Enjoying Nothingness at Nagarahole

Published in the 15 Sep 2023 edition of www.jlrexplore.com, a nature and wildlife magazine.

Nagarahole National Park had decided to take an unannounced, unseasonal vacation. And I had turned up exactly during that time, in eager anticipation of a forest thriving with activity. After all, March is a great month – it’s just before the blistering heat sets in, the forest is still somewhat lush, and there’s a chance to see the very last of the winter migrants. But to everybody’s surprise, Karnataka’s ‘mango showers’ arrived two weeks too early, exactly when those of us who were trying to escape Holi revelries in the city fled to the forest; we got drenched anyway – the joke was on us.

Peafowl on a foggy, rainy morning.

So what does that leave me with, to tell you a story about my three days at Nagarahole? Not much other than single digits on the sightings list – 1 Barking Deer, 1 Jungle Fowl, 1 Crested Serpent-eagle, 1 White-bellied Woodpecker, 2 Sambar, 2 langur, 2 egrets (where were the flocks?), a few peafowl, and 2 Gaur. I kid you not. Not even herds of Spotted Deer, usually so ubiquitous that nobody gives them a second glance. Yes, there were also a couple of elephants, and a fleeting dramatic incident, but Nagarahole National Park was as thinly populated as an office between Christmas and New Year.

Sambar

Elephants at dusk.

From two of the bleakest opening paragraphs possibly ever written, you might have sensed my despondency. So does it sound believable when I say that I still had a marvellous time? Let me tell you how.

The campus of King’s Sanctuary, Nagarahole, where I stayed, is almost 40 acres. The sprawling property has spacious accommodation spread out amidst trees and plants, most of them native flora. I was piqued by all the sounds I could hear around me, while in my room or walking to and from the dining area for meals.

Having had two ‘no-sightings’ safaris since arriving, I decided to skip an evening safari and go on a nature walk instead. Shekhar was excited to show me around the campus, which incidentally has been his home for over twenty years. My leisurely stroll began after a cup of tea, on a promising note - the light was unusually golden for 4:30 pm. This should have portended the rain that was to come, but blissfully unaware, I chose to enjoy the perks of peering at treetops without any glare. And we did see a fair bit of activity – Golden Orioles, an Asian Koel pair, and a male Paradise Flycatcher – to the soundtrack of a Common Hawk-cuckoo, which was proving to us why its nickname is ‘brain fever bird’. The grass all around us fluttered with tiny brown birds too skittish to identify.

Asian Koel, female

Shekhar was thrilled to know that I wanted to see the flora as well, and birds were soon forgotten, talking about inflorescences, leaf shapes and how the locals use different trees and plants. Almost as if on cue, a low, sprawling fig tree appeared. I had to pause to take it in – straight out of an otherworldly setting, or for fellow Potter-heads, like the whomping willow. We disappeared into the tree to enjoy the etherealness. When the tree’s leaves began producing a racket, we stepped out to investigate and realised that it was raining quite heavily. The thick canopy sheltered us well from the downpour, but sensing that the rain would only intensify, we darted to a nearby cluster of rooms. We thought that we were done for the day, but the birds had other ideas. Tickell’s Blue Flycatchers chased each other around the central courtyard. The sky rapidly darkened, but not before it threw up silhouettes of Malabar Grey Hornbills and a Shikra.

Over dinner that night, I was talking to the manager and one of the naturalists about their experience of staying in the buffer zone and being in close proximity to wildlife. I was invited to go on a night walk around the campus. Anyone who knows me knows that I am scared of the dark. Also, the possibility of whether I would encounter elephants had me worried; I respect the strength of these wonderful beings and like to keep my distance from them. Meeting an elephant on foot is my worst nightmare, but I agreed in desperation only because my upcoming article about Nagarahole was potentially turning into a bigger nightmare due to scarce sightings. Armed with dull torches, we set out along the campus’s perimeter. The worry about coming across elephants turned out to be unfounded, as the property is fenced all around.

Walking at night activates all the senses, and especially amplifies sound. The slithering we heard turned out to be a Green Keelback. The chorus of crickets was a constant companion. Footsteps other than ours made us jump many times, revealing equally skittish Spotted Deer. My city vision was sorely lacking, and had it not been for the naturalist, I would have walked past the Sri Lankan Painted Frog and straight into the web of a garden spider. There was so much to grab our attention that we stopped every few steps - to see Wolf Spider-lings, a Cicada nymph, and even a Whip Spider trying to pass off for a twig. The highlight was seeing radiant bioluminescent fungi on the barks of a few mango trees.

The well-camouflaged Sri Lankan Painted Frog.

Bioluminescent fungi

That fleeting dramatic incident I had mentioned at the beginning? When our starved-for-sightings jeep saw a peacock, we spent many minutes looking at it intently. It then flew gracefully and landed next to our jeep, but screeched in shock, and we also heard a yelp and furious running. The peacock had almost landed on an alarmed, skulking leopard, and all we saw was its tail disappear into bushes. The third yelp was let out collectively by our jeep, because we hadn’t realised that there had been a leopard in the nullah right next to our jeep. Three species within a few square feet of each other, and quite unusually, we all managed to shock each other! My memento from this moment is a photograph of “can you see the leopard that we almost didn’t see?”

A few other jeeps did have better sightings – a few more birds than I did, and even a whole leopard. But my experience at Nagarahole reiterates that not every safari in a forest is “productive”. And certainly, not everybody sights predators all the time. But just because we don’t see life does not mean that the forest is “bare”.

What I’ve also learnt over the years is that I don’t have to go on a safari to enjoy what nature has to offer - all I need is to look around me, or for that matter, even within my city. I know that my story is probably not the best way to convince anybody to visit Nagarahole. But I do hope that we continue to appreciate the ecosystem, irrespective of whether or not the forest reveals itself to us.

Sakrebyle Elephant Camp

Published in the 15 March 2017 edition of www.jlrexplore.com, a nature and wildlife-specific website

We were hunched over next to the kitchen building, unmindful of the water dripping over our heads from a water tank which had just overflown, peering in amazement at the gigantic reddish growth in the ground. Was it a flower? A fruit? A vegetable, perhaps? It looked not unlike a cabbage. We had no immediate answers, and the staff said that nothing like this had ever sprouted before. Lying prostrate before the wondrous object, I could see beetles and ants move along the sinuous folds of the reddish bulb, and between the cabbage-like leaves at its base, emerging coated with fine, yellow pollen. I soon discovered that I had seen the flower of an Amorphophallus sp. for the first time.

The Amorphophallus sp. with its pollinators

When I decided to visit Sakrebyle, I had no expectations other than that I wanted to get away from the city for some quiet time. There isn’t much to ‘see’ or ‘do’ in Sakrebyle, and that suited me just fine. A modestly sized campus, this Jungle Lodges’ property is a relative newbie, offering cosy log cabins across the road from Sakrebyle’s famous Elephant Camp. The smallness of the campus ensures that a holiday here is peaceful, barring the bird-calls that resound from bamboo groves at the edge of the property.

Log cabins at the JLR property

Allowing for backyard birding (literally), the property’s bird-bath offers birds some much-sought-after respite from the afternoon sun, while you sit behind a screen and enjoy their antics and birdsong. Even the shy Indian Pitta is said to be a visitor to this bird-bath, as is the Yellow-browed Bulbul, a Western Ghats endemic.

The hide near the bird-bath

Dark-fronted Babblers, which are endemic to the Western Ghats.

The on-campus flora is home to various butterflies, bees, beetles and other insects, and the resident naturalists are only too happy to take you on a nature walk. Some of these nature trails are longer hikes through the surrounding Shettihalli Wildlife Sanctuary, weaving though a mix of dense canopies, shrub-land and grasslands. Along one of these trails, I spotted a lifer, a Drongo-cuckoo, and was engrossed in observing it. The sudden trumpet of an elephant from behind us had me scramble away, briskly walking all the way back to the property. While having breakfast soon after, we saw the elephant emerge from the trail, a mahout astride it, and realised that it was a camp elephant.

A Scimitar Babbler

The trekking trail

The aforementioned ‘Sakrebyle Elephant Camp’ is located across the road from the Jungle Lodges’ property, on the banks of the Tunga River. Housing elephants which have been captured or born in captivity, some of them undergoing treatments for injuries, the elephant camp is fairly popular with visitors to the Shimoga region, especially with children. Watching the pachyderms being scrubbed clean in the river, sometimes playfully squirting their mahouts, I was left to deal with mixed emotions. However, understanding that matters cannot be looked at as starkly black or white, I ambled around the small camp, watching visitors interact with the elephants, sometimes apprehensive, but then, reassured by the mahouts, always enjoying the experience.

Elephants being bathed by their mahouts

Having emerged from the river, the elephants were now being oiled to keep them cool, even as their food was being prepared. They are fed in an interesting way – chunks of coconut flesh and jaggery are wrapped into a bundle using hay, which the giants gleefully devour. A few of the youngest elephants were play-fighting and chasing each other, only to be firmly nudged by an adult if they got too boisterous.

With this playful sight as my parting memory, as I turned to leave, a loud trumpet from one of the young elephants made me jump a little. Just as an elephant’s trumpet had marked the beginning of my trip to Sakrebyle, this trumpet signalled the end of my short but memorable time in the land of elephants.

2015 Travel Calendar

‘Short trips’ was this year’s recurring theme, making the best of my sparse holidays and sparser travel money.  If the last two years had been about discovering the joys of road-trips and solo travel, this year led me down a new path – food trips. Having always been a foodie, enjoying regional cuisine whenever I travelled, this year’s trips took this passion to new heights – trips where we ate like there was no tomorrow, hunting down the tastiest local specialities a place had to offer. I had more than enough food to savour, despite my supposed ‘drawback’ of being a vegetarian.

In between gorging on food, I photographed these delicacies, resulting in outright bad photos at first, but improving slowly by the next trip. This has made me want to better my food photography skills, something I’ve resolved to practice next year; not your glossy, studio set-up food photos, but photographing food on the streets. I love how travel brings such new challenges my way!

With a trip already planned for the first month of 2016, I sign off excitedly for this year, wishing everybody a very happy, healthy and travel-filled 2016.

                                                                                                         

Madurai

I travelled to Madurai by chance, as my husband, who spent a few years living there, wanted to visit the city to re-live his childhood memories. The trip quickly snowballed into a larger agenda, of also enjoying Madurai’s famed food. The city takes its title of 'thoonga nagaram' (the town that never sleeps) very seriously, buzzing from the wee hours of the morning, well into the night. Catering to the teeming mass of people are hole-in-the-wall eateries and road-side vendors, with a wide array of meals and tiffin items. While meals include a lot of non-vegetarian dishes, tiffin is predominantly vegetarian, and can be a meal in itself. Madurai's residents have a discerning palate, which reflects in the food they prepare, and it is almost impossible to get bad food anywhere in the city. I ate my way through Madurai tiffin, which offers a mind-boggling variety of dishes and beverages: from popular dishes like kotthu parotta and idli to unique local items like jigarthanda and thennangkuruthu. 

Kodaikanal

The best way to atone for indulging in such excesses at Madurai was to walk it off, I thought. What better way to do that than to spend a few days at nearby Kodaikanal? Kodaikanal’s crisp winter weather and laidback weekday disposition proved to be the perfect setting for rambling walks, energetic cycling around the Kodai Lake, and a sweaty hike to Dolphin’s Nose. Our determination to not focus on food, however, was thrown out of the window thanks to our gregarious home-stay hosts, who broke our resolve with every lip-smacking meal they cooked for us.  All the food sent us scrambling for more walks, and we returned to Bangalore refreshed by Kodaikanal’s charm and natural beauty.

Read about this trip: http://nomadandabag.blogspot.com/2016/08/seeking-nostalgia-in-kodaikanal.html

Kabini, Karnataka

This quick jaunt to Kabini in the monsoon was intended as a rejuvenating break after a strenuous first half of the year, and to celebrate hubby’s milestone birthday. As usual, Kabini lived up to its promise. Threatening clouds loomed, but it never rained hard enough to foil our plans. Four safaris into the forest, short walks around Kabini River Lodge’s campus, and contemplative sessions gazing at the Kabini reservoir got us fully recharged for the latter half of 2015.

Delhi

Dilli ki sardi was something my friend would often poetically rave about. I decided that it was finally time to experience it first-hand, inviting myself over to my aforesaid friend’s home. Research prior to the trip had armed me with a list of over 40 eateries to visit, many serving winter specialities, and I lost no time in dragging my friends along for the food mania. Over three days, we systematically chomped our way through the list, walking for hours through Old Delhi, seeking out nondescript push-carts and not-marked-on-any-map eateries, all serving some of the cheapest, freshest and most delicious food I have ever eaten. When we could walk no more, we took breaks at some of Delhi’s lovely monuments, catching forty winks and resting our tired legs, only to resume our mission soon after. Not for the faint-hearted, this trail!

Wild Postcards from Sri Lanka

An unedited version of my story published in the November 2015 edition of the in-flight magazine, JetWings

I furrow my brows, as the ringtone interrupts my hectic deadline. The number displayed on my mobile is unknown, but I continue to stare – something about it beginning with +94 seems deliciously familiar. I answer. Silence. Just as I return to furiously typing out the remainder of my email, it rings again. I absently answer the call, only to be greeted by rapid-fire talk in a language I don’t understand. Then it comes back to me, rusty as the memory is, from months of disuse. I get up from my chair, smile at no one in particular, and say “ayubowan.” The relentless chatter pauses. “No Sinhala,” I continue, like I’d repeated for three weeks, many months ago. The voice begins talking in an endearingly halting and lilting Hindi, “Main Prasanna bol rahaa hoon.” I can hear a smile, a shy smile. “Aapka letter aaya.” Instantly, my deadline is all but forgotten.

Sinharaja Forest Reserve, in south-west Sri Lanka, is the country’s only surviving primary tropical rainforest. Its pin-head size belies the fact that more than 60% of the flora and fauna found here are endemic to the region. Due to this high endemism, the forest has been declared a UNESCO heritage site.

Prasanna was my eyes and ears in Sinharaja, where the earth was as slippery as grease, and battalions of leeches clung to every human who dared brave the incessant rains. The sky flickered between innumerable shades of grey, and could barely be glimpsed through small gaps in the tall, dense rainforest canopy. The highlight of my trek was witnessing a mixed-flock hunt, with raucous drongos, frisky babblers, belligerent Blue Magpies, and even the dignified trogon, feasting on worms and insects emerging from the rain-battered earth. The forest trail yielded birds, fungi, flowers, snakes, and lizards of such varieties, that we were constantly surprised at every turn; even the endangered Purple-faced Leaf Monkey revealed itself on my last evening at Sinharaja.

At the end of each tiring day in the forest, I’d return to my room at Martin’s Simple Lodge, a place which is exactly as its name suggests, swapping sightings and experiences with fellow birding enthusiasts while savouring refreshing tea on the terrace overlooking Sinharaja’s dipterocarps, or while nonchalantly plucking leeches off our persons by the communal tap. The owner, a former guide and a wealth of information, is a man of few words; what makes him smile though, is visitors’ childlike enthusiasm at having seen a Red-faced Malkoha or a Ceylon Frogmouth up-close, in the forest he holds dear.

"Sinharaja’s villages don’t have pin-codes; how will my letter be delivered?" I’d asked, while saying goodbye. Prasanna just smiled, answerless. I needn’t have worried: the letter, along with photographs of Sinharaja, had reached him within a week of my convincing my neighbourhood post office that I was not ‘wasting eighty rupees in postage’.

“There is an error in your identification” Prasanna says, alluding to the contents of my letter, “This is a Purple-faced Leaf Monkey, not a Bear Monkey.” I apologise sheepishly for my rookie mistake. The mention of the Bear Monkey, though, swings me along to another place, another day.

Horton Plains National Park, located in Sri Lanka’s central highlands, is the country’s only montane grassland and cloud forest. Due to its high elevation, fog and clouds deposit a large amount of moisture, creating a unique ecosystem of moist grasslands, swamps and wetlands. The endemic flora and fauna have evolved to suit this peculiar habitat. Ohiya is a convenient base for exploring Horton Plains. However, due to extremely limited accommodation here, most visitors prefer to stay at the popular hill station Nuwara Eliya, almost two hours away.

The mountain railway at Ohiya snakes through dense foliage, from which peek colourful tin roofs. An occasional curlicue of smoke from a cooking fire is the only sign of habitation. Hiking along the tracks brought well-preserved, century-old sleepers and metal components my way. I was also rewarded with an encounter with the endemic Bear Monkeys, cousins of the species in Sinharaja. Over twenty of them, jumping from branch to branch, with a wary eye on me, looking improbably like monkeys with bear ancestors - to think, I wasn’t even within the national park boundary yet!

At Horton Plains National Park, the 9 kilometre trail meandering across grasslands, seasonal ponds, over undulating rock, sometimes gravel, and finally through dense forest, can be completed in 3 hours. However, stopping to admire bright orchids and gnarly trees, while looking for Bear Monkeys and elusive birds, meant that my trekking time doubled. My guide and I trekked anti-clockwise, beginning at the grasslands, moving on to Baker’s Falls, Large and Little World’s Ends, and finally, through dense vegetation. 

Old-man’s beard, a characteristic of Horton Plains, festooned all the trees in the last stretch, whose trunks and branches were also decorated with lichen and moss. A Sri Lankan breakfast of rotti, jam, and bananas, devoured while staring into World’s End, added to the air of fulfillment and quiet contemplation; the sheer escarpment here offers views till the coastline, on one of the rare clear days like that day.

I sigh, looking at the digital clock on my computer screen. The sun has long set, and I’ve been caught up in Sinharaja and Horton Plains. A flick of the switch illuminates the room. The paperwork on my desk lies un-tackled, held down by a pebble, smooth and rounded, as grey as the sea was that day. With white specks, as white as the sand looked, reflecting the sun’s generosity beating down on it. There I go again, carried along by a wave of memories.

Mirissa, a tiny fishing village in southern Sri Lanka, attracts visitors for two reasons: its laidback, picturesque beach and its whale-watching trips. Since it lies at the southernmost tip of the entire Indian subcontinent, whales migrating east to west must cross Mirissa. The abundance of food in the Indian Ocean makes it a favourite with these cetaceans, and even the otherwise-elusive Blue Whales and Sperm Whales are routinely spotted.  

At 5:30 am one morning, travellers gathered at the whale-watching agency’s office, upbeat at the prospect of guaranteed sightings of whales and dolphins. I, however, couldn’t bring myself to ignore the knot in my stomach, as I don’t take well to open seas. On the two-decked boat, all around me was laughter, anticipation and colourful life-jackets. The tantalising omelette station on board was crowded; just an hour later, the boat’s only restroom would be; so too the railing on the deck, with nauseous travellers bent over. Despite having resolutely stayed away from breakfast, I could feel my innards churning - quite an indication of the roiling Indian Ocean.

By the time we returned to shore after six hours at sea, we had become a statistic – the only boat in forty days to not sight a single whale. I held on to precious, fleeting memories of the dolphin pod we had seen, unfortunately far enough to look merely like grey flotsam. The next afternoon, travellers were agog at having spotted multiple whales. One had even breached the water, excited voices told us. All I could do was close my eyes and picture it, the waves lashing Mirissa’s beach adding sound to my thought. I smiled, as my imaginary Blue Whale emerged from bluer waters, magnificence personified. For this, I will brave the Indian Ocean again someday, I decided, sanguinely.   

“Wapas aaoge tab milenge” is Prasanna’s parting shot. He knows Sri Lanka’s allure – you just MUST return.  Sometimes, that’s all it takes to travel in time – a call you hesitated to take.

Thadiyandamol Trek: the ground beneath my feet

An unedited version of my story published in the August 2015 edition of Outlook Traveller

A view of the summit of Thadiyandamol

“Oops, sorry!” was a phrase I found myself constantly repeating throughout that day, as I dodged people. All around me was the clackety-clack of trekking boots and poles, as trekkers marched past in twos, threes, or fours, nodding at our group in greeting. I almost felt guilty for not being purposeful enough - for not aiming to reach the peak quickly - unlike those walking on. A few broke their march-past to peer into whatever bush we were peering into. They’d see nothing, and walk away with an indulgent smile and a slow shake of their head. Some, seeing me sprawled on the ground, stopped to enquire if I was injured and needed help. 

Thadiyandamol, Coorg’s highest peak at 5724 ft (1748 mts), is a favourite; enjoying its beautiful vistas and summiting it is on most trekkers’ wish-lists. Timing the trek too is important to many. I, however, had decided to stop and smell the roses - or the Kurinjis, in this case. What if I didn’t look at the views around me, but at the ground beneath my feet, for a change?

The endangered Blue-eyed bush frog, also known locally as 'Neel-netra', endemic to the Western Ghats

An endemic snail - the colourful 'Indrella ampulla'.

I was in Coorg just on the heels of the monsoon, when an errant painter seemed to have run amok with his bucket of green. Life-forms were undergoing changes on Thadiyandamol, after the invigorating rain. Somewhere, a frog croaked to attract its mate. Yet elsewhere, a snail moved at, well, snail’s pace, glistening raindrops riding piggy-back on its shell. Picture-postcard streams emitted clichéd gurgles as they swooshed around egg-smooth pebbles and seeped into parched crevices. A plant that flowers once in twelve years awaited us, while a carnivorous plant lay waiting for its next prey.

A cold, damp morning found our group of five at the beginning of the trekking route, in an open clearing in the rainforest canopy, through which we locked eyes with an ominously cloudy sky. Surrounded as the clearing was by some of the tall primary forest trees which had survived human brutality, this area instantly became the object of our affections.  Rain the previous day had made the ground slushy, and the morning stillness now reverberated with sounds of the earth sucking our shoes in, followed by the curt popping of shoes being released. Alert leeches scanned for heat and blood, clinging tenaciously as we tried to prise them off.

The initial path of the trek

In a corner, a burst of purple perked up the forest floor – Impatiens nodding away in the gentle breeze. These bright flowers grow near water or in moist conditions, and are endemic to the Western Ghats, of which Thadiyandamol is a part. An iridescent damselfly and a sluggish snail later, our naturalist urged us to move ahead, only because we needed time at hand for completing the trek before either the rain appeared or the sun disappeared; at worst, both. If we made good time, we could be slower on our way back, he promised.

The bright Impatiens. The ferns seen in this photograph are also typical of rainforests.

The vistas along the trek route were undeniably captivating; as we moved first through rainforests and then through shola-grasslands, we were hard-pressed to look elsewhere. But then, a sudden flash of colour would catch our eye, or that very faint call would have us perk up our ears, and a search would ensue. The vegetation along the path varied – some stretches had trees and plants densely packed on either side, revealing spiders, grasshoppers, frogs or orchids, if we knew where to look. Other stretches opened up on the valley side, offering sweeping panoramas of the shola-grasslands, a characteristic forest type of the region, which lends the hills the appearance of being cloaked in patterned green velvet.

These grasslands brought us a variety of wildflowers and a surprise! Every twelve years, Kurinji plants flower en masse, draping the hills with a purple carpet, a phenomenon which currently relied solely on my imagination to visualise it. To help me along, however, a couple of stray Kurinji had decided to be the delinquents of their tribe, eliciting a jig out of me. 

Kurinjis, or Neelakurinjis, seen here in their habitat, with a dragonfly hovering over. These distinctive purple flowers led to the Nilgiris being named so – blue mountains. 

The sudden calls of the Bright-headed Cisticola – a bird as tiny as its name is long – was all that was needed for our entire group to first break into a jig, and then a jog, as we tried in vain to keep up with the hyperactive bird. By then, the sun had reached its pinnacle, it had begun drizzling, and we had just reached past the mid-point, identifiable by a big boulder on a fairly level ground. A deliciously cold stream soothed our aching feet, as we energised ourselves with lunch and some well-deserved rest before the steep and rocky last leg of the trek.

A view from the latter part of the trek, where the sholas give way to grasslands. Trekkers, seen to the right, are a small blip in the vast landscape.

Nearing the summit, we stopped yet again. Sure, it helped us catch our breath from the climb, but, more importantly, it brought us face to face with our most prized sighting – the carnivorous plant, Drosera. Calling it a ‘sighting’ is probably a stretch – the species found here is smaller than blades of grass, barely discernible to the naked eye. The ingenuity of a plant this size is mind-boggling – rather than being easy prey, it is actually a predator.  Each ‘leaf’ has glandular tentacles which are topped with globules of sticky secretion. Assuming these to be dew, insects get stuck to the plant, ending up as its food.

We would have missed all this drama, had we just trekked past. Lying down on the ground had lent a new perspective – meeting Thadiyandamol’s inhabitants.  They hear the grasslands perform a synchronized sweep in that manic, midnight wind. They live under a sky which stars light up with different patterns each night. They witness Thadiyandamol disappearing into the morning mist, only to emerge slowly later, leaving early-bird trekkers sighing at the poetry of it all.

Robberflies, mating

Grasshoppers, mating

Back from the trek, lying supine on our guest-house’s terrace, we plucked leeches off our clothing – sometimes stomachs and necks too - with the nonchalance of seasoned ground crawlers. My energy now draining as fast as the setting sun, I succumbed to the evening breeze lulling me into a slumber.

In my mental map of the trek route now are numerous landmarks; what was at the beginning of the trek just an indistinct swathe of green, now has memories imprinted on it. To the people I meet, my conversations about ‘The bush where we saw the orange orchid’, ‘that puddle where the frog was half-submerged’ or ‘that rotten trunk where the sparkling fungus grew’ may sound like ramblings of an unhinged mind, but to me, they are indispensable parts of my Harry Potter-esque Pensieve, taking me back to Thadiyandamol. To that exact spot and that exact moment in time. To relive the trek, until I add new memories and markers from my next. 

Some trees at the base of Thadiyandamol yield surprising varieties of fungi, like this one

The area around Thadiyandamol is host to a variety of butterflies, and their colourful  caterpillars can often be spotted feeding on suitable plants.

For information about the trek and my tips, read this: 
http://nomadandabag-guides.blogspot.com/2015/08/thadiyandamol-trek-information-tips.html