My First Wild Tiger Sighting

I saw my first wild tiger at Bandipur, I was ontop of the safari RTV, sitting about 15 feet off the ground when I saw something walking across the path. I was about to ask our guide what that was when he shouted "Tiger, stop the vehicle, quiet...".

The tiger was about 50 feet away and hadn't noticed us. He sauntered across the path seemingly lost in his own thoughts and then, he noticed us. He stopped and turned his head, giving us one of the dirtiest looks I have ever got, for the longest time. Then he vanished into the lantana, just like that.

I had prayed that I would see a tiger, but never thought I would, on my first safari into a jungle :). Its strange in some ways as the next day, we saw nothing - almost no wildlife. I guess I can complain about not getting a good photograph of the tiger though :).

Bandipur Photos

Photos from our Bandipur trip can be found here. Yes, I did see a tiger and I tried to get a photo. That valiant attempt was spoilt by poor light and a shaky hand :(. If anyone wants a blurry photo of a tiger walking away, let me know.

The tree frog that eats bats

Here's a really bizzare story from the BBC. That must be one big tree frog.

Off to Bandipur

We are off to Bandipur tomorrow morning. I hope we get to see a tiger :) in the wild. From what I hear, its pretty unlikely but you never never know. I am currently trying desperately hard to finish writing my thesis. I'm happy to take off for the weekend, to be getting a much needed break from it all.

I should be back at blogging early next week.

Wildlife and natural parks in Karnataka

Here's a list of some of the the wildlife related things you can do in Karnataka.

We are going to Jungle Lodges later this week. Jungle Lodges is a Karnataka goverment enterprise that runs a number of resorts all over Karnataka. They are all supposed to be pretty good, the tarrifs are a bit steep (1650-2500 Rs./day/person), especially if you're on a budget.

I also found this fairly vague site run by the Karnataka forest department that has a ton of information on all the forest areas in Karnataka that you can go to for treks. The only problem is that the site is short on detials of how you can go about this. They do have a lot of information for birdwatchers.

There seem to be a number of resorts around Bandipur and BR Hills that offer both a place to stay and safaris into the parks. I found two such resorts - Bushbetta and Tusker Trails.

Ullal Beach

Ullal Beach - nice and clean and very few people for most of the day

Mangalore Trip

Had gone to Mangalore - place called Summer Sands for a neural coding conference last week. Summer sands itself is fairly quaint and a bit rustic. The resort is on Ullal Beach which is very nice (rough seas though). The conference was really good, learnt a lot, especially about what I dont know. There were talks on Vision, models/algorithms for learning and cognition.

Good stuff and great food. I mention the food as my last meal there will be hard to forget :), there were 7 kinds of seafood - mussels, prawn, squid and four kinds of fish. I dont think I will ever have a meal like that again.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Watched the "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow", horrible movie. It has a really lame plot/story set around the 1940's, about a mad german scientist who creates a rocket-ship noah's ark and wants to destroy the world.... need I say more? I watched the movie as it got some press for its special effects, the movie was mostly made using animations. The special effects are pretty good but its nowhere near enough to rescue the movie.

All in all, bad movie with a worse story, they do have the odd interesting concept thrown in, but please avoid otherwise.

India as an economic power

A lot has been said about where India stands as an economic power in the world and I'm guessing there are better people than me to opine on this. My curiosity was sparked by an article in the ET, which suggested that India had the fifth largest economy in the world at $2.6 trillion. On searching the web, turns out there are more places that suggest similar things. Its pretty staggering if you think about it, we are richer/more powerful than almost any country with 3 exceptions - the US, China, Japan. No more colonial mentality of thinking of western countries that are as big as some Indian states as 'rich countries'.

Except for one little hitch. Turns out that if you look at more reliable sources like the World Bank, we are about $590 billion in size and about 12th in world rankings. According to me, that's still great and wonderful. In these tsunami-ridden days, there is fresh fodder for thought, as probably for the first time in the history of India, we have refused all foreign aid. We are in fact offering some aid to smaller countries like Sri Lanka.

I'm not commenting on the merits of that decision but merely pointing out that as an Indian, I feel like the country finally has some kind of economic feet/grounding of its own based on which it can not only take care of its own but is capable of helping others. Pretty cool....

Your transgenic flourescent aquarium

Glo-fish is an innovatively named company that sells transgenic flourescent zebrafish. These fish were originally developed to act Pollution Indicators. Add that to your list of wierd things that can be bought on the internet.

BTW, ordinary zebrafish are work-fish of the developmental biology world. Its used as a 'model organism', as it is mostly transparent throughout its development making it ideal for genetic studies that affect cellular and tissue structure.

I'm Back

Ok folks, sorry about the long absence. After a week-long bout of fever and tension over my thesis seminar, I'm finally back on my feet and running. The thesis seminar went off very well and it was well recieved.

ps. Its Dr. B from now :)