Evergreen Leaves: Recollections of My Journeys into Wild India

By Gangadharan Menon

Gangadharan Menon gave up advertising after 28 years to take up his first and second love: teaching and travel. He now teaches at Rachana Sansad College of Applied Arts, Mumbai, and does travel photography and travel writing. His articles have been published in The Hindu, The Times of India, DNA, Hindustan Times, Mid-day, and in Hornbill, the journal of Bombay Natural History Society. Through his writings he encourages people to discover the joy of travelling in India, a country that is made up of many countries.

He can be contacted on [e-mail]

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Dec 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781482841701

Gangadharan Menon

Gangadharan Menon is a writer and photographer, and has extensively travelled for more than three decades across India and its neighbouring countries. He regularly writes about Nature, wildlife, history and anthropology, and over 150 of his articles have been published in India’s leading newspapers.

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Copyright © 2014 Gangadharan Menon. All rights reserved.

ISBN

978-1-4828-4171-8 (sc)

978-1-4828-4170-1 (e)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

www.partridgepublishing.com/india

12/4/2014

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evergreen

leaves

Recollections of My Journeys into Wild India

Gangadharan Menon

Contents

The Wild Side Of Wildlife

The Birdman Of Kheechan

A Cloudburst of Colours

The Amphibian Island

A City Lake And A City Forest

The Floating Forests

Silent Valley Isn’t Silent Anymore

Chasing The Flamingos

Living On A Spice Farm

The Fluttering Rainbows

The State Of Paradox

Night Out In A Forest

Half Dream, Half Reality

Paradise Lost

Children Of A Greater God

Nature, Relocated

Taming Of The Wild

A New, Improved Sanctuary

A World Yet To Be Discovered

A Forest In The Backyard

Birds Of Paradise

Tamarind Trees For Peacocks

The Land Of The Dead Is Teeming

With Life

The Young, Green Brigade

The Forest Less Travelled

The Crown Of The World

Where Birds Of Different Feathers Flock Together

In Search Of The King

Preserving All That Is Left

The Story Of Poachers-Turned-Protectors

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Text and Photographs: © Gangadharan Menon 2014

Design: breathing space

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without prior written consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, and that no part of this publication maybe reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the permission of copyright owners.

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In evergreen gratitude to my grandfather K. P. Raghava Menon for teaching me how to think, and my teacher K. V. Shankaranarayanan for teaching me how to write.

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special thanks to all the people who made this book a reality:

My wife Anita and son Akash for the selfless support they gave me to give up my profession of 28 years, and go back to my first love: travel and writing.

Isaac Kehimkar for coaxing me to write the first article, and Dr. Asad Rahmani and Varad Giri for encouraging me to write the rest.

All the editors of various newspapers and magazines for publishing my writings for the last five years, thereby reassuring me that there is readership for such writing.

Uday Parkar for making the words in this book come alive.

K. A. Somasundaran, my cousin brother, for giving me my first Agfa Click 3 camera at the age of 10, and making me a shutterbug for life.

Shantaram Pawar for inculcating in me the importance of being simple and concise in communication.

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This Book is about travelling into Nature. But it is not a ‘How to’ Book. It doesn’t tell you How to Get There, Where to Stay, and When to Go. Instead, it’s about exploring Nature, and the joy of mostly-unplanned travel. It’s about what these journeys have done to me. How they have made me. So in that sense, it’s private, it’s introspective.

These journeys span over three decades, and cover 16 States of this incredible land called India. From the snow-capped mountains of Ladakh to the southern-most tip of the Western Ghats. And from the harsh deserts of Rajasthan to the mystical forests of the North-East. The memories of these journeys are evergreen in my mind. Hope the reader too gets the rub of the green.

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The Wild Side Of Wildlife

In the last 36 years, I have encountered wildlife at extremely close quarters just four times.

When I say close quarters I mean face-to-face encounters outside the safe confines of a forest jeep.

The very first time was during my very first trip into the forests. We were filming a documentary on Silent Valley in Kerala. During the 3-week shoot in this forest we had run out of provisions and I was trekking to a village 24 kms away along with my tribal guide.

As we were walking in this dense, evergreen forest, we heard sounds that could send a chill down your spine, especially when you are on foot. A lone tusker in ‘masst’ about 100 feet away, breaking every single branch within his reach and smashing it on the forest floor. The whole forest was trembling with fear. We had to lie low in the forest for almost an hour, and it seemed like a year, to allow the rampaging elephant to pass.

In this situation, we were pre-warned and thus we escaped.

The second instance was also in the Western Ghats, north of Olavakkode, near Palakkad. I was trekking with my brother, Manu. At one point, we had to cross a river that was in spate. My brother stepped into the gushing river first, and I gingerly followed.

Just before I stepped in, I held on to the last rock on the ledge. My brother casually turned to look at my progress, and to his horror he saw a poisonous viper snake inches away from my hand. Without letting me know the gravity of the situation, he calmly told me, ‘Chetta, don’t look back. Just take away your hand slowly, very slowly, and come towards me.’ I did exactly that, and then turned to look back. There was a viper on the rock, very close to where my hand was, and I had escaped death by the moulted skin of my teeth.

Here, I had a narrow escape as I had not threatened the viper, and it allowed me to retreat gracefully.

The third instance was in Tadoba, near Nagpur in Maharashtra. My son Akash, who was barely ten years old then, and I, had gone into the jungle with a guide. It was 6 in the morning, and the forest was waking up to the chirping of birds. As the mission was to look for tigers, we headed straight to a waterhole about a kilometre from the forest bungalow, on foot.

At the waterhole that was nestling among the rocks, there were no tigers. But the wet pugmarks on the rocks were tell-tale signs that a tiger was there a few minutes ago. We looked around but couldn’t see it; maybe at that very moment it was watching us from the dense jungle around. Disappointed, we started trekking back. Suddenly a full grown tiger emerged from the foliage and stood there majestically, staring at us from about 80 feet away.

The guide asked us to ‘freeze’ and we did just that. So much so that I didn’t even attempt to click a photograph, though my camera was hanging around my neck in all readiness.

After staring at us for a full minute, the tiger disappeared into the mystery of the forest.

Dazed out of our wits, we started our journey back, marvelling at how small and insignificant you feel in front of the raw, unbridled power of a wild animal.

Here we escaped because we were absolutely still, and the tiger was neither threatened nor provoked.

The last of the encounters of the wild kind happened on the 15th of June, in 2008. It was at Masinagudi, the last village before Mudumalai Sanctuary in Tamilnadu, on the Ooty-Mysore road.

There were three of us: the guide Ombalan, my brother Manu and me. Ombalan had been a guide in Mudumalai for over 15 years and he knew the forest like the palm of his hand. But little did he know that very soon the lifeline on his palm would cross the path of a wild tusker.

Spurred on by the sound of an elephant, we set out into the dense jungle for a photo op. Within minutes we saw a tusker moving into the distant foliage. Ombalan asked us to double up as the elephant was downwind and could easily sense our presence.

Then we saw two trunks towering above a bamboo grove, pulling down bamboo shoots, at a distance of some 150 feet.

As we moved ahead, we came across a strange forestscape that had a mix of ancient trees, bamboo groves and gigantic bushes of lantana. It was the first time that I saw such massive bushes of lantana in a forest, that too in circular shapes, as if pruned by Mother Nature.

The first uncanny sight we saw was a freshly killed black-naped hare lying on the forest floor. We looked around for the predator, which could have been a tiger or a leopard or a jackal. There was an eerie silence and we cocked our ears for the gentlest rustle; there was none.

A little ahead we saw the skeleton of a deer hanging from a tree, about 40 feet above the ground. Ombalan told us that a leopard had carried his kill up that tree about a month ago, and left the carcass behind. It was the last photograph I took; and little did I know then that it could well have been my very last. Shaken and stirred, we moved on.

While we were trekking along a forest path created by elephants, Ombalan heard a sound which none of us had picked up. He asked my brother and me to wait, right in our tracks. And as he went around the dense bamboo bush, he walked straight into a waiting tusker.

Inadvertently he had entered the elephant’s discomfort zone, which it clearly construed as an act of blatant aggression.

I have been close to elephants, may be about 5 or 6 times, but in the safety of a jeep. And every time they would give a warning by taking a few steps towards me, and then making a short, mock charge.

But in this instance there was no time and not enough distance for such wild niceties.

It made a charge at Ombalan, and he took to his heels shouting, ‘Sir, odungo!’ Which in plain English meant run. Without knowing whether it was a tiger, or an elephant, or a leopard lying in ambush, we ran straight ahead, trying to catch up with the guide who was going ahead in full steam.

By the time we caught up with him, I was the last in the group.

As I turned back to look at what we were running away from, I saw a wild tusker aged about 16, barely 30 feet away from me, in full charge. I ran for my life, as fast as my 52-year old feet could carry me. Five steps later when I turned again, he was just about 20 feet behind me, now in full flow.

My survival instinct told me that I have to get out of his way before he knocks me down and tramples me, or impales me on his tusks. So I dived to the left and landed on my shoulder like a good goalkeeper, which I was in my school days.

I could hear four mammoth legs coming to a screeching halt behind me, as he was surprised by this unexpected move. Then the tusker went down on his front legs and attacked me with his right tusk, right on my lower back, exactly where I had a slip-disc for 14 years.

Just as he was preparing to attack me the second time, Ombalan let out a wild, nomadic scream which unsettled him.

The tusker lost his concentration and his tusk went through my shirt near my shoulder,