Trip to Bandipur Forest Reserve and BR HIlls

It started off as an unplanned activity, with JP deciding to check out his prowess on the car over hill roads and me being what I am agreeing to the adventure in it. We had decided to use the tents for camping out and taken the pick-axes along for safety purposes... :-)
Slept over at JP's place after packing the camping gear, woke up early at 4 in the morning and called up Fateh (who also wanted to tag along). Had to ring him a dozen times before he finally responded and we managed to wean him away from the slumber he was into.
Loaded ourselves into the car along with all the equipment and started off on the journey. The plan was to hit the hills by the early morning and reach someplace near Kemmenagundi or Chikmangalur by the afternoon. But plans changed midway and we headed towards the BR Hill range. Had a lot of fun along the way with stoppages and running around to get ourselves into the holiday mood; before we finally stopped at the Cafe Day for breakfast. Filled up gas in one of the modern filling stations of Mangalore Natural Gas and then decided to move on towards the BR Hills area. We had hit the hills...!!
It was a really wonderful trip through the hills, we frolicked around quite a lot before we finally reached the summit of the BR Hills area. Here, there was a hilltop temple and we went for a short trek onto the same. The trek turned out to be a real pleasure, as that area is where the states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka meet and the hills on which we were trekking are no-mans land area sorts... :-)
Came back and went for lunch to one of the local dhaba's. It was real good with a British English speaking person, who served us the food and that too on the banana leaf with proper vegetables and eating with hands. He then sat with us and spoke about the places to visit and stay there. We finally decided to make it to the Bandipur Forest Reserve and sleep near that place, as JP also wanted to show us the wild animals which he had seen some dozen years earlier ... :-D
Had a good time searching for a hotel to stay in and finally landed up with a single room with an extra bed. The place was quite good and we enjoyed a lot at the same, the night was pleasant and we survived through it without any more incidents, except when JP woke up at night and wanted to take us through the forest to check out the "wild beasts" who would be roaming the place at that time. He managed to convince us of the same and we went on a night safari at 1 in the night ;-D

We then proceed the next night to Ooty and went again on a hike behind the top most peak there, along with a spurt of buying chocolates for all near and dear ones. ;-)