The Bison is Naturalist Saad Bin Jung’s venture and he and his wife personally welcome guests to the camps. The Bison has seven tents and one loft and plans are on the anvil to build another couple of tents to meet the growing demand. Each of the tents has a large four poster bed, dressing table, and a bathroom. The dining room has a breath taking view and the meals are wholesome with roti, dal, and chaawal.

Try and beat the rush from the neighboring resorts by leaving early and you might get to a variety of animals like tuskers, leopards, tigers, etc, birds, and amphibians out of the 100 species of mammals, 350 birds, 80 reptiles, 39 fish, 31 amphibians, 316 butterflies present in the Nilgiris biosphere-of which Kabini constitutes a small fraction.

It is the closest to the Nagarhole forest boundary – so close that you can see wild animals coming to drink water in the Kabini River from the comfort of your bed itself. Every tent in the lodge offers a panoramic view of the Kabini river and the Nagarhole forests with the river coming as close as 100 meters from the tents. You are separated from the wild world of Nagarhole just by this stretch of river water and in summer this barrier thins considerably.

The Walk is conducted by Safari Adventures, an experienced team who have more than 3 generations of experience in handling and training lions. A five minute safari bus ride took us to the big cat area. We saw a variety of animals and birds like the deer, pink pigeons and zebras on our way. The Company offers three kinds of walks- the Lion Walk, Cheetah Encounter and Lion Encounter. We had opted for the first one and it’s recommended to book the walk in advance as we did, though for the latter two encounters no prior booking is mandatory.

After a briefing from the guide, (who earlier managed a game reserve in Zimbabwe), about the lions and the area of the walk, we started our dream-walk with the lions in a group of 8 people. We walked with a male and female named Kimba and Kiara. The guide lets you take turns to walk alongside the lions. Though they appear to strolling leisurely, the strides of the lions were much longer than ours and we had to literally jog to keep pace with them. We were allowed to touch the lions, strike a pose with them, and rest our hands on their backs. The guides are watchful and instructed us when to take our hands off the lions, if they thought it unsafe.

Throughout the walk, I kept pinching myself to confirm if the whole experience was real. It’s only the wild and ferocious aspect of the lions that we all are familiar with and here we were posing and stroking the beasts. After the initial fear when the lions first came out, the rest of the walk was enjoyable and gave us a feeling of having accomplished something. The lions seemed pretty casual about the human interaction and a chat with the guide confirmed that they were hand reared.

After the lion walk we visited the restaurant in the park with a sea view and an enclosure for giant turtles. There are also peacocks and a few other pretty wild birds that we fed bread crumbs.

It was an once-in-a-lifetime experience truly out of the world

Tips:

• Book your walk in advance

• Apply loads of sun screen; carry your sun glasses/hat

• Carry your camera

• Wear sports shoes because it’s a walk over rough terrain.

• Don’t miss this adventure on your Mauritius trip

Apart from its religious and spiritual appeal, the adventurous facet of Rishikesh has gained popularity with numerous adventure clubs offering packages complete with rafting, cliff jumping, beach volley ball, rappelling and trekking of varying degrees of difficulty. It’s a happy co-existence of the traditional religion and youthful adventure & sports.

My visit to Rishikesh in the last week of April was an ‘adventurous’ one and so I will defer writing about the religious aspect till my next visit there.

After an early morning drive from Delhi we arrived at Rishikesh and checked into a camp situated on the sandy banks of the Ganges at Shivpuri.
We were put up in Safari tents well furnished with proper beds with clean Sheets, mattresses and blankets

After lunch we were taken for a 10 km drive to Marine Drive from where we returned to Rishikesh rafting the entire stretch through rapids like Three Blind Mice, and Crossfire. In the middle of the rapids you almost feel that you’ll be thrown out of the raft and every time we maneuvered through a rapid amidst screams, laughter, the roar of the waves and the instructions of the guide we cheered ourselves for the tough task we had performed

The rapids are given names and grades depending on the degree of difficulty. Most Camps cover rapids like Sweet Sixteen (Grade-1), Marine Drive (Grade-2), Three Blind Mice (Grade-3), Cross Fire (Grade-3), Roller Coaster (Grade-4) and Golf Course (Grade-4). Grade 4 rapids are undertaken depending upon the age & expertise of the rafter and the decision of the river guide

The rafting guides allow you to take a dip mid-stream. After watching non-swimmers in the raft take a dive, I cast my fears aside and plunged into the freezing waters. Though the temperature outside must have been 35 degrees the water was almost 5 degrees. It was an awesome experience to float on the waters (holding onto the sides of the raft of course) and gaze at the whole dome of the sky.

After a wholesome breakfast at the camp the next day, we rafted the 16 km from Shivpuri to Rishikesh at a leisurely pace, and crossed rapids named Return to the Sender, Roller Coaster, Golf Course, Clubhouse, etc. On the way we stopped for cliff jumping from a 25 ft high cliff. It’s surely an adrenaline pumping adventure and a spectator can make his watch worthwhile by recording the different pitches and decibels of screams let out by people in mid-air.

After returning to the camp we had a bonfire while groups played music and danced merrily around the fire. While having a sumptuous dinner by the riverside I watched the river ribboning through the hills and absorbed the sound the waves crashing against the rocks. After literally testing the waters of the Ganges I came back with a feeling of being overwhelmed by the antithesis that the river personifies- of immense power and calm, of the fieriness and serenity and of providing ‘Nirvana’ for the body and soul…