Jungle Story - Forests, Trekking, Wildlife, a 4X4 and more... (Part 2)

It would be best if you read this first. After observing the herd for a while, we continued our walk discussing about the sighting. All of us a sudden a *massive* Feral Buffallo ran towards us. It was sleeping in the shade of a tree and we hadnt noticed it. Our movement had disturbed its sleep and the fellow was *pissed off* at us.

These are no doubt one of the most aggressive and dangerous animals in the entire forest. Worse then tigers and elephants. If this buffalo spots you alone, you are finished. The next thing he does is sneeze out loud and charge you. Imagine a 1 ton beast running towards you at 40-50 kmph. He gets you in between those horns and rips your intestines apart. When attacked by these animals, death is almost never immediate. The victim dies only of excessive blood loss or because his intestines and other organs have been ripped apart.

The moment he saw us (6 of us) he let out a sneeze (grunt) and ran around us. Our tracker tried scaring him off and threw stones at him. The bloody fellow did not budge. He continued to stare at us till we were out of sight.

Soon after this adventure we saw another herd of elephants. It was a very short sighting, since the wind was not in our favor and the elephants very soon figured out they were being watched and moved away.

This was immediately followed by a Bison sighting. The fellow initially didnot realise we were looking at him. The moment I lifted my camera up, he saw some movement and sprinted away.

The highlight of this trek however was only at the end.

There is only one bus that comes to Thengumarada village. It comes to the village at around 1 in the afternoon and leaves at around 2. One of us had to catch that bus. There are no roads in these areas. Only mud paths and that too thru the jungle. We reached a point where we knew the bus would cross us and waited there. The bus came in a few minutes & he left. The rest of us rested for a while longer before we left for the village. About 15 minutes after the bus had passed, we started towards the village, and this is what we saw less than 30-50 feet from where we were resting. This is a pugmark of a tiger. And the best part - they were over the tire tracks of the bus that passed us. The tiger had actually come along, noticed us sitting nearby and moved away. All this less than 10-15 minutes ago :)

A perfect end to a wildlife trail!

This is not the end of the trip. Only the end of the trek. More adventures yet to be posted...

If you have anything to say/share, please feel free to drop a comment.