Once upon a time, Nelliampathy was a dense, continuous stretch of evergreen forests. Today, they are small, green islands floating in a sea of coffee, tea and cardamom plantations. These plantations were given on a 99-year lease before the British left India for good. When the lease expires, an attempt could be made to allow the forests to heal themselves. But that's a far cry; in the case of some plantations, another three decades.
The journey to Minimedu estate, a defunct estate now converted into a tourist spot, was more of a roller coaster ride than a jeep drive. The roads were washed away many monsoons ago, exposing subterranean boulders of all shapes and sizes. But after an hour of a really bumpy ride, the reward was waiting for us by a small rivulet. A shrub completely covered with dozens of a single species of butterfly, strangely called 'blue tiger'. Their blue and black flutter made the simple shrub look like an animated miracle, standing on the shores of an animated rivulet.
It reminded me of a breathtaking sight I had seen in the town of Jamnagar, almost 15 years ago. From the balcony of my hotel room, I could see three bare trees, denuded by winter. As the sun was about to go down, all of a sudden hordes of rose-ringed parakeets descended on the branches of these trees turning the bare tree into a green, fluttering wonder. The next day, in the wee hours of the morning, they disappeared as quickly as they had come, making the tree barren all over again. Almost as a metaphor of life itself.
The same day in Nelliampathy, we witnessed another visual spectacle. This time by night. After an early dinner, we were lazing around in the sit-out of the cottage, sharing our forest tales. Right in front of us was the dense darkness of an evergreen forest, soaked in the black ink of a moonless night. Out of nowhere, there appeared tiny specks of light. As they increased in numbers, we realized it was a multitude of fireflies. With the lights going on and off intermittently, they looked like a curtain of lights hanging from the heavens. En masse, all of a sudden, they would move from one side to the other giving the impression that the curtain was swaying in the breeze.
From Nelliampathy, we proceeded to Anamalai in Tamil Nadu. It was a long, smooth drive that culminated in a rain-ravaged road leading to the national park. As we entered, we were welcomed by the golden arches of Cassia fistula, the flower of my life.
Inside the sanctuary though, the scene wasn't very picturesque. Busloads of picnickers had landed with the sole intention of consumption, and soon the roads were littered with the leftovers of uncivilization. And within no time, a group of wild boar came out from the forest and started rummaging through the piles of garbage. I saw the leader of the pack biting into a plastic pouch, and having liked the contents, swallowed the entire pouch. Manu, who was taking photographs of the gory incident, paused to tell me that this pouch could travel through the digestive tract of the boar and reach the rectum and block it. Leading to a very painful and unnatural death.
The incident took me back to my trip to the Andamans where we encountered the critically endangered Jarwa tribe, one of the few nomadic tribes that is untouched (or was untouched) by civilization since the times of cave-men. As we were traversing the dense jungle, a group of these tribesmen came on to the road and blocked our car. They started begging for food and when we refused they threatened us with primitive actions. The driver-cum-guide was quick to respond, and as the car zoomed away from them, I saw their tragic faces in the rear-view mirror, and I hung my head in shame for what we have reduced them to.
Our next trip to the adjoining Parambikulam National Park reposed our faith in conservation. Here the visitors were taken into the forest in enclosed mini buses, accompanied by a guide. Nobody, not even the most ardent wildlife photographer among us, was allowed to step out. And the bus only stopped at two pre-determined spots. The first stop was to witness the solitary grandeur of the Kannimara Teak, the tallest living teak in the world. Myth has it that when a woodcutter tried to cut this tree, it started bleeding profusely. The woodcutter, scared out of his wits, ran into the village to tell his tale. And the whole village came to the forest to pay their obeisance to the tree, and lovingly named it Kannimaram, or the Virgin Tree.
At the second stop, which was at the dam-site, we saw a small group of wild boar coming towards us for some tit-bits. Since the entire park was a no-plastic zone, and since no one was allowed to get down with any food stuff, the forest remained unlittered. And the wild boar, with disapproving grunts, went back to their real abode looking for their real food. Unlike the domesticated wild boar of Anamalai.
Our next destination was Amravati, an extension of Anamalai Sanctuary. There we chanced upon a herd of elephants; and as it was nearing evening, they were on their last stretch of grazing for the day.
Instinct told our guide that the herd is now ready to cross the road on their journey to the waterhole. He asked everyone to get into the car, and as he had predicted, within seconds they started moving. In a single file, they crossed the road and moved towards the waterhole.
It is crossing such treacherous roads that has killed many a wild animal in recent times. These paths, or animal corridors, are genetically coded in them and they don't change them. So generation after generation they use the same path, even when they are intersected by man-made roads and railway lines. A random survey of the Wildlife Conservation Foundation, Mysore, revealed that in Bandipur alone between 2004 and 2008, there were road kills that accounted for the deaths of 91 mammals, 74 birds and 56 reptiles. In Walayar, on the border of Kerala and Tamilnadu, speeding trains have killed 21 elephants in 2 years, wiping out 10% of the entire elephant population of the Walayar forests. In fact, a study showed that we lose more animals to road kills than to poaching.
Yes, laying speed breakers on these roads, enforcing speed limits and prohibiting night traffic could perhaps bring down these road kills. But what can be done when the railway tracks that are the lifelines of the country end up being the deathlines of our precious wildlife?
And without a clear answer, we proceeded to Valparai, another part of the Anamalai sanctuary, where we were to witness another tragic tale.
The drive was tough but the view was spectacular, with 40 hair-pin bends to negotiate before we reached the town of Valparai. We had decided to stop at the 9th bend, because that was where Manu had spotted the Nilgiri tahr, or the mountain goat, the last time he was here. Hoping for an encore, we paused. And right enough they were there, serenely grazing among the rocks.
When we reached the 40th bend, we paused to take a look at the serpentine road we had just taken. It looked as if the goddess of the mountain had let her hair down in a hurry, scattering her hair pins all along the mountain slopes.
Once we reached Valparai, we went looking for Shaik Husain, a researcher working on the lion-tailed macaque project, and stationed in Valparai for the last 18 months. He took us to the forest inhabited by these monkeys, and there I saw one of the most heart-rending scenes I have come across in my life.
A road sliced through the heart of that dense forest, and lots of vehicles were plying on that road. Whenever a vehicle stopped by, hordes of liontailed macaques would descend from the tree tops and extend their hands and beg for food. Mindless tourists would throw all kinds of junk food at them; and grabbing these, they would vanish into the pristine forests. I even saw a liontailed macaque biting into a tetrapak of Tropicana, and gulping down the contents. Apart from converting them into zombies, and making them vulnerable to the diseases of man, it made them incapable of foraging for their natural food. It also made them candidates for road kills, as they dart across the road with human greed, without looking on either side.
The first thing that struck me while looking at these fragile, helpless creatures is that they were much smaller in size than the ones I had first seen in Silent Valley. Shaik explained to me the reason for this. 75 years of systematically converting these forests into plantations have fragmented these forests, and made them into isolated islands. So a group that's imprisoned on one island starts inbreeding; and that makes them frail, weak and prone to diseases. They start living in large groups, and this makes food even more scarce and inadequate.
That evening when we went looking for the flying squirrel, we even saw a large herd of Indian gaur entering coffee plantations looking for food.
Valparai is neither a true forest nor a true plantation. The borders are blurred, and as the forest cover dwindles by the day, wild incursions into human settlements increase, thereby increasing the chances of man-animal conflict.
As we drove back the next morning, we saw a liontailed macaque sitting on the stump of a tree, his hand extended, begging for food. And for a moment I thought to myself: Was he really begging for food, or was he begging of us to return his natural life that we had so cruelly snatched away from him?
