The thrill of the "hunt"

For our last (well, my last and Joe's first and last!) weekend in India, we decided to escape the stressful life of yoga and long lunches with a weekend safari :)


We stayed at the Kabini River Lodge, at the suggestion of fellow Ashtangi Maria.


The room was nice and spacious, complete with a Western toilet and a shower! It felt so luxurious to take a shower after 6 weeks of bucket baths.


The weather was beautiful.


So were the views.


We spent Friday afternoon and Saturday morning riding in the back of this vehicle.


The roads were unbelievably bumpy, but I managed the requisite self-portrait.


At Nagarahole National Park, we saw many different animals, including


...a sambar.


...gorgeous peacocks.


...an "I-forgot-the-name" eagle.


...lots of spotted deer.


...some Indian "bison," which is really the largest family of cow, as real bison are only found in America.


...a few packs of wild boar. They look like they have mohawks.


...families of monkeys.


...and beautiful elephants.


But most of the time was spent waiting. On any safari, the most coveted animals to see are the big predators because they are so few and far between. The beauty of seeing animals in the "wild" (I use this term loosely because, really, is there any wilderness left anymore. A national park is just a glorified zoo without the fences. But I digress.) is that you never know when or where they will be seen. Which means sometimes they won't be seen.

We did catch a few glimpses of a leopard, but I think he was just out for a leisurely stroll. Some other people on another jeep were lucky enough to see the leopard in a tree and snapped some beautiful photos, but we didn't have such a good view. The national park is mostly a forest and the animals seem to hang out just inside the treeline, thus making it difficult to always see them. But part of the fun of the safari is the thrill of finding the animal, rather than just observing it from its cage in a zoo, which I really hate (digressing again).


We really enjoyed exploring a different part of India. (Another pet peeve: why does everyone love to center their subjects in a photo. Rule of thirds people! Last digression, I promise.)


I did try to follow the rules of the Lodge.