Thanks, that was very gracious of you (see previous post). I'm about a month late in blogging this trip of ours to anticlimactic forests and cute lovely beaches. The delay can well be attributed to any of starting trouble, writer's block, holiday hangover or work pressure, but let me play the honest guy and admit I was lazy.
Oct 13, 2005: We had only called up Dandeli Forest Dept. the day before, and couldn't book tents in the Kulgi Nature Camp - we were just asked to come to the camp, where two tents were expected to be vacant.But, lo, you guessed right, they were not. We were politely shown the door, or gate, whatever (intriguingly, there's a cut-out of a bison by this gate) ("Rooms, no. Only dormitory."). We anyway didn't fancy the idea of staying in a "nature camp" just 1km from civilization, from where there was a rain-induced moratorium on treks ("No permit") and the watchmen very skeptical of jungle safaris ("If you're lucky, you can see.."). We also considered Jungle Lodges, but they were really expensive, and they seemed to prefer hikes (though they called them treks) to treks anyway. We rang up a trek organizer, one Manjunath Rathode (our eventual trip-nemesis) who wasn't available, went back to Dandeli, and checked in at State Lodge, just opposite the bus stand, with whom we got a safari arranged for the evening.
Oct 13, 2005: We had only called up Dandeli Forest Dept. the day before, and couldn't book tents in the Kulgi Nature Camp - we were just asked to come to the camp, where two tents were expected to be vacant.But, lo, you guessed right, they were not. We were politely shown the door, or gate, whatever (intriguingly, there's a cut-out of a bison by this gate) ("Rooms, no. Only dormitory."). We anyway didn't fancy the idea of staying in a "nature camp" just 1km from civilization, from where there was a rain-induced moratorium on treks ("No permit") and the watchmen very skeptical of jungle safaris ("If you're lucky, you can see.."). We also considered Jungle Lodges, but they were really expensive, and they seemed to prefer hikes (though they called them treks) to treks anyway. We rang up a trek organizer, one Manjunath Rathode (our eventual trip-nemesis) who wasn't available, went back to Dandeli, and checked in at State Lodge, just opposite the bus stand, with whom we got a safari arranged for the evening.