This is an invitation to take part in one of the greatest elephant shows in Asia. It doesn't consist of pachyderms kicking a football around, or riding a tricycle. This elephant show is all about raw intensity, wild passion, brute magnetism and a sense of unbridled power being exuded by the very air around. This is an arena where you have not three or four or six elephants doing the star turn, but 200. Or maybe 250, in just one evening....
Quite the extraordinary thing about the Kabini area is the existence of a mind-blowing 60 sq km of static water inside the forest precincts, the result of a dam built across the river at Beechanahalli. The water bifurcates the national parks of Nagarhole and Bandipur, but unites a spectacular range of wildlife in glorious abandon on its shores.
From the giant tuskers to the mouse deer, to barking deer and chital, to herds of gaur and sambhar, to the rare but definitely spottable tiger and panther, and the sloth bear... they are all here. And the birds? They flock together. Painted storks, egrets, herons and ibis. The vultures soar high even as the crested serpent eagle sits in majesty, scanning the area, seating itself on one of the innumerable stumps of wood that peek out of the water's surface, vestiges of once proud trees that were submerged by the dam.
But then again, Kabini is all about elephants and more elephants. Some 1,500 of them roam free in the jungles of Nagarhole alone, of which Kabini is a primary part. And according to Project Elephant reports, there are 5,500 to 6,000 of them in the contiguous stretches of forests comprising Nagarhole, Bandipur, Mudumalai and Biligirirangana sanctuaries, not at all far from each other, if you were a crow! Or why, even if you had a jeep!