Basic Halli

Set in Kanakapura, not too far away from Bangalore, is a little resort. To say it's a resort is a massive overstatement. A few thatch covered tents, a small tank, five bathrooms, and a kitchen; surrounded by a elephant trench. There is no electricity save for the main administration building which also serves as a kitchen. This is Basic Halli.

Halli in Kannada means village and the resort boasts of really basic amenities.
Check-in here and you're handed a mat, a blanket, a bed sheet, an air pillow, a steel plate, and a tumbler. Then you're shown your tent. Or rather it is pointed out to you.

It's the views around that are fantastic. The Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary is way off toward the East and elephants often come here to raid the crops. The rolling hills beckon seductively in the early morning light, their accompanying vegetation washed fresh and the earthy aromas swirl around, mixing seductively with the thousand perfumes of nature.
Birds abound. They seem to be more fearless here than in places closer to the city. Babblers often cross your path, shrieking, gossipping, and belabouring each other's opinions. Scaly breasted munias throng the lantana and the grasses with gay abandon. When we had been there, it was the breeding season for these little birds and one could watch them strip the grass and carry it off to wherever they were building their nests.

A golden oriole flew over head unmindful of the raucous cries of the parakeets that busied themselves with their breakfast of fruits. Below the trees, in the shrubs, the purple rumped sunbirds flitted from flower to flower, gathering the nectar.
Our climb up the hill was easy. A gentle, tarred slope led us upward and wound its way around the fields of raagi and jowar.

Birders are not the best of people to walk with. Every other moment is relished by standing around, the destination and time forgotten. Knowledgeable people discourse on a variety of subjects. Us lesser mortals gather around to listen. Then the walk goes on. Photographers in the group stop at every vantage point to point, shoot, examine, shake their heads over the results and move on to the next.

Our host, Anand Shankar, is a big, bearded young man. His rough exterior hides a gentle interior. He has planned, laid out, and built, with his own hands the entire resort. He is an Enfield Bullet enthusiast, so much so, that he even named his dog Bullet.

He trooped up the hills with us talking earnestly about his plans for the resort. It was almost 9 a.m. when we reached a shelf of rock closer to the top of the hill. A few enthusiastic birders continued up the hill while the rest of us threw ourselves down exhausted and hungry.

Lobo, the other partner at Basic Halli, reached the rock shelf with a basket load of Thatte Idli and vadas along with chutney. We fell to the largess with much gusto, taking care to pick up the used paper plates and stuff them into a large garbage bag which would be disposed off closer to civilisation.

All too soon the morning came to an end and we trooped back to the resort for a rest and await lunch.

Meals at Basic Halli are simple fare. Vegetarian but wholesome and delicious. They are cooked by a trio of village women.

That afternoon, there was raagi mudde, pumpkin curry, sambar, rasam, and rice. The pumpkin curry made my day. Never one to try new stuff I shied away from this unusual (for me) curry. But the rapturous cries that I heard from the others prompted me to try it out and I was hooked. I didn't get around to eating the raagi mudde though, something I've disliked since I was a child. The sticky mass is not chewable and small balls of it have to be swallowed whole with a generous laving of sambar. I've never taken to it.

Lunch over, a gentle discussion on the resort and its surroundings turned into a full-fledged but friendly argument till it was time for the group photo in which Bullet, the dog, enthusiastically joined. Licking every face he could reach and running around a top speed, Bullet managed to leap into the photograph.

If you want an overnighter holiday and don't care about your luxuries, Basic Halli is the place to go.

Details are here: Basic Halli website.

Owlets and Shikras at home

Since I'm home bound most weekends (owing to requirements, not restrictions) I've had the unique opportunity to stand in my balcony and look out across the limitless rooftops that dot our fair city of Bangalore.
Smoke from a million exhaust pipes kill one's enthusiasm to venture out at all. The tabebuia tree in front of my house is some solace since it plays host to several animals and birds. Of late, it has grown quite leafy with not a single flower in sight. Squirrels scold crows from its branches while, under it's shady boughs, stray dogs mass around, snarling, marking out their territories and showing off to each other.
A couple of months ago, a spotted owlet made its presence felt here. I had stepped out of my house to switch off the staircase light when an odd shape on the sheathed electric cable caught my eye.


Trupti was already asleep and Adu and Pallavi were preparing for a night of boisterous games when I charged back inside, shook my wife awake and told them all about the owlet.
I love these tiny, beautiful, and bold birds. We took several pictures of the owlet which stayed comfortably in place despite the fact that we were about five feet away from it, admiring it in hushed tones of reverence.

For three days, almost regularly at around 11 p.m., the owlet returned to the electric cable and stayed there for almost 30 minutes before hopping across to the tabebuia tree. And we kept watch wanting to confirm that it would arrive regularly there as a prelude to its hunting foray. Then it suddenly stopped visiting us. Two days ago, Trupti was awake at 2.30 a.m. when she heard a haunting hoot just outside our window. The owlet had returned. Karthik tells me it can't be the spotted owlet since they don't hoot. I shall have to confirm with Trupti what the call sounded like before I post an update again.

Hang on! We'd like to confirm it's return before we let you drop in on us. Bring your own blankets, pillows and coffee. We'll share your coffee with you.

Last weekend, I was nursing a cup of tea in the aforementioned balcony when a lone shikra flew to the granite extrusion of the roof of the neighbour's house. I think it was the same one that had chased a squirrel on to our window.

The road in front of the house is a thoroughfare and any number of people and vehicles populate it even on a Sunday. But this bird sat there quite fearlessly, resting on one foot while the other disappeared under it's beautiful feathers. The markings on it were clear and distinctive. Trupti and Adu had walked off to my dad's house and hadn't yet returned. As I watched, it scanned the lawn below it for any evidence of an errant lizard. At one point, I think it must have noticed the weird individual staring at it and glared at me for a few seconds with it's fierce looking eyes before turning away.
I dashed inside to get the camcorder and spent some minutes cursing horribly under my breath because the SD card wasn't in, fitted the SD card into its slot and wasted some more time screwing on the telecon lens and dashed out only to find that the shikra had disappeared. Trupti and Adu had by now returned and I told them about the bird while showing them the pictures.
I was lamenting the fact that we hadn't got a video when I heard the distinctive "kek kyoo" call somewhere near the eucalyptus grove that marks the Mini Forest. I whistled the call a few times and was pleasantly surprised to see it flying back to the gul mohur tree right at my doorstep. So close that I couldn't get a decent photograph of it with my zoom lens. It wasn't alone, it had brought its mate with it, probably to challenge the intruder in their domain. I chanced to see both the shikras again in the Mini Forest a little later in the day. I suspect they've made the place home since I've heard the call regularly since identifying the birds.

Trupti did get some video footage which I will try to post here sometime in the not too discernible future.

UPDATE: Karthik was kind enough to read through and offer a few corrections. The shikra in the photograph is a juvenile and so the pair that returned could not have been mates. I can't, at this moment, offer an explanation or call them siblings. So until further sightings confirm the pair's activities, it's just a pair of shikras.

White-Cheeked Barbet

It has been a long time since I blogged last about the spotted deer. "Common animals" is now the refrain from many of my friends who have been to Bannerghatta and back. They're not even impressed by the sight of gaur, sambar and Nilgai. Now it's only the tigers and the lions. Even the bear safari draws only as much as a "ho hum" from many of them.
Bangalore city abounds in birdlife. Months ago, my wife and son spotted a grey tit gracing the tabebuia tree in front of my house. Shikras often visit on short notice leaving us seething since to leave the spot and go for the camera might result in our missing out on some interesting behaviour. For instance, just the other day, I was throwing on my clothes preparatory to leaving for work and a screaming squirrel dived from the staircase to the window adjoining it. The screams attracted my attention and I walked quickly but quietly in the direction of the window only to see a shikra on the staircase watching the squirrel. I was spell bound. The spell was, however, broken by Duke who trotted up to investigate the noise in his domain. In a second, the shikra took off and the squirrel, scolded a few times more and took off for parts unknown. Missed photo opportunity? Perhaps, but then I saw how close a Shikra would get to human habitation in search of its prey.
Most weekends, I pack my camera in my car wherever I'm going. It can be to a friend's house or just down the road to the restaurant. This comes in handy when I see any animal life indulging in natural behaviour.
One such occasion was when I visited my in-laws, family in tow. My wife decided, on the way back, that she had to drop in on her old hair dresser for a "quick cut". My son and I sat in our car mulling over the misfortune of having to sit by the road side when I caught sight of a barbet on the electric cable above my head. Telling Adu to keep an eye on it, I slipped to the back seat of the car to change the lens on my camera and came up with some pictures of barbet behaviour.

This barbet left the electric cable and flew down to a nearby branch which, fortunately for me, was even closer. I first photographed the barbet from inside my car and then slowly began to emerge. This bird paid almost no attention to me and sat there, only occasionally changing position to exasperate me.

I soon found out why. It was waiting for its mate. This barbet.

The very branch on which the first one was sitting turned out to be hollow. I hadn't noticed it at all till the mate came in. The second barbet alighted on the branch from below and began to very thoroughly chisel away the wood around a little hollow. Periodically, it took a breather ostensibly to have a look around and make sure that I was harmless or that I had not overstepped my limits.
It remained very actively employed in either enlarging the opening or in delving deeper into the branch.
At some points, it went in so deep, I wondered if it would manage to get out safely.

I had initially thought that the first barbet was a chauvinist and wasn't participating in the excavating activities of the second one. However, a few minutes of putting my camera down and watching the birds convinced me that barbet number one was also equally involved. Both, in fact, were taking turns at digging out the rotten and dried up wood widening and extending what would be their living quarters for that monsoon season.
Soon, the eggs would be laid and then the young would be hatched. In a few weeks, the young ones would be fledged and would begin exploratory flights before joining the world outside which would ring with the "brrrrrr, butterk, butterk, butterk" call. Come summer, the call is heard in the tree laden avenues that still dot Bangalore city. The circle of life goes on.