Wild Elephants & Bisons – The Gentle Giants Of Mudumalai National Park

Aug 302011

An Encounter with Wild Elephants and Bisons in Mudumalai National Park

We are about to celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi the festival in honor of Ganesh, the first to be invoked among gods, the son of Shiva and Parvati, he who is brighter than a billion suns.

The unique thing about Ganesha is that he has the head of an Elephant, although there is a story behind that which all of us must have read as kids. But I think there could be a reason for choosing head of an elephant for the wisest of the gods. Elephants themselves are one of the most intelligent and social animals with memory of well an Elephant ! 😉

The Giant Bison

We have all seen elephants on various occasions in the cities we live in and in temples in Southern India. But the experience of breathing the same air as a group of elephants in the jungles of Mudumalai is something that I will never forget. We were visitng Ooty from Hyderabad and decided to visit the Mudumalai National park, which is close to Ooty. We were very happy to see a giant bison just after entering the precinct of the sanctuary. The Bison was bigger a Maruti 800 car, from which an idiot got out and was trying to take pictures of the beast. We decided to respect the rules of the jungle and clicked some pictures from the car itself.

Private vehicles are not allowed in the core area of the Mudumalai National Park and we had to book a bus. I was very disappointed with this arrangement as I thought we will never see the elephants with a busload of tourists making noise. For some reason most tourists in our national parks behave as if they are in an amusement park and not in wild.

a herd of wild elephants with calves in Mudumalai National Park

Family Of Elephants

Elephant herd with baby elephants mudumalai national park

The Mothers Trying To Protect The Calves

Do Read my post about Human Elephant Conflict

Fortunately Mudumalai is Ganesha Country and elephants are in a good number, once we reached in the interiors of the woods the driver suddenly stopped the bus and said something in Tamil, which most of us did not understand. Only when we saw a giant dark grey rock moving in front of us, we realized that a herd of mother elephants with their calves was grazing in front of us. The moment the herd realized that there were intruders ( us )in their home the gentle giants huddled together with mothers protectively covering their babies.

It was an amazing experience to watch the herd of elephants slowly melting in the wood on that summer afternoon. Is it not humbling that those giants instead of attacking us chose to go away peacefully while every time we visit even a zoo we do our best to tease the captured animals ? I think we should all learn to respect and leave wild animals alone.

To find more about Mudumalai National park please click here

To see more posts about both domestic and wild elephants check the links below