Black Buck Resort, Bidar

 After many ambitious plans were made and dropped, we decided to make a quick 2-day trip to Bidar's Black Buck Resort which had been on my mind for a while now. The drive was easy - a three and a half hour drive. I booked the cottage with no real idea of how the place would be - it comes to some 10k per cottage. It was Dasara time so we figured there might be some people around too. Anyways since it was considered a tranquil place out in the jungle I hoped for some quiet reading and stuff.  

View of lake from cottage

Sample cottage

Check in time is 130 so we took off at around 9 and weaved our way through heavy traffic on the Mumbai highway - the road near BHEL is in bad shape thanks to the new flyover and the traffic does not abate until way way longer - a sign that the city has grown. Perhaps almost till the ORR. We motored on and I found that even the highway was under some repair or the other so it was a jerky ride.

The road less travelled

Road to nowhere - actually to water

 The only good thing was the number of food courts that seemed to have popped up all along and we stopped at one such place - Patnam restaurant and Madurai restaurant. The latter was open and served some good breakfast stuff in some heavy duty plates. I liked it.

Then to Zaheerabad where we played many matches in our youth and turned off the highway towards Bidar which was some 30 kms, and then past Bidar towards Black Buck resort which shows up on GPS. A village road and then a country road and then in the jungle we find the resort. Its full of langurs, harmless if you let them be. We got Cottage No 5. We dumped our stuff and headed off for lunch where we met Ashwin, Abhi's friend from the colony. The chap from the resort told me the list of activities - boating at 4, sncks at 6, bonfire at 730, star gazing at 8, dinner at 830, birdwalk early morning, safari early morning, city tour at 945 am next day and so on.

The green contraption is a light with spikes

Made the mistake of getting on a coracle ride which was pretty pleasant until he decided to spin it around which was a bad idea - my head spun for a long time. Next time, no such adventure sports for me. Back to the dining area for snacks (pakoda), and then back to the cottage. Plans for a blackbuck safari at 630 am were made and we hit the sack early.

Safari jeep

Black Bucks

Next morning we were up for the safari which was a ride in a modified Gypsy along with a couple of couples and their kids - psychologist Diana and her husband Yohann and their kids, dentists Shefali and Mahesh and their kid. Off we went with Hussain who showed us many birds and named them and drove us some 18 kms to the place where the black bucks live. Quite a sight they were.We clicked some pics and came back in time for breakfast.

Self-explanatory

Bidar fort

A quick shower and off we went to the city tour with our fav co-travellers. The city tour included a trip to the bidri craft shops which were inside the old fort. Diana bought herself some bangles and the guy wrapped it in a newspaper which had her pic from an article in it. Off we went from there to the Bidar fort which is quite large. The Barid Shah dynasty which had spun off from the Bijapur sultanate ruled here. We walked around the fort for no charge and saw the gardens, the old monuments, the remnants of the palaces and then returned to the canteen for some soft drinks. Onward to the gurdwara which was to me a first. Then back to the good old resort and some lunch.

Bidar fort

Barid Shah tombs

I took a walk along the bund that evening by myself and returned in time for tea and snacks. Some telescoping where we saw the moon and its craters and the rings around saturn, a peep at the bonfire and off to crash after a hectic day.

The next morning we had a chilled out morning and left at 10ish. Pretty nice trip. Idyllic. Definitely recommend.