We had a guide this time, a lil' kid from the estate named Abhinav. He knew his way around the forest, and he tried to impress us with his 'knowledge' of the legendary Kaati!
Don't forget the magic word Kaati across the rest of the adventure, because a lot of adventure revolved around the Kaati itself! Kaati means Wild Bison in Kannada and Thulu, the local dialects spoken here; and Ashwin solved the dilemma of my 'non-comprendo Kannada' with his fluency in both!
I was keen in shooting the Kaati. More than elephant or leopard or any other animal, i always had a fascination for this rather humongous but really muscled buffalo (choco brown in colour with white stockings, and not black)! Oh yes, before you start giving me those wrinkled eyebrow looks and signs of cutting my throat; shooting here means shooting with my camera, and my gun's my 150-500mm Sigma lens attached to my good ol' Canon camera!
Apparently, Kaati were numerous in these forests and could be easily sighted. Of course, this is easier said than done for these huge buffaloes are masters at making themselves disappear into the slightest of cover. Evening's when they'd come down to drink. But the forest where we were headed was mountainous terrain, and experience told me the Kaati'd be resting in the shade of some tree grove; and a chance such as this could not be discounted!
Ashwin did not share my enthusiasm for hunting the Kaati, and was rather nervous. It was his first time in a forest, so he must not be scoffed at! To add to his fears, the kid kept pointing us telltale signs of Kaati roaming the forest. Any furrows dug deep in the ground became Kaati hoofmarks for him and Ashwin began vigorously nodding with him in consent. Guess what they were talking in? Kannada my love :)
The marks on the ground could certainly be Kaati, but they seem more like the work of Wild Boar. Deep furrows in the earth, dug up plants, and a general disarray could be caused by a herd of Kaati or a sounder of Wild Boar.
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| The pond where Kaati come to drink |
The next important event was birding in difficult terrain, read undergrowth dominated by ant hills, thick undergrowth and rotting vegetation. I didn't particularly like it because it meant looking down where i'm walking in addition to following the bird i wanted to shoot. There was somebody who called this place home, cobras! And King Cobra cannot be discounted from here because it was evergreen forest, home to these giant cobras!
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| Malabar Trogon |
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| Asian Fairy Bluebird |
And so, braving the prospect of a brutal death at the fangs of the cobras, bitten painfully by ants thankfully, we wended through the forest finding those elusive birds who belong in the realm of fantasy. Sounds like fun? You bet it was!
Asian Fairy Bluebird, Malabar Trogon etc to name a few were bagged in succession. Far more missed were, and these included White Bellied Blue Flycatcher, Verditer Flycatcher, and God knows what else i missed. These birds are known for their marvellous colour, and terrific difficulty in yielding a good sighting, let alone a photograph!
The passage of time of course we could never guage and neither did we try to do that either. The kid Abhinav was an adept hand at spotting birds, and was instrumental for us in bagging the Malabar Trogon.
After this midday session, there's little to report unless you want to hear of what we had for lunch, our afternoon's siesta, Abhinav waiting for us for upwards of an hour, a visit to a paddy field damaged by wild boar, and just about the other mundane things.
I thought of sitting up for the Kaati at an old bungalow at the fringe of the estate bordering the forest we had visited in the afternoon. But then when we got back home, both of us conveniently forgot about this hunt. Result? We had a BATH! As always, there's a reason the bath's written in capital bold! Kaati have a remarkable sense of smell, and the smell of our deodorants would send Kaati crashing away even before we could chance upon them :(
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