As part of World Wildlife Week, Junglescapes organized a meeting with the DCF, Mr Narayanaswamy, on the 6th of October, and early in the morning, a few volunteers from both GE (who is strongly supporting the work in Bandipur) and Junglescapes left for a visit to the villages of Chik Yelchetti and Lokkere.

Here’s the Junglescapes sign:

And here’s the serenity of the temple bells at the small shrine in the Madheshwara Home Stay:

When we reached the homestay, we realized that the DCF, Mr Narayanswamy, was not going to adhere to the time of 1pm (he actually arrived at nearly 4pm!) and so we got a nice NTP (there were 6 of us who were NTP members...in alphabetical order,Girish,Krishna Mohan, Nayantara, Ramesh, Suri, and myself)walk...five of us just did a Guru-G Life Under Foot walk along the path...we didn't get even to half a kilometre from the homestay, but look at the treasures we found! Here we are, ambling along: See the serene beauty of the small stream at the homestay: We saw a few common, yet beautiful, butterflies; here's the CHOCOLATE PANSY: the LEMON PANSY: the good old PLAIN TIGER: the lovely BLUE TIGER: the COMMON BUSH BROWN: here's a bug that I don't know (didn't meet him socially and get introduced!): another unknown, sitting on the gall-filled leaves: We watched this procession of ANTS for a while...they flowed in a river along the path: this BLUE-WINGED WASP showed her iridiscent colours as she looked for prey in the grass: this SPIDER WASP was on the same mission: Uma id'd this one as a female DITCH JEWEL: Several pretty MUSHROOMS decorated the path: And it was interesting to see this cutaway of a TERMITE MOUND and see the various chambers: and could not identify what eggs these were, looking little drops of blood on the back of the leaf of the Banyan tree: We moved further up the animal kingdom, and saw this lovely PIED BUSHCHAT ...serenading us from the wire! and these two melty-eyed calves nuzzled each other: We came back to the camp as fairly wildlife-type growls were emanating from our stomachs by now; luckily, the DCF and his platoon arrived, and after a delicious "chitrAnna" lunch, we went to Chik Yelchetti village, where Siddappa, from ATREE, addressed the gathering of villagers: Following this, Mr Narayanaswamy interacted with the few schoolchildren who had come to the meeting: What I liked was that instead of a boring talk about wildlife, he showed us all some really excellent wildlife photographs that he had taken! Sweets were distributed, and the meeting broke up; the VIP's left their garlands (remember, I posted about the flower shop where we had bought them?) but the children, of course, had fun with them, and here's my documentation of someone else documenting that: The rain, of course, made its presence felt, but while VaruNA was with us, I liked the sight of gaNEshA, the elephant God, on Anand's car dashbboard, with the background of the rain:

To underline the fact that one can get colour anywhere, and that it’s worth taking the camera everywhere…here’s a view of the toilet at Madheswara Home Stay!

For more pics,

click here

and view the pictures starting from that last one just above!