Tiger Shine On !

Project Tiger, and all other efforts to save the tiger meant as much to me as saving any other endangered species. I have always treated this as something important that needed doing, but never really appreciated why saving the tiger was something special and almost fundamental to our survival. I have heard many naturalists say, “we have inherited the world from our parents AND have borrowed it from our children”. I can understand what is behind that sentiment, but I never really related saving the tiger with this statement in a straight correlation.

However, all that changed last weekend after my trip to Jim Corbett National Park. I had gone to the park along with my Marketing team which is a team of nine wonderful and crazy folks. We had been planning a getaway for quite some time to celebrate a a very tough and successful year gone by and also to enjoy in each others company outside of the office environment. As a leader of this team, the trip for me, was an opportunity to appreciate every one's effort and also to improve team bonding. To achieve these objectives, any "touristy"place outside Delhi would have sufficed. Thankfully, Corbett was chosen as the destination after some sort of a democratic process without too much thinking about the specificity of what Corbett offered.

We started from Delhi, early Saturday morning and after an uneventful drive arrived at Corbett after about 6 hours . Our stay was arranged at at the wonderful and quaint Jim’s Jungle Retreat. The retreat is really close to the forest (on the east side) and it was really exciting to be so close – so much so that one could actually hear tiger calls from the cottages in the retreat. (these are panic calls made by animals when they make eye contact with the tiger) . The sense of the tiger being so close was exciting as well as scary at the same time. One expected the retreat to be typical with all the trappings that modern day resorts offer in India, nothing more, nothing less. But, we were completely taken aback by what we got. If there is something called Eco Tourism- then I believe that Jim’s is the gold standard for it.

As soon as we walked in we could see that the place was different. I have never seen so much greenery in a resort before. It was so densely green that we felt that we are in the Jungle itself. Over an area of 13 acres, they have only 12 cottages, almost an acre per cottage! Since all of us in the team are marketing folks we immediately started discussing that they could get in at least 50 cottages in the same space and how much higher ROI they would have and so on. The rooms were comfortable and the resort has all the creature comforts that one can need... swish rooms, AC, pool, massage, great food, sports and so on. However, what set this place apart for us was 3 special people that we met here. Jassi, Majid and Mr Imran Khan. You would expect the General Manager of a resort like this to have a degree in hospitality or experience mainly in the hospitality business – not here! Mr Imran Khan who runs the place is an ex Forest Services employee who has a PhD in tiger conservation and worked with Valmik Thapar on his research. WOW! Jassi and Majid, his second in commands, are MBA’s who have worked in regular jobs in places like Delhi, but have left the draw of the plush life because they “love the jungle”. A strange trio to be running a resort you would think at first, but read on to understand that 3-stage seduction process that we were all going to undergo.
Since there are only 12 cottages in the resort and we had 5 of them, we were able to get a lot of interaction time with the three. Majid, in an impromptu hour-long lecture on the evening of our arrival, explained minute details about the forest and what the rules governing the life in the fores are. We got a very good basic understanding of the forest, the tiger and various other interesting facts about Nature in general and Corbett in specific. His passion and love for what he does was infectious – we were bitten! Seduction Stage 1.

Early next morning, Jassi took us for a 2 hour nature walk deep into the forest and showed us several birds, various types of animals, made us hear bird sounds, sounds of different animals, mating calls, panic calls, and exposed us to forest in a manner that none of us had ever experienced. On foot, right next to the animals, without the safety of a cage or a vehicle. We also saw tiger marks at various places, bones of dead animals with Jassi hypothesising the cause of death and other such details. We came back flush with excitement of the nature walk feeling totally blessed. We could feel the intoxication! Seduction Stage 2

At break fast the same day, we had an hour-long discussion with Mr Imran Khan, which was one of the highlights of the trip. For the first time I truly understood the importance of project tiger and its implications. Mr Khan explained a simple equation to us. Tiger = Forest = Water = Life. Basically, Tiger = Life. According to him, if the wild tiger bcomes extinct, then life as we know it today will not exist. This seemed like a preposterous statement, but he looked serious enough so we listened. Carefully.

Mr Khan explained that not for nothing is the Tiger known as the King of the Jungle. He plays the main role in the preservation of the forest itself by maintaining the fine balance between all the elements that are needed for a forest to survive. If the tiger gets wiped out from a jungle, the jungle dies and takes away everything that it has to offer. Take the example of the Sariska Forest Reserve; since there are no tigers left there now, the forest has started to die. Animals on whom the Tiger would otherwise keep a check like Neel Gai and Deer and other herbivores have multiplied in such huge numbers that the balance of the forest is totally gone. The herbivores are eating the jungle away, and, the vegetation is not able to grow back that rapidly to feed all the hungry stomachs. Sadly, there is no Tiger there anymore to save his jungle, to bring back that balance in the circle of life. The Sariska Jungle is perilously close to destruction. Point made sir, Tiger = Forest!

The second and third part of the equation, i.e. forest = water and water = life is easily understood and it did not require much explaining. The individual parts of the equation are easy to understand but putting them together made the big picture Tiger = Life crystal clear to all of us and we suddenly understood that saving the tiger is far more important than just saving the tiger. It is actually a measure of the impact of all our conservation efforts. The Tiger count in our forests is like a Ecology Sensex of sorts. At the turn of the century India had approx 40,000/- tigers, around independence we had approx 5,000 and today we have about 1,500 tigers in the wild. Arguably this could also be a numeric indicator of the deterioration of our environment itself- a measure that can quantify the extent to which we have raped nature. Tiger conservation has a significance much larger than anything else that I have heard in a long long time. It is possible that all this was common knowledge and you may feel, “what’s the big deal, I already knew this”, but all of us who spent that morning with Mr Khan came out of the conversation feeling like tourists transformed to naturalists.
This was the final stage of seduction; we were filled with the magic and completely inebriated. Over and out. Mission Completed. Stage 3.

Now, I do not know if these 3 amazing gentlemen had planned these 3 stages of our seduction with nature or it happened naturally (Pardon the pun). Whatever the case, we could not care less. The intoxication was heady and we loved it.

Yes, we did an Elephant Safari deep into the forest that evening and after a 2 hour search we saw not one but 2 tigers from as close as twenty feet and had our chills and thrills. But, when the tiger sighting happened, for us it was much more than a badge of having seen the tiger. It was much more than a box that we as tourists needed to tick. It was much more than having seen the mandatory “lovers point” or “monkey point”. For us sighting the Tiger was the culmination of a 2-day seduction journey that ended in a orgasm of sorts symbolised by seeing the tiger in wild .

What about the team bonding objective ? The objective was more than achieved, not just because we were all together having fun for 3 days, but also, because we had been through this journey feeling similar emotions and similar realisations at the same time. A shared emotional roller coaster is sometimes a great glue to bond the human soul. This is what happened to us and we all came back saying in unison, “Tiger Shine on” !

Red beaked brown-breasted blue eyed something…

Last weekend I was all alone at home with nothing to do. My wife and daughter (Aditi) are away holidaying in hometown Bangalore while I brave the year-end sales target as well as the winter of Delhi all alone. As you can imagine the setting led to a rather somber mood and the home was almost - running to bite me – (Ghar katne ko daur raha tha)- borrowing from Hindi as nothing in English does better justice to my mood.

A friend of mine Amoghavarsha, who calls himself a geek, wildlifer & photographer called and said he is going to the bird sanctuary at Bharatpur (Keoladeo Ghana National Park) to photograph some migratory birds that visit this sanctuary every winter. Well, I am not bird watching type of person and the only birds I can recognize with confidence is the Crow, the sparrow, the peacock and the Chicken (ahem!) and here I was being invited by some one who is a relative expert in the area and passionate about wildlife and conservation. With some trepidation about and feeling like a duck out of water I agreed to accompany the party of Amogha and his friends Pavi and Rati. I also wanted to take my new car for a drive out into the highway and offered to drive the party up and down as well.

We started off from Delhi at 6 am on the freezing Sunday morning. The effective toyota heater comforted my passengers into deep sleep and soon I was left to enjoy the drive alone only to be later accompanied by the rhythmic percussion of 3 soft snores.

The drive on the Delhi-Agra NH2 is simply beautiful once you get out of Faridabad. The median has bougainvillea planted all along and they were in full bloom. There was a moment, around 7 am, when the sun was just rising and igniting the sarson (mustard) fields on either side and the full bloom bougainvillea in the center of the road was swaying in the wind. Man! Some highways in India can have real sights if you look for them. I wish I had a picture of that moment, but I think it would be impossible to capture on camera. The road is world class and we made very good time only to stop for steaming parathas and tea on the way, this 30 minute break notwithstanding we reached the sanctuary at 9.30 Am, covering approximately 240 Kms in 3 hours of drive time. Not bad at all by Indian Highway standards.

I had heard about the Siberian Crane that vists the sanctuary every year in winter and was keen to see it. The guides informed us that the variety that used to visit the sanctuary is now extinct. Apparantly, they used to trace a set path from Siberia flying over Afghanistan. The Siberian Crane would fly by moonlight and rest by daylight. The bitter fighting in Afghanistan over the last decade led to shortage of food in the winters and the beautiful birds - which were otherwise safe in the many years that they traveled the route - were the unsuspecting martyrs of a war that even many humans do not understand, forget the Siberian Crane. I was disappointed beyond words to hear this story and almost felt like heading back to Delhi.

Anyways, we proceeded on bicycles inside the sanctuary (vehicles are banned inside) along with a well-informed guide. We saw a variety of beautiful birds. Amogha got the shots he wanted and you can see a preview here. The names of all those birds are are now impossible for me reproduce – the title of this post captures my illiteracy in this area and sad to report I did not come back any wiser from this trip. All the biology was a bit too much to digest in one day. To make matters worse we cycled for more than 25 Kms through the day on a cycle seat that was designed to inflict pain. The stony cobbled path and the shove-it- where-it-hurts-the-most-seat conspired to first take the joy away, then moved to sheer pain, and finally broke my spirit 6 hours into the expedition. I tempted Rati with the prospect of a cold beer at the government hotel at the entrance of the sanctuary and she agreed immediately – while Amogha and Pavi continued like pros only to join us after a delay of 20 minutes! Vijay Mallaya’s Kingfisher won on this day over Bharatpur’s Kingfisher! It took only 20 minutes to break the pros!

The drive back was uneventful and equally beautiful. I was looking for the spot where I caught the sunrise the day before and we caught the sunrise this time as well at more or less the same spot. We stopped at a different dhaba (road side restaurant). The parathas this time were better, I had the tandoor version on the way back and it was better than the Tawa version we had a day earlier – the milky sweet tea was as good.

Amogha’s desire was to take me to Bharatpur as a tourist and bring me back as a conservationist, I can’t say that the objective was achieved fully, but the story of the Siberian Crane and hearing of its extinction did some thing to me…it made me really sad in a very beautiful place.

You do not have to be an expert to be believe in conservation, I dont know what those birds are called, but I want to my daughter to see them when she grows up. Lets save the Red beaked brown-breasted blue eyed something…for Aditi.

Beautiful Coorg

Like most middle class Indians who have graduated from near penury to some degree of affluence, my stance towards consuming products and services has changed from “Value for Money” to ‘Money for Value”. Which basically means that I will put my money (even if it is really expensive) where I see value as opposed to buying products and services that are inexpensive and of low value.

Over the last 5-6 years of travelling (more on business and a bit for pleasure) I have had the opportunity to stay in many country resorts & holiday resorts. Considering that most of my business travels in India and abroad makes me stay in 5 Star type hotels, I have become a bit difficult to please. Since most of these properties charge the bomb, my expectations of value delivery are normally very high. Sadly, I have very rarely been fully satisfied.

Club Mahindra recently invited me to their Kodagu Valley resort in Coorg along with a group of fellow bloggers. Since, I did not have to pay for my stay, you can argue that it is impossible to evaluate objectively. But, I will try nevertheless. The rest of this post is meant to be a part travelogue and part assessment of the resort.

We drove from Bangalore in a fairly uncomfortable bus. It was proudly called Ganesh and was as uncomfortable as it would be riding on Ganesh’s transport – the mooshik. The first stop was “Kamath’s” at the outskirts of Bangalore on the Mysore highway for lunch. The restaurant has a traditional Karnataka setting and the food is fabulous. You can choose either the North Karnataka (Served with Javar Rotti) or the South Karnataka (Poori) styles – both are great.

(Check out the leg room)

The new road from Bangalore to Mysore is good and we did good time. From Mysore to Kodagu (Coorg) was another story altogether. Ganesh with his laughable shock absorbers was pure hell. There are parts of my body that are still protesting from the combined torture that the terrible road and Ganesh collaborated to inflict. After 8 long hours and just as nightfall was approaching, we reached the Club Mahindra Kodagu Valley Resort, which is located about 5 Kms from Madikeri town center.

As soon as we entered the resort, the pains of travel shifted to the back of the subconscious mind. The first sight was of a stunningly beautiful Coorgi girl welcoming us, and the touch of the cool sandal paste that she applied on the forehead was like balm for the mind.

The serene mood setting is what you notice as soon as you enter the resort. It is made well with a good artistic sensibility. The usage of wood is brilliant and is very similar to the architecture that we saw the next day in the temple at Baghamandala (about 30 Kms from Madikeri). Resorts can some times stick out like "sore concrete thumbs" amidst natural beauty, but this particular resort has blended in well with the local setting and culture.

The Picture on the left is of the temple and the ones on the right are of the lobby at the resort. Look for the similarity in the shape of the vertical beams and the sloping design of the roof. Brilliant stuff.



The rooms were nice – like in any resort that charges as much. However, what was different about the place was the attention to detail. From flower decorations all around to a welcome leaf placed on the bed to the heart shape on the steaming coffee. God lies in the details and the Mahindra guys seem to realise that. Impressed!

Picture of Coffee Mug by Mridula



The resort has all the usual suspects like a swimming pool (which could do with some heating though), various activities for kids and families and adventure games for the strong hearted. What I liked the most is the plantations inside the resort spread across 25 odd acres with cash crops like Coffee, Cardamom etc from the local area. The staff is highly motivated and very well informed and gave us a very good brief on the coffee plantation, and different types of crops. They could also answer most questions - and bloggers ask a lot of questions! There were also facilities for a great camp fire and they even arranged for a guitar. Campfire, guitar, alcohol, singing, cold weather and company of like minded people - Whoa - it made for a very memorable night ! One that I will remember for some time to come.

Over the next two days we made trips to the Tala Cauvery (The birth place of Cauvery) , the Dubari elephant camp, where you reach after crossing to the other side of the Cauvery by motor boats, Abbey Falls and the Tibetian monastery at Kushalnagar. I missed the monastry as I had to get back to Delhi earlier than the rest of the group.

Above pictures by Mridula

After having travelled a bit in the Himalayan region, I was unsure whether I would find Coorg up to the mark. But after this trip, I can safely say that Coorg is beautiful.

Picture of the Kodagu Valley by Apurv

I Look forward to going again and recommend highly, especially if you are in the North and want to head down south for a "different" experience. There is a lot to do and I guess 4-5 days is required to do justice. Distances are not very large and most of places to explore are within 50 Kms of Madikeri.

The Choice is mine

I spent the last weekend at the absolutely magnificent Club Mahindra Kodagu Valley resort at Coorg. I was part of a group of bloggers who were invited by Club Mahindra.

The entire group is featured in the picture. From left to right Srinidhi, Amogha, Apurv, Sudhir, Mridula, Arun from Club Mahindra, Kiruba, Anil, Anita, Khanjan and Joy from Club Mahindra. Hidden behind Amogha is the silent DJ Dhruv.

The group was a fairly diverse one. We had professors; marketing professionals, corp. comm. Managers, entrepreneurs, photographers, techies etc traversing a wide age as well as size band to make things even more interesting. The only common thing was that all of us were bloggers. Some were fairly evolved bloggers like Kiruba (www.kiruba.com); while there were also a recent upstarts like me.

I had a fantastic time meeting the group and it was a pleasure to interact with some of the “rascals” who were more than 10 years younger but never made me feel old. I Came back drunk on the energy and enthusiasm of the young and happening generation next. I have always maintained that the power of the untrained mind is one of the most potent forces that our country has today. Intelligent, enthusiastic and with the confidence to take on the world.

I have not had an outing of this nature for a long time. I have probably not gone out and had fun with strangers for the last 10 –12 years. As a matter of fact, most of the “new” people I have met in the last decade have been professionally and most of them have not become friends. It amazed me that for some one who is given to making friends so easily and some one who loves meeting people and analyzing social and cultural issues, this would be the case. If you had asked me 10 years ago if this would have happened, I would have laughed at you. It is amazing the price your career makes you pay.

Now, that I am back and looking at sales numbers and the media plan for next month, it just struck me that the choice to stay young is mine!

Ah Chail !

I have been taking driving holidays from Delhi for the last 10 years now. Agreed, the frequency has come down off late, but i still love to get out of the mad rush and get into the hills. Was recently thinking of which place i have liked the most and its an impossible choice when you are talking about comparing more than 60 locations visited over the last 10 years.

Chail (near Shimla in HP, India) stands out for me - not because it was the best, but because it has managed to stay in my memory and for some reason makes me want to go back again.

Chail is different from most hill stations in India, firstly it has no crowds, no crowded mall road, no rubbish strewn on the streets, no jam packed town centre with diesel fume being the primary odor. Secondly, it has at least 7-8 lovely walks and mild treks, it has the world's highest ground (its beautiful - I can only imagine how much the cherry would swing in those conditions) and it has the lovely Chail Palace Hotel where we stayed.

While the Palace hotel is quite nice, and we quite liked it, only after staying there for a night I realised that it has a gem ! About a 1 Km brisk walk from the main Hotel are a couple of log huts that the Hotel controls. Almost in the middle of no where with a fantastic view and a steep fall right in front of the log huts.

I think it is that log hut and the absolute beauty of the surroundings that they are set in have made a permanent imprint on my mind ! Will i go there again, undoubtedly!