Of Cubs and kids - A visit to Daroji Bear Sanctuary

"Amma, there’s a frog on the toilet seat!!” That was Samhith, my seven year old son, shouting loud enough for all the birds in the region to fly away in alarm. The cause of the ruckus turned out to be a tiny fellow sitting calmly on the toilet bowl, seemingly unaware of all the chaos he was causing. Much as I love wildlife, I was not in the mood to pick him up, so I suggested flushing him down, a suggestion which was received with severe disdain “Amma, how can you even think of murdering an animal? And you tell me that we should protect wildlife!” Seeing the prospect of tears looming large, I gave up my apparently bloodthirsty solution, and hastened to call the reception, rather shamefacedly admitting that there was a frog, and could someone please come and deal with it? The summons were answered almost at once by one of the smiling young men on the staff. His smile grew bigger as he saw the tiny cause of the commotion, and he calmly pulled the flush, and the little chap disappeared almost at once. The young man left before Samhith found his tongue again, so it was left for me to convince him that the frog probably wouldn’t die, since it was amphibious, but that led to another discussion about whether the frog could live in sewage, a discussion I am sure you don’t want to hear!

We were at the Jungle Lodges’ Sloth Bear Resort at Hampi, making the most of our Christmas vacation, a long awaited holiday. The resort was an instant hit with my son, who wandered about while I caught up with some much needed sleep, and returned excitedly saying that he had seen some centipedes!

Our foray into the Daroji Bear Sanctuary was with a group of enthusiastic people who had all landed there with the express purpose of seeing sloth bears in the wild. Almost every group was accompanied by kids making even Samhith appear quiet! I rather felt sorry for the few couples and enthusiastic photographers with us, who must have regretted the decision to come here during the Christmas vacation. Thankfully, the sanctuary was unlike any we had visited before.

For one, it was a dry deciduous forest, covered with shrubs rather than the dense foliage we had expected. For another, it is one of the few places where a safari doesn’t mean a jaunt into the forest in a jeep, but a drive to a concrete macchan (observation tower) built at the top of a hillock conveniently situated to provide a good view of the rocks where the bears come to bask in the sun.


At first glance, there was nothing to see when we arrived, but soon, our guides spotted a tiny dot, which, through the binoculars, resolved into a sloth bear, fast asleep! For the next 15 minutes, all we did was speculate about whether it would wake up or not, while the kids ran around, refusing to believe that it was a real bear! Thankfully, a few more soon appeared, including some young ones which ran about, much like the kids with us. The calm was soon shattered by kids shrieking out “There! There’s another bear! There’s a small one climbing the rock!” The cries thankfully didn’t scare the bears away, but induced a few peafowl hiding in the shrubs to take flight, giving us a great view! Once again, I regretted not buying a better camera, for mine was hopelessly inadequate! Have firmly made a resolution this year to buy a better camera before the year is out!

As time passed and the bears disappeared again, the crowd of kids left, the natural calmness of the jungle returned. Just Samhith and another kid remained, clambering over the rocks like the bear cubs, talking nonsense, and providing entertainment for the others while the bears were away. We stayed on, for the forest guard told us that the bears would be back in a while, for dinner. That surprised us, until the guard told us that the forest department provided honey and fruits for the bears, to ensure that firstly, the bears would come to the rocks for tourists like us to see, and secondly, because there were about a 100 to 150 bears in the jungle, and there wasn’t much left in the way of honey or fruits in the forest, thanks to all the mining in the area! What a sad situation, I ruminated, that the forest had bears, but not enough to feed them! As the sun set over the rocks, even the kids seemed to calm down, and the bears returned, coming down as far as the road. Unfortunately, it was too dark by then to see anything clearly, even through the binoculars. We finally gave up and came back down, just in time to see a flock of grey francolins parade past us on the jungle path.


A walk in the wilderness turned out to be adventurous, as we made our way through thorny bushes, and clambered down rocks!

A pair of doves looked at us curiously, perhaps wondering what we were doing in their territory…

While we saw trees filled with weaver birds’ nests and wondered if we would see any of the birds themselves….Butterflies were everywhere…. And so were spiders…. We saw a huge web made by the social spiders…..And this signature spider, which we saw had made its home right in the lounge of the resort!

However, the best part of the nature walk was a snake – one which had appeared in the bathroom of one of the guests at the forest department’s guest house – which had just been captured. It was secure in a bottle, waiting to be released back into the wild, and hissed angrily when we came closer to take a better look. I couldn’t help wondering what would have happened if the snake had appeared in our bathroom!
Back at the resort, most of the crowd had disappeared, and we sat peacefully watching the robins and doves, when a rabbit suddenly bounded across the path and disappeared into its burrow. Samhith turned to me and declared, “We should have stayed here all day instead of going to the sanctuary. Then, we would have seen many more birds and animals!”

Posted by blogger and traveller Anuradha Shankar who blogs at A Wandering Mind