This one is a very short trip done over the weekend mainly for 2 reasons. One, I was itching to use my camera and click some birds and second we wanted to see how our cats would react if we were not around.
Over last year or so we had 4 kittens walk into our home and we ended up adopting them. After the first one came home, we were away from home for 4 days in early 2024. When we returned home the kitten was sick and it took almost a week long medication for it to come back to good health. This incident created some hesitation every time we wanted to plan a trip. Now we have 4 cats, oldest one is almost 1.5 years old and youngest being 4 months old. But now we have a neighbour who also has a cat, this gave us some comfort and we planned this short trip asking our neighbour to keep an eye on our cats.
There are 2 Jungle Lodges and Resorts (JLR) properties not too far from our house, so we decided to visit these 2 places. This also gave me an opportunity take those cameras out of cold storage and put them to some use.
We left home on Friday morning (14/02/2025) around 10:00 AM and our destination was Jungle Lodges and Resorts - Aanejari Butterfly Camp which is about 120 KMs away. We reached there in couple of hours after stopping for a coffee at Pakashala, Kumbashi on the way. Last 1 Km is unpaved road, but it should not be any challenge to most cars.
This property is located on the banks of Souparnika river and is home to 5 different kinds of Kingfishers. So if you are lucky you may get to spot them all.
I spent my afternoon looking for these birds on the riverbank. There were a lot of monkeys there and also a lesser fish eagle because of which birds stayed away and all I got to see was a Cormorant and a Darter.
Darter
Lesser fish eagle
After the sunset weather cooled down and silence of the jungle took over the rest of the evening.
Next day morning I was lucky to spot 3 of the 5 Kingfisher species available here.
Common Kingfisher
White throated Kingfisher
Blue eared Kingfisher
A lot of birds started to visit the birding area in the property as well, so I spent rest of the morning clicking away there.
White bellied blue flycatcher female
Lesser Yellow nape
Brown cheeked Fulvetta
Yellow Bulbul
Crimson Sunbird
On 15/02/2025 we left from Aanejari Nature camp around 10:30 AM and drove towards our next destination, Bhagavathi Nature Camp at Kudremukha. This is about 130 KMs drive and it took us 3 hours to reach. Road is good in most parts though it is 2 lane highway throughout. We stopped on the way at Holige Batru shop at Hebri to buy some sweets and savories. After taking the deviation from Karkala - Kalasa road the road condition became bit bad with patches of chipped off road surface.
Post lunch we went around the property. This place too has a lot of birds and you can hear them all around you. But spotting them is almost impossible because of the kind of trees here and how closely they are planted. We went out again in the evening looking for birds and also the next day morning walked close to 3 KMs on a trail and the result was same.
A river flows on the edge of this property and has crystal clear water. For us this place was the highlight. We also visited this river side post dinner and it was amazing to see stars with no light noise from here.
In the night the temperature dropped to single digits here and when we woke up in the morning the whole place was covered with fog. There was a layer of fog moving over the river water like cloud.
This place is also starting point for some of these treks and the booking need to be done through forest department website. https://aranyavihaara.karnataka.gov.in/
We left from here around 10:00 AM and reached home in couple of hours. This was a 95 KMs drive and road condition was good in most places.
Cats were fine so that is a big relief. Hopefully this will allow us to travel more frequently here onwards.
A note about both the places:
Aanejari Nature camp: Here Jio connectivity is good, rest of the mobile networks do not work. Office room has wifi connectivity.
Bhagavati Nature Camp: None of the mobile networks have any connectivity here and there is no wifi facility. So you will be completely cut off once you are here. Airtel stops working once you enter the Kudremukha national park and BSNL works in few places.
We were going on a road trip after 1.5 years after our previous road trip. Even without any road trip car had churned up 12.5K KMs in this period covering work and family function related travels. Also incidentally last 3 trips including this one have started from 3 different cities because of we moving houses. Life has been on a fast track for a while now.
We were planning for a road trip to Goa for a while. Our previous trips to Goa have been all about beaches, so we wanted it to be bit different this time. So we decided to visit southern part of Goa just after monsoon where there are few waterfalls to visit. October and November were busy again because of family commitments which meant the trip got delayed till end of November. Monsoon was sparse this time and delay in starting of the trip meant we were risking visiting these waterfalls at the wrong time. But we were so desperate for a road trip we decided to go on with the plan.
Journey:
We booked an entire house on Airbnb for week as we also wanted to take care of work during the weekday and go out only in the evenings. Luggage was packed and most of it was loaded in the car previous evening itself.
We left home around 6:00 AM, a rather late start for us as we didn't have much distance to cover. Our starting point for this trip was Mangalore, we had approximate 5.5 Hrs of leisure driving to Canacona. But soon we realized that our check in is only at 3:00 PM. So now had a huge challenge in hand to cover less than 6 Hrs distance in 9 hours. We decided for some pitstops at interesting locations on the way to extend our drive time. We have multiple bridges on this route as a lot of rivers which originate in western ghat drain into Arabian see in this coastal region.
Our next stop was for breakfast at Pakashala, Kumbashi. We were missing vada, sambar and masala dosa of Bangalore style; that craving was taken care of here.
We for a brief period at Maravanthe beach. It was very hot by then, so we decided to continue our journey.
On one of such bridges, we stopped for our first pit stop to watch the sunrise.
Sand Plover
Most part of this route is 4 lane highway, however there are few sections where the work is incomplete. These sudden change from 4 lane to 2 lane happens without any notice so one need to be careful and keep on the look out for such narrow passages. Surface quality is really good throughout this route.
With all these stops we had covered 200 KMs in about 4 hours time and just another 100 KMs to reach our destination.
We saw a diversion towards Mirjan Fort and decided to visit.
We spent about 45 mins here and continued our journey. Our next stop was CCD Ankola. Again, this stop was more to kill time and not because we needed a break.
At 12:15 PM we entered Karwar and stopped to visit INS Chapal war museum. This was in my bucket list for a while and today we got an opportunity to visit. Our initial plan was to visit this place during our return journey.
We called our host and informed him about we probably arriving early by an hour, thankfully he had no issues with it. We reached our home for next 1 week by 1:45 PM.
This place is on the edge of the Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary. Bit away from the beach but right in the lap of nature, the side of Goa we wanted this time.
This was the view from the outside of the house.
Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary:
This day being weekend, we had whole day to go out and explore. Plan was to visit Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary and also visit the Kuskem waterfalls which is inside the wildlife sanctuary.
A short distance drive to reach here, took us 20 minutes to reach the main gate where we have to enter details and buy entry tickets.
Road is in excellent condition, 2 lane twisties with canopy cover. It was a pleasant drive.
After buying the entry tickets we drove to the first gate as instructed at the front gate and parked our car. From here the trek inside the sanctuary starts till the lake (Bela).
This trek is roughly 3.5 KMs one side and you get to walk inside thick forest. Allowing people to walk makes it evident that spotting any wildlife is almost not possible. But we saw some motion sensor camera traps on the way which suggests that probably in the night time there is some movement of wildlife.
We got to hear a lot of birds chirping, got to see few but I was not able to click any as the forest is dense. Also the trees here are very tall, so its almost impossible to spot most of these birds.
Spotted an ant hill on the way.
Direction marking has been done in couple of places, not that one can get lost as there is no other alternate path to walk.
Hornet's Nest
When we were closer to the lake thick forest gave way to grassland.
We reached the Bela lake in about 90 mins. There were couple pond herons and Egrets and nothing else. However walk was very pleasant and an unique experience.
We were back to the car parking in another 90 mins and wanted to visit the waterfall. Forest guard at the gate informed us to avoid the visit as water fall is completely dry.
We spoke to him about our intensions of visiting Netravali Wildlife Sanctuary the next day to visit couple of waterfalls there. He made some phone calls and informed that the situation is similar there too.
So our plans of visiting waterfalls in this trip had to be dropped. We decided to plan next visit better and come and see them.
It was late in the afternoon by then, we decided to have lunch in one of the restaurants in a resort inside the wildlife sanctuary, go back to the room and make alternate plans for rest of our stay.
Beaches we visited:
Our plan during the weekdays was to work during the day and head out to some interesting places in the evenings.
Here are some of the beaches we visited in south Goa.
Talpona beach:
Galgibaga beach (This place is apparently the cleanest beach and is also famous for nesting of turtles.)
Palolem:
Agonda:
Chapoli dam:
Talpona river:
Other places we visited:
Cabo de Rama Fort: A small fort and has a church inside. It was closed when we went there. There is nothing much to do here.
Spotted this list of all monuments in GOA under ASI.
Betul Fort: A small piece of the fort remains here. A local guy we met there informed that there is a fort and showed his hand in the direction. But that narrow walkable path turned into thick bush about 100 meters later. He was gone when we returned and there was no one else to cross check. So not sure if there is more to see here.
We were visiting Madgao for some shopping. We decided to go to St. Baptist church, Benaulim. But this one was closed too when we went there.
This very narrow bridge over Talpona river at Sadolxem was an interesting one. This bridge is wide enough for a medium size car. I had about 3 inches of space on either side for OVRMs. So had to hold the car steady through the length. The narrowest bridge I have ever driven. But after a couple of drives through it didn't have to worry about the width much.
We tried this local dish called Xacuti.
The home we stayed being so close to the thick jungle meant we got to spot some birds around it. Here are some of the birds I spotted around where we stayed and some when we went out exploring.
Note: Trees being so close meant had a difficult angle to take photos with most having bright white sky as background, so most of these photos are just record shots.
Common Wood shrike
Yellow billed Babbler
Lesser White throat
This Brahmini kite was enjoying his meal
Large Hawk Cuckoo
Blue tailed Bee eater
White browed wagtail
Chestnut tailed starling
Common iora
Indian golden Oriol
Asian Koel
Asian fairy bluebird.
I got to see this for just a few seconds and I had almost passed it off thinking it is a Drongo. Glad I took this photo.
Black winged cuckoo shrike
Common kingfisher
Our return journey was uneventful. We left at 8:00 AM and reached our home by 1:15 PM. Stopped for breakfast on the way in Kumta. Did not find any good options for breakfast before this on the way.
