The year was 2011. I had just started my new life as a naturalist intern at a property that was an important eco-tourism experiment in Satpura, Madhya Pradesh. Starting my journey there shaped me in more ways than I could have imagined. This hilly, mixed deciduous forest was my first jungle home and remained so for five years. In 2011, the animals of Satpura were not used to people or vehicles as they are now. Tigers were hard to find, and the terrain hid the scattered herds of sambar, gaur, etc. Meadows with large herds of spotted deer, a norm in most tiger reserves, were almost non-existent. Sloth bears and rusty spotted cats were the stars. Satpura was the odd one out in a landscape that included Kanha, Pench, Bandhavgarh, and Panna. However, what truly set Satpura apart was the freedom to explore the reserve on foot.
Learning to be a walking guide
Exploring the forest and keeping my guests and myself excited on these walks required that I learn new skills. I began paying attention to markers: a large mahua tree, nightjar roost, beehive, two-tailed spiders, a fascinating bush or rock with interesting origin story. Tracks and signs I saw were left undisturbed for my next walk. I started to notice seasonal changes in the markers: new leaves, flowers, fruits, bursts of insect and bird life around certain plants, caterpillars, the movement patterns of the resident leopard that I never saw, the dynamics of a langur troop in a teak grove. I walked the same two trails in Satpura over 100 times each season (Oct-Jun) for five years, and a love affair blossomed. The markers, vistas, and creatures on these trails came to represent the park for me. On this path, I felt deeply connected with the landscape, more than anywhere else in the tiger reserve.
Cover photo: The Nilgiris in South India are a part of the Western Ghats. Here, the author walks along his favourite trail in these mountains.
For the love of trails
What draws people to the wilderness? For many, it is big cats. For some, it’s birds or a national park’s beauty. For me, it is one or two select trails: Pelia and Sonbadhra in Satpura; the walk around the property I worked for in Kanha; the cycling track near Jamtara in Pench; a cardamom plantation trail in Munnar; Spango Valley in Ladakh; or the narrow trail along the Narmada canal in Dasada. On foot, seeing the familiar and noticing subtle changes in a small area is as intriguing as exploring the entire landscape. That’s why, when looking for a home, I realise I need a place with a walking trail that represents a slice of the region and provides access to individual creatures that I can get familiar with.
Home in the Nilgiris
The Nilgiris, an isolated massif of the Western Ghats, was a place I had been going to year after year. My partner and I connected with its wilderness, the vistas, the history, the cosmopolitan societies, and many friends. In July 2019, we decided to move there and rented the perfect little house at the edge of a small village surrounded by tea estates, wattle and eucalyptus plantations, and valley forests, on the northern slopes of the Nilgiris. These secondary habitats support wildlife that has adapted to these new cultivated surroundings and mastered the art of staying hidden.
Backyard trail
On day one, we took our first walk through the area around our new home. Our neighbour mentioned a trail leading up a hill through an adjoining patch of tea bushes. Within the first five minutes, we noticed scrape marks and tracks made by a large male leopard. It was a random trail that led up the valley through tea and wattle plantations and overgrown raspberry vines before ending on a rocky ridge. Sloth bear droppings were scattered all around the tea garden. Estate workers we met warned us about bears, explaining how they hide behind the smallest of tea bushes. Luckily, we didn’t encounter any on that walk. But we heard the calls of the Nilgiri laughingthrush (Strophocincla cachinnans) seemingly from every dense thicket. Peering through some bushes, we spotted the endemic Nilgiri sholakili (blue robin; Sholicola major). Meandering along the trail, we stopped for everything from skittish southern rock agamas to dragonflies, native trees, porcupine quills, and droppings with Elaeocarpus seeds (of a toddy cat or brown palm civet). There were signs of many creatures, including a faint track that could have been a tiger. At the top of the ridge, the windswept flatland restricted vegetation to stunted bushes and lichen-covered rocks. We noticed a raptor perched at the edge of a precipice overlooking the valley. It was a shaheen falcon who dived into the vastness upon seeing us. A closer look at the rock revealed large white stains of raptor poop. This was their regular perch. We sat there for a bit, taking in our new surroundings, discussing what we saw, and then walked back home before sundown.
Though the trail didn’t lead through dense jungles, sholas, or grasslands, it had all the elements we associate with the Nilgiris tea estates: villagers plucking tea, expansive vistas, endemic birds, and a surprisingly healthy quantity of well-hidden wildlife. And a raptor roost to top it all. This walk cemented our connection with our new environment. Our joy was short-lived, though, as in October 2019 we went back to work in Central India and Ladakh. Little did we know that things were about to change dramatically for all of us.
Lockdown in the Nilgiris
The unfortunate events of 2020 sent us back home by March and restricted us to a corner of the Nilgiris for almost two long years as the pandemic played out. It was a strange time as our regular lives as wildlife guides had involved constant travel. After the initial few weeks of watching the news, worrying about the uncertainty, and a short period of drowning in self-pity, we started long walks. Initially, it was one walk a day at sundown. It began with watching Indian blackbirds, nesting black-throated and scaly-breasted munias, or loud, red-vented bulbuls around our home. This was followed by looking for signs of leopards and bears, peering through the foliage for black and orange flycatchers, checking on the sholakili by the stream, and finally, ending up atop a hill to observe the antics of a pair of shaheens. We did this every day, sometimes more than once, for six months.
This walk became a form of meditation — an exercise in slowing down and learning. While earlier we’d travelled to broadly understand species and habitats across the country, here we were figuring out individuals: a black eagle that soared past our home every day; leopards and sloth bears; nesting shaheen falcons; a flock of painted bush quails; and even a Nilgiri marten that occasionally surprised us. With every walk, we learnt more about each of them. Every creature left a piece of their story, a puzzle for us to solve while on the trail. On certain days we’d sit atop the ridge and watch monsoon clouds envelop the valley, then rise, dance, and disappear. It was the greatest connection I’d experienced to any patch of wilderness from the time of my first stint as an intern in Satpura.
Today, even though we don’t live in the same area of the Nilgiris, we make it a point to walk that trail often. It is our way of reconnecting with the Nilgiris after a long absence. It is a sliver of wilderness with which we’re most familiar. Every tree, rock, and turn is familiar — we could probably walk it blindfolded. Some of our most fulfilling moments in the wild have been here, with individual animals, plants, and insects that we look for and know so well. This unassuming path, overlooked by most people, is the trail I will forever cherish.
About the contributor
Surya Ramachandran
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