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.
