Wild Trails
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome and dangerous, wrote a friend.
No, not a curse, but a blessing. My wild trails have been all this and more; if only you care to walk with me, you will track the frustratingly elusive orangutan mom as she swings from one durian tree to another, flinging stinky peels at you in the darkened jungles of Borneo, saunter among blubbery sea lions sunning themselves on the beaches of Galapagos Islands, crane your neck to glimpse the languorous sloth clinging to the top branch in the primordial Amazon forest, but be careful as you pick your way through water bodies infested with caimans and land, stalked by stealthy jaguars, drive past a pride of bored lions swatting flies in the Savannah, halt and give way to an elephant family and cower in your jeep as giraffes and ostriches check you out up close and personal; marvel at hundreds of mother turtles lugubriously congregating on a lonely Orissa coast to perform their only motherly duty – of laying eggs and burying them in the sand, travel in a jeep with a 11-foot king cobra curled up at your feet, or chase kiangs in the salt flats of the Rann or stare a striped cat – yes the big and elegant one – in the face, in the jungles of the Western Ghats.
Amazon – Rigs in a rainforest (2013) - The Yasuni National Park is much in the news these days, mostly for the wrong reasons. Located deep in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador, this 9,000 square kilometres of reserve forest, arguably the richest biodiversity hotspot on the planet, was “discovered” a few decades ago…
Bandipur & Kabini in the Western Ghats(2018) - Time stood still. The setting sun sent slanting shafts of golden light onto the forest floor, strobe-lighting the dance of the dust mites. Nary a ripple on the surface of the pond. Even the chirping birds seemed to have fallen silent, as if in deference…
Bharatpur Birders’ Delight(Many times) - Bharatpur is literally in my backyard – a mere three-hour drive from home. Which is why we end up going there every now and then. It is pure bliss to stay inside the park and take the dawn rickshaw ride to spot the early birds.…
Chobe, Elephant Paradise, Botswana (2022) - After two weeks of driving through Namibia, we flew from Windhoek to Katima Mulilo on the border, drove another 75 km to exit Namibia and through 700 meters of ‘no man’s land’ to cross the land border into Kasane, the border town of Botswana, the…Coca, the gateway to the Amazon (2013) - If you like tinny, tiny planes and even tinier airports where no security detail gropes you and your suitcase does not disappear down a hurtling belt into a yawning hole, Coca is the place for you. Jomsom and Lukla in Nepal or Murghab in Tajikistan…
Dandeli, Dense With Winged Wonders (2020) - Old Magazine House at Dandeli held out tantalizing prospect of glimpsing those winged beauties who would rather hide themselves in the dense foliage. So, around mid-December of the year of Corona, we hopped into our battered jalopy and drove straight 15 hours to Goa, stopping…
Daroji Bear Sanctuary (2019) - Having been to many wildlife sanctuaries including the Rann where kiangs roam, I was pleasantly surprised to find a signage for Daroji bear sanctuary en route to Hampi. Tiger or elephant sanctuaries sprawl across central and southern India as well as the Himalayan foothills. Even…
Etosha National Park, Namibia (2022) - Etosha Pan extending over 22000 square kms of dry scrubland in Namibia is home to every African wildlife species, some of them prolific. What sets Etosha apart from other wildlife parks in Africa is that it is a desert and the animals here have adapted…
Gahirmatha – An Unfinished Journey (2009) - The ever-effusive Google, god of instant gratification for impulsive travellers and armchair researchers, is stumped for sites when I query for Gahirmatha. All I get is sketchy Wikipedia and repetitive sales spiel by tour operators whereas what I am looking for is specific information on…
Galapagos – Still Evolving (2013) - Charles Darwin, all of 22 years old in 1832, stumbled upon Galapagos Islands, partly to escape his persistent seasickness while on a five-year voyage on HMS Beagle. At the end of just five weeks’ stay on the islands, he collected enough specimens of both flora…
Gir, Tryst With Royalty (2010) - This is one wild life safari that begins long before you reach the jungle, all the more thrilling because you never expected it! Provided you travel at the right time of the year – between October and December. As you drive from Dwaraka to Somnath,…
Indonesian Borneo, In Search of Orangutans (2012) - Kapuas may not be as well-known as Kaveri but is as wide and impressive. Its delta is a tangle of tributaries each as wide as the parent river itself and sprawling over several kilometres. At 1143 kilometers, Kapuas is the longest and biggest river on…
Jhalana, Leopard Land (2019) - She saunters languorously, as if disinterested in the clutch of peahens and their weeks-old hatchlings that fidget nervously. A handsome black neelgai regards her with supreme indifference, secure in the knowledge that he is too big for her. But today, the young leopardess is not…
Kanha, Hunter & The Hunted (2011) - I haven’t had much luck with tiger-spotting although I have visited quite a few tiger sanctuaries in the country. My five visits to Jim Corbett over a period of 25 years yielded nothing more than wild elephants, deer and mynahs. But Kanha was so close…
Kaziranga – Rhino Raj (2003, 2011) - The baby elephant comes bounding towards us and thrusts her trunk at us. Flattered by this unexpected attention, we stroke her trunk tentatively and pat her prickly back, but she pushes our hands away and nuzzles again and again. We are both amused and perplexed.…
Khijadiya: Smoking Chimneys; Soaring Cranes (2012) - Jamnagar seems an unlikely location for a bird sanctuary or a marine national park. The capital of a former princely state known as Nawanagar, Jamnagar is located in the Gulf of Kutch, an arid belt abutted by the Arabian Sea. Virtually untouched by British architectural…
Madagascar 1 – the Baobab island (2019) - This travelogue comes in three parts. Part 1 is on that iconic tree, the baobab, Part 2 on Lemurs and other exotic wildlife of the island and Part 3 on the land and its people “A Caliban of a tree, grizzled, distorted old goblin with…
Mudumalai – Harmony or illusion? (2012) - She strides majestically into view, her baby trailing along. At the edge of the forest, she stops and surveys the road before leading her baby onto the macadam. Obviously, she has done this many times. There are three cars on the road at present, but…
My Wild Home in Bengaluru - Two years ago, I decided to ditch the traffic and pollution of Delhi to move to Bengaluru, all I desired was a bit of quiet and silence. North Bengaluru beckoned, not having been concretised densely like the rest of the city, but my local friends…
Nagarhole Diary (Sep 2021) - Strobilanthus seduced. Visions of dazzling blue slopes crowding the horizon cascaded in the mind’s eye as I hurriedly packed my bag and hopped into the car for a six-hour drive to Coorg where kurinji had been spotted. But my date with the blossoms was not…
Namdapha, Haven of Biodiversity (2010) - The mahout cuts a humungous green bamboo pole from a thicket, and with four neat slashes, transforms it into a step-ladder for us to alight from the elephant. We’re now on the forest floor, piled high with sodden leaves and buzzing with butterflies and insects.…
Ngorongoro – Ark of Africa (2015) - Ngorongoro seems like another version of Noah’s ark. It teems with all kinds of creatures although there is no sea for a few hundred miles in any direction and the ark itself is nothing but a collapsed crater. This crater is the planet’s largest inactive,…
Ranathambore, Retreat for the Royal Tiger (2015) - Ranathambore, we were told, is the park to go to, for tiger-sighting. Having been to Jim Corbett thrice and having failed to spot the striped king, I jumped at the idea. It was a family trip. We took the train from Delhi to Sawai Madhopur…
Rann – Bounteous, not Barren (2011) - Nothing like the Rann to put you in your place. The Rann of Kutch gives you a whole new perspective, bringing home with clarity and poignancy your own insignificance in a vast and wide universe on a lonely planet. As you stand on the parched…
Serengeti, Wildlife Wonderland (2015) - Skirting the rock cluster, we are almost upon him, a full-grown lion in all his mane-ly glory. His shimmering halo silhouetted by the flaming African sun, he is standing on tiptoe, snout upturned ever so slightly to catch the scent of zebras milling about in…
Sichuan – Land of Pandas (2014) - Travelling through Sichuan is like playing hopscotch on a colourful mosaic. One moment you’re in a valley dwarfed by the stunning barren snow ranges whose crowns are hidden in cotton-wool clouds; in just a few hours you’re cruising amidst the verdant conical hills of the…
Valparai – Uneasy Co-existence (2020) - The setting sun sends slanting shafts of smoky beams to stroke the top of the neatly-cropped tea bushes, strobe-lighting the dance of the dust mites. The tea bushes on the rounded peak remind me of the stylized sculptures of the Buddha, his curly locks neatly…
Walking on the Sea Floor (2012) - It is 3.30 am. The road is smooth, straight and illuminated with sunken lights and pointers as if leading to a space station in some science fiction movie. On both sides of this ribbon of perfection rise stacks of twinkling lights in vertical columns as…
Wayanad – The Great Escape (2010, 2020) - We chose Annapara Homestay again, for our second visit to Wayanad after a decade. If anything, this resort has gotten even better over the decade. A new family wing, a clear blue wading pool slung over by a fecund fig tree, several hammocks placed strategically,…
Western Ghats – Chasing King Cobras (2016) - The knotted black bundle under our feet heaves rhythmically as the occupant seems resigned to his fate of being trapped in a bag. But then, every now and then, our vehicle hits a bump causing the bag to jerk and twitch. We hold our breath,…