Bandipur Roadkills campaign - Jan 2009
The Bandipur Reserve Resort Forest
(no offence meant for resort owners)
******
Hello all and welcome to the Bandipur Resort Forest. This is one of those few places where you feel like "being at home". We had lots of attractions lined up for you and trust me all those makes an amazing package!! Without boring you much, let me brief you all a little about the mind blowing facilities and attractions one can experience.
The Bandipur Tea:
If you are a tea lover, we bet you never heard about BANDIPUR tea?? Move aside ASSAM tea, Darjeeling tea, we have our own best branded BANDIPUR TEA. You can choose this as welcome drink and we know your inquisitive minds wish to know how to prepare it, hence to soothe you all, we will share the recipe too!!
1. Reach Bandipur forest with all your friends and family playing loud music and screaming.
2. Drive through the forest and when you feel you are in the middle.. stop!!, Yes stop in the middle of the forest where you can find THICK dried bamboo or dried grass
3. Make sure the place is dry and had all dry twigs and dead leaves around.
4. Collect some leaves, lit fire and make temporary stove, boil milk, add ingredients.
5. Leave your brains behind and don’t worry about wind or forest or a bed of dead leaves around ready to catch fire that can demolish the forest!
You can choose it as a “welcome drink”! Some people out there found it tastier!???
Monkey Massage
Then, as you proceed we have a NATUROPATHIC SPA with a little difference. It provides special refreshing massage and naturaopathic treatment, usually done by 2 masters we had in the resort, a Langur-dada and the Bonnet dada.
To experience the offer, you need to do the below.
1. Get down in the middle of the jungle
2. Carry some eatables be it namkeens or whatever you eat or about to throw into bins
3. Go closer to our experts and try feeding them!!
You would get a bite on your body (can be any place) that feeds in the "secret" ingredients that makes you run crazy and drives you into "musth" mood. Remember we are not responsible for the "hospitlization" charges if any that you need to incur due to the “side-affects" of our NATUROPATHIC SPA.
Other Attractions
If that was not enough, we have a “Drink-while-drive” scheme, where through out the “resort” you can throw your beer or any liquor bottles and drive at your “will” testing the limits of your speed-o-meter. Remember we are not responsible for any freaky accidents.
For the sake of devotional souls we have a "feed-d-animal" scheme where you can get down in the middle of the jungle and feed the chital and sambar around and feel that you are a "kind-hearted" and treat it as “alms”. We are not responsible if you feel guilty when you realize that one of them was killed because you disturbed their natural food habits and make them stay close to the road ending up as road kills!
For the "i-have-been-there-seen-there" kind of photo lovers, we had a scheme of CLICK-ANYWHERE where people can get down wherever they want in the forest and pose for photographs proving Darwin’s theory of "evolution" by reminding people that we still have our ancestors (read apes & chimps) traces in us, which comes out only during forest visits! But, we are not responsible for tusker attacks!
So, come visit us and feel refreshing!!!..
******
So, if you managed to read this till here, didn't you think at some point of time that I am insane and wrote rubbish and wondering what this article is about? But these appear to be the hidden rules of the forest as perceived by our public. People are treating it as a resort, but not national park!
Fun apart; let me tell you that we WITNESSED all those schemes that I detailed above during KANS-4th Road kill awareness campaign in BANDIPUR in JANUARY. The mindless tea makers, the stupid drunken drivers, the benevolent animal feeders who make the monkeys and langurs sit on road expecting every vehicle to be potential source of food. Some throw food at them, some of them pass it to their hand, others calls them up and offers, someone gets down and get closer and ends up being chased away.
At one moment we saw a line of 10 cars stopping in the middle of the forest and magnanimous people getting down and feeding and posing with chital!! What a stupidity!!? Now, don't blame the forest department! They are understaffed and overloaded. What can they do when the netas are not interested in taking care of them??
Again, don't blame the netas, after all, we are the one's who elected them. But hey, don't blame people completely. I feel it is partially because there is zero awareness and partially due to the "attitudes". Like what my friend quotes- when humans are least concerned about other humans around, how can one expect them to be sensitive towards animals? I would say chances are as good as spotting a 'native' tiger in Sariska! This is precisely the reason why we are trying to educate people about the behavioral ethics in the forest.
After stopping close to 10,000 vehicles and talking to more than 20,000 people over the past 4 months, we realized how badly our public needs this kind of education/awareness. With every campaign we are resolving ourselves to do it more often and with more vigor. It's not about which NGO do we belong, it's not about whether Kenneth Anderson wrote fiction or truth, it's not about who inspired us to head jungles... but all that matter to us is.. -What can we do to the precious precious jungles which gave us this air to breathe, the food we eat, the inexpressible joy we perceive...which is shared by any nature lover around the world be it Kenneth Anderson or Jim Corbett. All are a Band of brothers in this good world of conservation, taking different paths like the way we all are doing it on our own small ways! So let's pray and hope that our jungles are safer and our efforts are blessed!
A team of 12 volunteers joined the campaign in January delivering instructions in English, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Bengali. I am sure every one went back with a pool of memories and a well-lit inspiration to pass on the message to their friends and family as well. Someone sent their wife to home town to catch up time to volunteer, some one heeded nothing to parents concern of driving all night, Couple of guys drove all the way on the bike from Bangalore daring chilling cold skipping the sleep, Someone came from Chennai, Some came from close by place squeezing in whatever little time they had in between running their businesses. Someone came all the way from Kerala, someone made sure they did their bit before flying out of the country…. & the stories goes on..
Kudos to the spirit of the volunteers and finally someone is volunteering to make a trip report at almost midnight!(self-pat)
P.S: We thank the forest department officials, KANS committee, our volunteers and supporters. Also, special thanks to Sudhir Shivaram & Giri Cavale of INW ( www.indianaturewatch.net) for stopping by (or stopped!!? :) ) and passing their encouraging words beside showing us the precious 800 mm bazooka
Team:
Satish Pari Baskaran, Guruprasad Timmapur, Prakash Matada, Rajesh Mangat, J. Balamurugan, Arunava Das , Anantharaj MS, Soumyajit Nandy, Rakesh Gupta, Vasanth, Arun and ChandraSekhar Bandi
ChandraSekhar Bandi
Member
Kenneth Anderson Nature Society
(no offence meant for resort owners)
******
Hello all and welcome to the Bandipur Resort Forest. This is one of those few places where you feel like "being at home". We had lots of attractions lined up for you and trust me all those makes an amazing package!! Without boring you much, let me brief you all a little about the mind blowing facilities and attractions one can experience.
The Bandipur Tea:
If you are a tea lover, we bet you never heard about BANDIPUR tea?? Move aside ASSAM tea, Darjeeling tea, we have our own best branded BANDIPUR TEA. You can choose this as welcome drink and we know your inquisitive minds wish to know how to prepare it, hence to soothe you all, we will share the recipe too!!
1. Reach Bandipur forest with all your friends and family playing loud music and screaming.
2. Drive through the forest and when you feel you are in the middle.. stop!!, Yes stop in the middle of the forest where you can find THICK dried bamboo or dried grass
3. Make sure the place is dry and had all dry twigs and dead leaves around.
4. Collect some leaves, lit fire and make temporary stove, boil milk, add ingredients.
5. Leave your brains behind and don’t worry about wind or forest or a bed of dead leaves around ready to catch fire that can demolish the forest!
You can choose it as a “welcome drink”! Some people out there found it tastier!???
Monkey Massage
Then, as you proceed we have a NATUROPATHIC SPA with a little difference. It provides special refreshing massage and naturaopathic treatment, usually done by 2 masters we had in the resort, a Langur-dada and the Bonnet dada.
To experience the offer, you need to do the below.
1. Get down in the middle of the jungle
2. Carry some eatables be it namkeens or whatever you eat or about to throw into bins
3. Go closer to our experts and try feeding them!!
You would get a bite on your body (can be any place) that feeds in the "secret" ingredients that makes you run crazy and drives you into "musth" mood. Remember we are not responsible for the "hospitlization" charges if any that you need to incur due to the “side-affects" of our NATUROPATHIC SPA.
Other Attractions
If that was not enough, we have a “Drink-while-drive” scheme, where through out the “resort” you can throw your beer or any liquor bottles and drive at your “will” testing the limits of your speed-o-meter. Remember we are not responsible for any freaky accidents.
For the sake of devotional souls we have a "feed-d-animal" scheme where you can get down in the middle of the jungle and feed the chital and sambar around and feel that you are a "kind-hearted" and treat it as “alms”. We are not responsible if you feel guilty when you realize that one of them was killed because you disturbed their natural food habits and make them stay close to the road ending up as road kills!
For the "i-have-been-there-seen-there" kind of photo lovers, we had a scheme of CLICK-ANYWHERE where people can get down wherever they want in the forest and pose for photographs proving Darwin’s theory of "evolution" by reminding people that we still have our ancestors (read apes & chimps) traces in us, which comes out only during forest visits! But, we are not responsible for tusker attacks!
So, come visit us and feel refreshing!!!..
******
So, if you managed to read this till here, didn't you think at some point of time that I am insane and wrote rubbish and wondering what this article is about? But these appear to be the hidden rules of the forest as perceived by our public. People are treating it as a resort, but not national park!
Fun apart; let me tell you that we WITNESSED all those schemes that I detailed above during KANS-4th Road kill awareness campaign in BANDIPUR in JANUARY. The mindless tea makers, the stupid drunken drivers, the benevolent animal feeders who make the monkeys and langurs sit on road expecting every vehicle to be potential source of food. Some throw food at them, some of them pass it to their hand, others calls them up and offers, someone gets down and get closer and ends up being chased away.
At one moment we saw a line of 10 cars stopping in the middle of the forest and magnanimous people getting down and feeding and posing with chital!! What a stupidity!!? Now, don't blame the forest department! They are understaffed and overloaded. What can they do when the netas are not interested in taking care of them??
Again, don't blame the netas, after all, we are the one's who elected them. But hey, don't blame people completely. I feel it is partially because there is zero awareness and partially due to the "attitudes". Like what my friend quotes- when humans are least concerned about other humans around, how can one expect them to be sensitive towards animals? I would say chances are as good as spotting a 'native' tiger in Sariska! This is precisely the reason why we are trying to educate people about the behavioral ethics in the forest.
After stopping close to 10,000 vehicles and talking to more than 20,000 people over the past 4 months, we realized how badly our public needs this kind of education/awareness. With every campaign we are resolving ourselves to do it more often and with more vigor. It's not about which NGO do we belong, it's not about whether Kenneth Anderson wrote fiction or truth, it's not about who inspired us to head jungles... but all that matter to us is.. -What can we do to the precious precious jungles which gave us this air to breathe, the food we eat, the inexpressible joy we perceive...which is shared by any nature lover around the world be it Kenneth Anderson or Jim Corbett. All are a Band of brothers in this good world of conservation, taking different paths like the way we all are doing it on our own small ways! So let's pray and hope that our jungles are safer and our efforts are blessed!
A team of 12 volunteers joined the campaign in January delivering instructions in English, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Bengali. I am sure every one went back with a pool of memories and a well-lit inspiration to pass on the message to their friends and family as well. Someone sent their wife to home town to catch up time to volunteer, some one heeded nothing to parents concern of driving all night, Couple of guys drove all the way on the bike from Bangalore daring chilling cold skipping the sleep, Someone came from Chennai, Some came from close by place squeezing in whatever little time they had in between running their businesses. Someone came all the way from Kerala, someone made sure they did their bit before flying out of the country…. & the stories goes on..
Kudos to the spirit of the volunteers and finally someone is volunteering to make a trip report at almost midnight!(self-pat)
P.S: We thank the forest department officials, KANS committee, our volunteers and supporters. Also, special thanks to Sudhir Shivaram & Giri Cavale of INW ( www.indianaturewatch.net) for stopping by (or stopped!!? :) ) and passing their encouraging words beside showing us the precious 800 mm bazooka
Team:
Satish Pari Baskaran, Guruprasad Timmapur, Prakash Matada, Rajesh Mangat, J. Balamurugan, Arunava Das , Anantharaj MS, Soumyajit Nandy, Rakesh Gupta, Vasanth, Arun and ChandraSekhar Bandi
ChandraSekhar Bandi
Member
Kenneth Anderson Nature Society
Labels: Bandipur
posted by Laxmeesha at
1:59 AM
1 Comments:
great initiative..we need stories and posts like this for our blogs..could u pls contribute ?
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