3:01pm: So many things, so little time
I just got my first major photo assignment.

The assignment is to shoot fashion shows etc on few cruises in Miami. I get to spend time in the cruse , all expenses taken care and a good pay check. Th only hitch is that, this is a 8 month long assignment. *Sigh*

Looks like I will have to pass :(

12:58pm: Leopard on the tree
Things have been slightly busy lately. I was in Bangalore and Hyderabad for couple of days last week. It was nice to meet all the folks back home, but the pollution and traffic jams are still the same no matter that, I just cannot get used to them. Sting concert was lovely too.

Got back here to the forest over the weekend and I've have been having a good time here. Last evening we saw this leopard sitting on top of a tree and it refused to budge from there. We waiting for 20 min and the leopard, just sat there. He was staring at us for a while, then gave up and slept off on the branch. Eventually it got too dark, so we drove back to the camp. I wish I had better lighting, the picture could have been lot better :)



Another close-up leopard picture

10:44am: Nostalgia from Doordarshan days
This is probably the first cartoon that I've ever seen in my life. It used to come very often on DD in the late 80's. Infact when I was watching this today, I realized I still remember every line and every scene of this song. It goes like “Suraj Ek, Chanda Ek…”, the cartoon in which a “didi” tells a small boy about Ekta? It's a story to illustrate the importance of unity in diversity.

I sure enjoyed it then (do even more now) and hope you will have pleasant feelings of nostalgia too.

Ek Anek Aur Ekta

11:30am: More than just birds at republic day bird count
What a bird count it has been. We started at 6am and trekked till 6pm with an hour's break in the middle. We managed to count about 2100 birds and 150 unique species. If you are interested, you can grab the republic day bird count list (xls file). I got to learn a great deal from other expert birders and now I can identify lot more birds very easily.

Since it was a trek through the jungle, we had an amazing time and got to see lot more then birds. To start off, Bandipur is an elephant infested forest. So we took an armed guard with us who kept his ear out for any signs of elephants and we altered our routes at various points so we don't bump into them. We managed to see 70% of the birds before 9am and after that, it started to get hot and we were seeing less and less of the birds. After late lunch, things started to cool down and we were spending lot of time at water holes to spot some water birds and animals etc.

At about 5pm, we heard lot of alarm calls at a lake and we ran towards it to see if can spot any predator. Once we got there, the alarm calls changed direction and we were not sure in which direction the animal was going. We split and I headed towards a spotted deer which was making the alarm call. The deer saw me and ran off, but I noticed the deer looking in one direction before it dashed off. I ran towards the place and from the spot where the deer was, I could see a big open area in front of me. The alarm calls stopped and I was just about to turn back when I saw some animal walk to the open area from the left. At first I thought it was a spotted deer since it was yellow and then I noticed the signature tail. It was a large leopard walking in front of me. I just froze and every hair on my body stood up. It's one hell of an experience to see a big cat on foot in the forest. I really have no words to describe the experience. You really have to be there to feel the adrenaline rush. It walked for a while and then sat down in the middle of the clearing. I called out for rest of the folks and they all came running towards me and had a good look at the leopard. My camera was in the bag, so I decided to give up shooting and just enjoy the sight with by binocs. We started to walk towards the leopard to have a close look, but the leopard spotted us and it immediately dashed off in the other direction. We ran to catch up with it, but he was gone. I could not count any more birds for a while, as I was so excited about the whole thing.

We continued the trek and at one of these waterholes, we spotted this large rock python resting on the side of the lake. It had few leeches on it and was not at all happy to see us. Eventually it went into the water after we got lot of good shots of the guy.


Rock python with leeches

And then it rained. Since this was the first rain of the year, every drop was releasing this amazing smell from the ground. We threw our bags and sat down on a rock to enjoy the rain and the smell. Luckly the rain was not too heavy and we managed to reach the checkpoint where a jeep was waiting for us. Then we spent time till 11pm, trying to make sense of all the count and by midnight, we had the fully compiled list with us.

I drove back to Bangalore from there yesterday. I should be here till next weekend ( with 3 days in Hyderabad in between ) and then will be heading back to BR hills.

7:32pm: Republic day bird count @ Bandipur
I'm at Bandipur National park right now with full power and almost high-speed internet access :)

Few Naturalists and wildlife experts have gathered here to do a bird species count tomorrow. We leave the camp at 6am and trek through the forest the whole day in 4 groups and eventually meet at a central location by the end of the day and compare notes on birds. I'm not a bird expert, but I hope to learn a lot through this exercise.

I drove down here today afternoon and the evening safari was amazing. Spotted some 20+ elephants and 2 packs of wild dogs. I leave for Bangalore from here on 27th and hope to spend about a week there.

12:32pm: Hunting for a tiger kill 2 - Gory pictures
The tiger kill is still intact ( or it was when I checked it day before ). Because of the weekend rush, Haven't had time to check out the place again. The body has started to rot, so looks like it will mostly remain that way. Finally had time to upload few of the pics.

( click only if you have the stomach for it )

3:12pm: Hunting for a tiger kill
Last night while having dinner, we suddenly heard a loud cry of an animal, followed by an elephant thrumpet and then whole forest around us just came alive. All the monkeys in the camp start screaming out, the pet dogs were getting restless and deers were giving alarm calls from all around. I could even hear langur at a distance. All this was coming from just 200m from the camp.

I tried talking to the guests, and none of them seemed interested. So I just took my torch and jumped out of the camp trying to find out what happened. I could not go beyond 50m as the forest got too dense and it was pitch dark to see anything. I searched around for a while and came back to the camp and all the noises eventually died out after 15 min.

I was pretty sure a big cat ( tiger or leopard ) had killed something nearby.

Today after the morning trek, I took the local tribal and went into the forest in search for the carcass. Since there were no routes into that area and since we did not have a knife to hack our way through, we just crawled through all the thorny bushes, jumped rocks to reach places and even rolled on the ground to slip under some brances. After more then a hour of searching, zillion scratches on my body and after tearing my T-shirt, we finally found the dead body of a HUGE male sambar deer. Most of the body was intact and the tiger had eaten only back of the animal. I took some snap's, but can only upload them later as I'm running low on disk space.

We decided not to tell anyone. If the local tribes get know about it, they will come down with knifes, chop the animal down and feast on it for weeks. Even if we tell the Forest Dept, they will cut the horns off and sell them off to make some quick buck. Besides I'm pretty sure the tiger will come back to have a second snack on the animal, so I plan to visit this carcass everyday for the next couple of days to see what happens to it.

Life's really really exciting here. More later...

1:33pm: Visit from fellow LJ bloggers
shortindiangirl and chaibacca where here the last two days along with their folks. Apparently they came over after mmk mentioned I was working here. Just before they left, chaibacca gave 100 bucks to the camp elephant thinking that would hand it over to the mahout. The elephant just took the money and put it in its mouth and gobbled it down. Now the mahout is planning to wait till tomorrow morning and see if he can get the money out from its crap. heh

Was nice to have them here specially since we had this other big pile of people from HP here and all they wanted to talk during the safari was how many bug's were left in their CRM product. Come on people, when you are on a vacation, do enjoy your vacation and if you are not interested in wildlife, go to a beach resort. Don't come to a forest and start partying and dancing.

I'm still down with fever. I wish I can get well soon. Missing all the lovely treks through the jungle.

12:01pm: Elephant Charge

The elephants in the forests know we do not harm them directly, but they still are very careful in the presence of humans and are always on alert when they smell us. This female was staring at us for a while and then suddenly decided we were a threat and did the most amazing charge towards our jeep I've ever seen in my life.

In other news, am down with fever here. Luckly its because of cold and not because of some freak insect bite.

2:20pm: Silver Jubilee
Yes. Today is my birthday. So add one more to that number that represents just how bald, tired, un-cool, nervous, and grumpy I am. I’ve earned it. But heck, looks like this is going to be the most interesting year in my life yet.

Thank you to all who wrote in to wish me.

11:48am: Updates from the jungle
Past few days have been very hectic and exciting.

I got to see all the predators in the forests - The tiger, the leopard and two packs of the Indian wild dogs. Also saw few bears, elephants and lots of amazing birds. All the photos will be up once I'm back in Bangalore (which is this wednesday). The connectivity here is too slow.

Weekend was hectic. Too many guests poured in here and I ran out of place to stay. Somehow survived in the forest guesthouse and now I'm back in my room since all the guests are gone. Few guests were good, but few of them come here just to drink all day and make loads of noise. Have to put up with all of them. Yathin, Noella, Bipin, Ramnath and Praveen were down here over the weekend. Pleasant company and had a nice time with them.

Politics are creeping up here. Since I take the guests out now, the manager is getting pissed off. He used to take lot of pride in taking the guests out and got kicks when his name was mentioned in the visitors book etc. Now since my name appears and the folks in the head office read that, he is very pissed and trying to get back at me ;)

From today, I start driving one of the jeeps since now I know all the routes in the jungle and know what to do in case of elephant charges.

11:46am: Finally a tiger in the wild
For the 1st time in my life, I managed to see a Tiger in the wild this morning. It was quite far, but we got to seem him for a full min. He was resting, saw us for a while, gave a huge growl and was off into the bushes. Since it was 7 in the morning with lost of mist, this is what I could manage.

11:22am: Showing tribals the Internet.
The folks here who work in the camp are truly amazing set of people. They have all come from the near by tribal villages and can speak only kannada. Today while I was working on my machine, they came over and asked me if I could show them a plane. Apparently they have never seen a plane in their lives, only few times flying really high above the forests. Infact they were going gaga over the pics of Bangalore. They have never been out of 50KM radius from here, never visited bangalore, never seen the sea and never even got on a train

I open up google image search and ask them to tell me what they'd like to see. The list went on something like America, helicopter, plane, buildings etc.. I show them the thumbnails and you should have seen the excitement on their faces. One guy jumped and called all the people around and I sat here for an hour showing them pic by pic of various things. The link's very bad here to show them too many things, but I promised them I will get all the pics and videos from bangalore and show them urban life.

I plan to leave the laptop with them later in the day and show them how to use google image search. They still cannot understand how I can talk to folks around the world using the computer and the internet. For them Yahoo messenger is voodoo magic.

In other news, we got charged by a big female elephant yesterday (Too bad I was not carrying my camera then). The emphasis here is to track big game and the drivers and trackers seem least interested about the birds , insects and plants. Will try to change that in the coming days.

12:21pm: I'm connected
Reached here at BRT by noon yesterday and since then been having a gala time.

Since the resort is on a hill, overlooking at the plains below, I can manage a weak airtel signal. So currently I have my phone tied up on a tree (to get better signal of course) and the laptop is able to connect to the phone via bluetooth even though the phone is more then 10m away.

What can I say about this place ? I'm currently sleeping on a hammock with the laptop on my tummy. There are some 20 monkey's around playing and few of them are curious about my laptop and want to have a peak. There are two camp elephants and they are day dreaming on my left and on the right the its all dense forests. Yesterday right after I landed here, a tiger walked into the camp. We heard lot of alarm calls from all the animals around and by the time I got to the place, the tiger had disappeared. Few of the guests managed to see it though.

Except for the fact that I feel a bit lonely here, this is the best thing I've done in my life. The people here are very friendly and since this is a gov organisation, they treat me like a king. It gets annoying too. They would not sit down while I am sitting and they won't even let me carry my own bag.

Haven't shot any pictures yet, but will do so today or tomorrow. More updates later, this monkey is eyeing my phone as I type this, so I better logout and grab my phone before the monkey gets to it.

11:38am: Off to the jungles on *Work*
Remember the naturalist training I had been to couple of weeks ago ? Well after the course the chief naturalist over there asked me to come over and meet him at his office and just as I hoped, he offered me a job as a naturalist at BRT forests (K Gudi).

Since I have other things to do here in bangalore, I said , I'll do the job for couple of weeks and then decide on my future. So starting Jan 1st 2005, I'm of to work there for anywhere between 2 weeks to 2 months. This place does not have power (a generator is turned out for an hour every evening) and no internet access (I'll have to drive to the nearest town to pick up GPRS signal), which means after after many years, I'll be totally offline.

I never imagined (even a month ago) that I'd be doing something as random as this in my life. I, for one always wanted to do this since I was a kid. I grew up looking at Jane goodall and likes on NGC and said to myself "Hey, I want to do that when I grow up" and this is like my childhood dream come true. (I also wanted to be an astronaut, but thats a diff story).

This will also mean, no more regular blogging from my side and will be very late on my email. If you are planning on a vacation into the jungle, then do drop in at BRT. I can be your personal guide :)

2:31am: Could we have saved some lives ?
The earthquake occurred at north-western Indonesia which is right at the continental plate boundry and usually most earthquakes happen at these boundries. I presume the Indian Geological survey team knew that.

The earthquake occurred at around 8am IST and alerts went out to all the countries in Asia right away (Including the Indian Geological survey ) . At about 10am, the huge tsunami waves hit the Indian and srilankan coast and killing thousands of people. So at about 8:30am, the Indian geological survey team knew there was a large earthquake and there could be huge tsunami's heading towards our country.

So they had a full hour and a half to warn the people on the beaches to run inland, or to high ground. Even an emergency alert on radio and TV around south India, could have saved so many lives. I think its about time the Indian gov setup a Tsunami Warning Center like how there is one for the pacific ocean.

<update>
According to hserus, the USGS (usgs.gov) has a warning and alert system in place for earthquakes and tsunamis and there's an international alert network. Apparently people from this network tried frantically to reach the indian authorities to warn them ... and as you can guess, the folks in India were talking a nap.
</update>

10:07am: Cookie Theft
Last night, some dude broke into my car while my car was parked near cambridge layout by breaking the small glass window behind. This time I had not left anything in my car and luckily was carrying the camera and the palm with me. The thief broke in, rolled down my back seat window and stole a pack of choco-brandy cookies which where in the back seat (I had got from CookieMan earlier in the day ). There were few other small stuff in the back seat, which the thief left intact.

I'll have to go get the glass fixed today and it's about time I get my car fitted with a security system.

8:30pm: Naturalist Training
Starting tomorrow morning, I'm off to a 3 day naturalist training workshop being conducted by Jungle lodges Training Institute at Bannerghatta Nature Camp. The course will consist of Role of Naturalists, Interpretive Skills, Introduction to reptiles, mammals, insects, butterfly's, birds, Conservation issues etc.

At the end of the course, time to ask them for a job :D

12:05pm: Colors of Nature

Instead of waiting for big game like tigers and elephants, I've started to appreciate little things in the jungle which most people just ignore or don't bother to have a closer look. For example, take this desert succulent plant. This is found almost all over india and many species of this plant develop spikes at the edge of their leaves filled with toxins to keep enemies away. This one here clearly advertising the fact that the spikes have toxins by color coding them and hence asking everyone to stay away. Who says plants do not communicate :) I've uploaded rest of the pictures from my last Bandipur trip. Oh did I mention, this time around, I actually got to spend some time with the baby elephant. I have no words to describe what a lovely experience it was.

12:04am: Google Suggest
When it comes to innovation and trying out new hacks, google rocks.

If you are a Unix user, you are just going to love the new Google Suggest feature. Auto-completion of search keywords :)

Yahoo and MSN are finally catching up on desktop search and I presume after today, they will start working on the Auto-completion feature and roll it out after couple of months.

10:57am: Cheap self publicity
<Commercial Mode On>
In case you want your portfolio done, portrait of you taken for an online dating service, interiors of your office photographed, need pictures for your company PR kit, themed images for your a calender, just ping your friendly neighborhood photographer ;)
</Commercial Mode Off>

Trying to make a living out of photography is *very* *very* tough.

2:10pm: Linux-Bangalore 2004
Linux-Bangalore/2004 finally comes to an end. I attended exactly 3 talks. Slept through one, the other two were quite interesting and the rest were pure tech talks which frankly I can learn by reading up online.

For me, LB has been an excellent place to catch up with loads of old friends, meeting people from online communities (LJ, LUG's) for the first time (now you can associate a face to that person), people from my college etc. Many folks came up to introduce themselves and mentioned that they read by blog. Cool! Thanks for dropping by to say hi.

There has been lot less noise about the event this time around, but the event itself was as good as last year. Apparently next year, the event will be held at palace grounds. I personally like the IISC halls and their seating system. Guess we do not have too much choice.

jace has my 5GB CF card and all my pics are on that card. Will try to post them once I get back my card.

5:45pm: Community Internet ?
No wifi, no LAN, no GPRS, no Internet at LB2004.

So jace jumps in, dials out via his reliance phone, makes his powerbook a wifi router and now the speaker lounge has wifi access. Yay to jace and may the force be with you.

Now back to my slides. Remember : If you want to attend, my talk is at 10am tomorrow.

12:55pm: Post trip blues
The trip to bandipur and kabini was *Excellent* and I already can't wait to get back to this place. Though we could not see many mammals, we had a gala time spotting the birds, insects and best of all the appreciating the flora. Will post some of the lovely plant pictures later when I have time.

Eventful week coming up. Me and my IISC prof are doing a combined keynote at the Storage Area Network CEO summit on Dec 1st. This will be my first major talk in front of a non-tech audience and I hope I can print my visiting cards in time for the event.

This years Linux Bangalore 2004 is happening next week. Time to catch up on all the folks from the linux community. This year, instead of the usual Linux security talks, my presentation will be on 'Digital Photography workflow under Linux'.

Looks like I'll have to spend a lot of time with openoffice in the next two days.

12:31am: Off again
In 5 hours, I am off to Bandipur and kabini again. This time its a longer trip and I'm back again only on the weekend. I will have my laptop to transfer all my images at the end of the day, so hopefully that will mean more pics (== better pics). I hope to spend some time with the baby elephant again.

Bye bye polluted world.