Work has kept me outside Bangalore and mostly outside India for the past few months. I finally found one weekend (23rd and 24th Oct) and a Friday when I had no work that couldn't wait. So I took the Friday off and we hit the road for a drive. Jungle Lodges & Resorts Limited (JLR) is a government of Karnataka initiative. They currently have 14 resorts, all in Karnataka and all in jungles/ national parks/ sanctuaries. A friend recommended the River Tern Resort. This resort is in Karnataka's Chikmagalur (literally, place of young daughters) district, which is north-west of Bangalore in the Western Ghats. It is situated at the entry to the Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary. This sanctuary/national park is fairly large as parks go…it’s around 490sqkm, which is slightly less than Corbett (520sqkm). The Bhadra reservoir is unusually large at 196sqkm. With a mean depth of 190 feet, that’s a lot of fresh water. This reservoir is the result of a dam on the Bhadra river, the river goes on to form the Tungabhadra river which later merges into the Krishna river. Like most peninsular rivers in India, it flows from west to east.
For those of you who believe like I do that the journey is the destination, the road is as important as the resort itself so I'll dwell at fair length on the road. The resort is around 280 km from Bangalore, which is a drive of around 6 hours. 2 of those 6 hours are to extricate yourself from Bangalore, or to get into it on your return. You drive out of Bangalore towards the Tumkur highway, which for me meant driving past the Hebbal flyover and going straight on (ignoring the oft taken right that leads to the airport J) past Nilamangala and finally hitting the highway. It took me ~50km just to hit the highway. The drive on the highway is all too brief – only another ~40km at which point you take a bypass to Shimoga well before Tumkur. Thereafter, the road ceases to have a divider in between and you have a single lane of traffic on either side of the road. But it’s a fair stretch of road almost right through till the resort barring a 2 km stretch where the rains have really taken a toll. For most of the single lane road, I averaged 80 kmph and even did 100 at stretches where I could see long stretches of empty road ahead. The road is ok to drive at speeds more than 100kmph but I cap out my driving at that speed since I don’t think I have control above that mark – at least not in my Swift.
Like most JLR joints, the agenda is for a single night’s stay. You reach around noon, go for a jeep safari in the evening and either trek or do a boat safari the next morning. You finish breakfast and check out around 11 AM. So in two days I drove 580 km, which is a fair bit on the road but it isn’t very taxing since the weather for the most part is pleasant, punctuated by the occasional mild drizzle. The sanctuary is famous for the river tern (bird) and the Gaur (Bison). There are a few tigers, cheetahs and around 200 elephants. The ideal season to visit if your primary intent is to watch the wildlife is in March – May (summer) when most of the water holes dry up and all predators as well as prey come to the limited perennially filled water holes to slake their thirst. If you intent is not wildlife particularly but to get some nice weather, take in the jungle air and get an eyeful of lush greenery then around this time (post monsoon) is a good time.
Here are some photos of the resort. I’d strongly recommend it for a weekend break from Bangalore.
Signboard at the gate:
Birds on every branch, and one little thing in the water:
1 comment:
Hi,im very glad to read your blog…you have gathered very good information.im planning for weekend vacation for Resorts at Bangalore so please suggest some good resorts
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