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Date of journey: 23/11/2007

Starting from: Bangalore

Destination: Dubare

Crew: Maneesh, Bharani, Malik, Sailaja, Arunava and Prasenjit.

It was an official trip, we started at night time about 3 am on Friday night on a cab. Some guys watched a movie Chak de India and I slept till we reached Mysore in the morning time. We just had a little break and we moved. We arrived at Dubare around 8 am in the morning and had some breakfast and coffee. Dubare elephant training camp is situated in Coorg along the banks of the river Cauvery(Kaveri). The camp is run by forest department to capture and train the wild elephants with the help of tamed elephants and the local tribes Kurabas. To reach the elephant camp we need to cross the river Kaveri by a boat:

The river was not in a full flow as it was not the rainy season. We took the tickets for the boat ride and crossed the River Cauvery. On the other side we found an elephant grazing, I took some shots from very close, as there was no risk involved as it was a tamed elephant:

We showed our bookings for the activities. You can book the package from the Jungle Lodges website. The first activity was to give bath to elephants. Well, some of our guys went for that but I was not interested to scrub them with a stone, as that they were doing. I and Bharani just watched and the other guys got into action . Well the most interesting part was that the elephants love water, they were not being pushed in to the water and it seems they were enjoying it:

The next activity was to feed the animals. Actually you don’t have to feed the animals by your own, you just have to watch and the elephant trainers will do the job. All the animals after bath were ready to be fed and the elephant camp guys were feeding them with huge ladoos made of ragi and jaggery(gur):

The elephants were the ready and it was time to take a ride. The ride was nice and it was the best part of the activities:

For more photos of Dubare Elephant camp, click here.

Then, after the ride we went for lunch. We had a buffet lunch, which was included in the package. After lunch we crossed the river and decided to go to Kushalnagar to take a home stay or a cottage. We found a nice home stay near Kaveri Nisargadhama for Rs. 500 per head. Just email me if you need his contact number. It was around 4 pm and the guys decided to go to Namdroling Monastery and Kaveri Nisargadhama. I had been to these places before and I was a bit tired so I thought of taking rest and others moved on. I got up at about 7 pm in the evening and after some time we had the dinner. After dinner we went for the campfire and it was amazing to sit beside the burning woods in icy cold winter. We were there chatting and gossiping till 12 o’ clock in the night. After some time we went to sleep. The next day we were having plans to go to Nagarhole National Park and I was very excited about it.
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