In case you have a deep desire to live inside a forest, and the bigger sanctuaries like Ranthambore, Dudhwa and Tadoba sound a little intimidating, for starters you can try Durshet. It would be your perfect initiation into the Ways of the Forest.
And the best part is, when you book yourself into the cottages of Nature Trails there, you have already got a deal that you hadn’t bargained for. It comes with a river, a lake and a forest attached. All for free. The place, unless on an unlucky weekend, is absolutely solitary. So you can safely feel as if you own all these freebies.
Durshet is a friendly forest nestling in the Western Ghats on the banks of river Amba near Khopoli. It’s flanked by the Ashtavinayaks of Mahad and Pali. The Varad Vinayak at Mahad is an elegant temple built by the Peshwas at a picturesque location next to a pond. Whereas Ballaleshwar is a temple painted with the most gaudy colours ever imagined by man.
From your doorstep you can watch the changing moods of the majestic Western Ghats; or you can walk down to river Amba and dangle your feet in its gentle waters. And when you are done with the butterfly watching within the complex itself, you can head off for white-water rafting in the river Kundalika, not very far from Durshet. Plus there are adventure sports like rock climbing, river crossing, rappelling - all at an arm’s distance.
The most wonderful thing about these adventure sports is that it’s your own humble version of Man v/s Wild. At the end of each event, you feel the immense joy of having conquered Nature. Or is it actually yourself?
But for us, the highpoint of the trip was the jungle trek in the night. We set off after dinner into the moonless forest, the lone beam of the guide’s torch lighting up the pathless land.
The entire forest was enveloped in dense darkness. The sky was starlit; but I realised that even a thousand stars can’t make up for the missing full moon. The creatures of the night were making their presence felt with their eerie calls: the owls, the night jars and the occasional jackal.
The hunt for the tarantula spider drew a blank but the torchlight caught a blacknaped hare that darted across us in sheer fright. It was difficult to say who was more scared: us or the hare.
Suddenly the forest became silent; even the cicadas stopped midway into their nightsong. And I was reminded of the time when I witnessed a solar eclipse in the forests of Nagzira in Maharashtra. It was late afternoon and the forest was alive and vibrant. The moment the sun was covered by the eclipse, the entire forest became silent as if night had fallen. When the eclipse passed and the sun regained its lost glory, the forest became alive again. And the denizens of the forest would have wondered how the night lasted for just twenty minutes.
As we stood at the edge of darkness and stared at the Durshet valley below, I remembered that distant night in Tadoba sanctuary when we were doing night census of the wildlife there. After the range officer dropped us to the machaan overlooking the waterhole, the first sighting we had was of a mama bear carrying a baby bear on her back. They passed by right under our shaky machaan. And when we moved a wee bit in sheer fright, the creaking of the loose wooden plank on which we were sitting reverberated in the pindrop silence of the forest. We were mortified that the bear would look up and spot us. But it went away having better things to do. On that lonely night that seemed to have no dawn, we spotted many animals that ventured to quench their thirst at the waterhole that was drying up by the hour: a lone leopard, a troupe of langurs, a couple of porcupines, a pack of wild dogs, and even a peacock that was suffering from a bad case of insomnia.
When we returned to the safety of the well-lit cottage, we realised an eternal truth that the caveman would have realised many eons ago: darkness is fear and light is courage.
