12-06-2025
Nagarhole National Park: 3-day itinerary to make the most of your trip
Driving into CGH Earth Saha Coorg Wild Walk's gates, passing coffee bushes and tall trees, our first glimpse of the villa encircled by electric fencing, with light flooding out of the expansive picture windows is magical. The only sound in the air is the strident sound of cicadas under the star-spangled sky.
The villa-style safari lodge is near Kutta's Nanachi Gate, in Coorg, in the South Indian state of Karnataka, minutes from the entrance of Nagarahole National Park, also known as Rajiv Gandhi National Park. The park is nestled in the Kodagu and Mysuru districts of Karnataka, India. Once this area was the exclusive hunting grounds of the royalty of Mysuru.
Covering an impressive area of around 643 square kilometres, it was declared a national park in 1988 and is part of the expansive Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve. The park derives its name from Nagara which means snake, and hole, meaning river or stream in the Kannada language. Nagarahole is home to a diverse range of mammals, including majestic elephants, tigers, elusive leopards, wild dogs and sloth bears. For bird enthusiasts, the park is a paradise with over 270 species, such as the Malabar trogon and the striking Malabar pied hornbill.
Our villa furnished in an earthy, rustic style, is amid a lush estate planted with robusta coffee, orange and pepper, that belongs to a local planter and has been in his family for five generations. CGH Earth has renovated the property into a cozy safari lodge, with stone clad walls, two lounges and four rooms, that offer a tryst with nature and quietude.
Our room is well furnished, with large picture windows that looked into the surrounding greenery and forest with a spacious bathroom with a rain shower. Wildlife photographs of leopards, elephants and tigers adorn the walls of every room, reminding you of where you are. The lounge downstairs is furnished in shades of olive green, shelves are equipped with binoculars and books on wildlife, with walls decorated with art and artefacts from the region. We hear stories of how leopards have been sighted approaching the property at night, recorded on cameras.
The lodge arranges for safari drives in the neighbouring Nagarahole Tiger Reserve, home to tigers, leopards, wild boar, Asiatic elephants, Gaur, Mouse deer, Langur monkeys and a prolific bird life. You can also choose to take plantation walks or go for picnics in the surrounding areas.
An early morning jeep safari drive takes us through red-dirt trails, and beautiful misty landscapes of open meadows, dense forests and winding streams, with rosewood, silver oak, sandalwood, silk cotton and teak trees standing tall, punctuated by the brilliant yellow flowers of the golden shower tree. Herds of sambar deer and wild boars lurk in bamboo thickets, as langurs with black and silver faces gazed at us curiously from branches.
The guide points out the fissured bark of the crocodile bark tree that resembles the rough scales of a crocodile, is resistant to fire, and blooms just before the monsoon, the axle wood tree that was traditionally used to make agricultural implements, and is known for its gum and resins, and the silk cotton tree. Though we see the tracks of a sloth bear and fresh paw marks of a tiger, they remain elusive.
We spot a Malabar pied hornbill with its large beak, on the branches of a silk cotton tree. Near a water hole, we see a huge congregation of lesser whistling ducks, as river terns and Brahminy kites soar overhead. Crested serpent eagles and fishing hawks circle over ponds and streams. A mugger crocodile basks on a stone bridge, as we come across a herd of elephants including a calf, that was just a month old, nestling close to the matriarch.
Not far from here we spot a herd of sinewy Gaur or wild bison that can weigh up to 1,000 kg each – our guide tells us that they are the favourite prey of tigers providing them around nine days' food. Nagarahole of course is not only about its wildlife – it's also the home of the Jenu Kuruba tribes, and we see the schools in forest clearings for their children, and meet some of them as they walk, carrying firewood. They still depend on ancient wisdom and forage for honey, roots and other forest goodies to sustain them.
Come evening, we sit around a bonfire and listen to our naturalist Sharath Abraham, and his tales of the jungle. He showed us videos of a face-off between the fabled black panther of Kabini and a leopard on the branches of a tree, and a safari drive where the python lies on the road ahead and a tiger evaluates the danger and walks away.
An afternoon walk through the coffee plantation, takes us through white coffee blooms with their heady fragrance. We spot huge heaps of elephant dung and understand that these marauders enter the plantation in the nights. It's not uncommon that even tigers and leopards stray here.
Though we don't spot tigers or leopards on our safari drives, magic exists everywhere. Each safari is like a new story that unfolds before your eyes. From the reddish-brown Malabar squirrels with long tails that scramble up the trees on our property, to the paw marks of the sloth bears that we see on our safari drive and the flash of a blue bearded bee-eater on the branches of a tree. Best of all are the birds that I see on our property, with my binoculars, from the white-cheeked barbet which makes a strident sound through the day, to the Asian fairy bluebird. I sketch what I see before me, trying to capture the sights of the forest, so that I can recall them back in the urban jungle.
