October is the time for the annual 'cousins club trip' as we call it. It has been an annual routine for the last 15 years now for my brothers, cousins to gang up with families and travel. We prefer some destination within Karnataka (there is so much to see) and a remote one at that. So forests are usually our destination. This time, we visited nagarahole & bandipur forests for 4 days and the crowd was 9 adults and 7 kids. Here is an account of the trip:
A few 'firsts' for kids:
- Kids did their first trekking in life - we trekked for about 4 kms in bandipur forest to view a beautiful lake. kids walked about half that distance. Our shoulders ached for two days because of carrying them for the remaining distance. We trekked in a thick forest with a local tribal man as a guide. Forget being armed for a risky trek like this, we were carrying kids and at nature's mercy for an hour or so. As I commented later, the only thing we could have done on sighting a leopard or tiger was to sing the popular Kannada folk song to the beast - "chanda vyaagrane, neenu idellava undu santhasadhindhiru". We watched a splendid sunset at the fag end of our trek. Kids felt very proud on doing the trek and posed.
Kids had the first taste of a waterfall and a beautiful one at that - irruppu falls. The kids screamed in frenzy for 40 mins in the van on the way to irruppu falls in excitement. They trekked up the path in zeal as well. The imposing waterfall and freezing water almost killed all the enthusiasm in them. They did enjoy the dip in the water for a while and their jaws rattled for 10 mins after getting out of water.
Kids played cards! It helps to start early :-) Kids were feeling bored one late evening on the trip, men wanted to play cards and women folk wanted a break from taking care of kids. The genius stroke from me was to give kids a pack of old playing cards and that kept them busy for more than two hours. The eldest kid in the gang came up with a game and rules were conveniently designed by him on the fly so that he wins all those games. Anyway that kept the kids engaged & happy and served our needs.
Other notes:
- Nidhi touched the tusk of a tamed elephant and was super thrilled
- Neha & Nidhi saw enough of forest that they could distinguish dung of four animals - goat, cow, gaur & elephant (no snaps for this :-))
- Kids loved the van safari ride in nagarhole and we could sight peacock, deer, elephants, gaur, wild boar, malabar squirrel & monkeys. First snap is that of kids wearing monkey caps and gazing at the forest. Second snap is that of the marks scraped on the bark of a tree by a tiger to mark its territory
We visited a rather cute govt primary school in murkal forest where the tribal kids are taught. Some interesting snaps from this school. Notice how small the benches are and how big the stick is! One true believer of 'spare the rod & spoil the child'.
