Bandipur burns - Part 2 : The view from Gopalswamy Betta

If you have been to Bandipur, you would have heard of a place called Gopalaswamy Betta. A little hill (1450m above MSL) lying to the north of the National Park. It is famous for a small temple on it's summit. The deity there, Himada Gopalaswamy, gets the first part of his name from the uncannily Himalayan conditions atop the hill. For most of the year the summit is covered by a dense cloud of mist and it showers even when the plains are hot and dry. The entire hillside is covered by a verdant sea of grass with clumps of taller vegetation along the valley's between the hillocks. On a good day you can see the slopes of the Nilgiri hills to your south and beyond Gundlupet in the north.

On February 22nd, 2009 the Betta bore little resemblance to what I was used to. For starters the cap of cloud was missing even as we started the climb up the steep ghat road. The slopes on the left of the road was barren and the herd of elephants that are seen were absent. As we turned right at the first hair pin the green grassy slopes were replaced by blackened ash and scorched shrubs.

Further up the road the picture turned more grim. The slopes on either side of the road was an uniform shade of black interspersed with brown. As far as eye could see the usually verdant green was absent.






The stray sambar deer wasn't there but a half burnt antler. I hope the owner who shed it escaped the inferno.

Things didn't look too good on one side and we were bracing ourselves for the worst as we parked the cars beside the temple. The usual nip in the air that greets everyone on the Betta was absent today. Instead, as we opened the car doors and stepped out, we were enveloped in a suffocating and hot atmosphere.

The temple had it's regular crowd of devotees and soothsayers but we were on a mission and these trivialities were the last thing on our mind.
The western boundary of the temple overlooks the Bandipur National Park, and the Muthanga WLS further west. The sight the we beheld was straight out a horror film, at least to this small group that were present there.



Endless stretches of burnt grassland, and a large plume of smoke from a fresh fire beyond the curve of the hill. At first sight, it was like a volcano erupting. The smoke obscured everything around it.

The usual blame falls on the heat but I'm not sure. As we surveyed the destruction covering more than a 180 degree arc from east to west we saw all the signs that these fires were possibly man made. At least a major contribution was by God's most destructive creation. There is more to follow. Watch this space.....

Bandipur burns - Part 1

This trip to Bandipur was meant to create awareness among our wild drivers about how we need to make room for the other creatures that share the world with us but are forced to live in an increasingly shrinking 'home'. The 5th Road Kill Awareness Campaign at Bandipur organized by the Kenneth Anderson Nature Society was my reason for driving down. I returned shaken.
The drive across the border gave me an inkling of what was in store but the "Live Action" left me shell shocked; and I'm still recovering.




The evening safari into Bandipur drew unprecedented reactions. I for one was not interested in my usual wildlife pictures (in any case my E3 was on a sabbatical). Through the smoke and haze I was witness to leaping flames consume the vegetation.


The flames were literally leaping up and consuming everything it could reach. So much so, that it did not spare even an isolated branch 20 feet off the ground.


























As the jeep made the painful journey the entire forest suddenly took a strange tint. The sun was obscured by the smoke and the road, vegetation and the sky took on a brownish orange colour. My fellow traveller, an old lady, dropped her mask. "Is it safe to go any further", she enquired. "Anyway, we won't see much of wildlife with all this fire around".

I wanted to tell her that the wildlife & vegetation were more precious than her EOS MkII and 300mm lens but I just restrained myself.

Burning Forests & Charred slopes

I have seen forest fires before but this left me shaken. Perhaps, because I was in the midst of the flames and acrid smoke this time.

My favourite patch of real estate was a mass of charred vegetation. I was already primed for evidence of destruction by the newspaper reports that I had been seeing in the past week.



When I drove through Mudumalai I could see the ferocity of the fire on either side of the road and on the southern side of the Moyar the forests were still burning. The heat was singularly oppressive and it seemed magnified by the lack of green that characterizes a teeming jungle.


As I drove past the Kekkanhalla checkpost into Bandipur my heart sank at the sights on either sides of the road. Hillocks with all the vegetation wiped out greeted me. The floor of the forest was covered in a macabre shade of black and grey, with small patches still smoking from the embers beneath.

Bandipur was burning, and I was there. Seeing the mayhem first hand and only able to watch helplessly.


We blame global warming but evidence points to the hand of homo sapiens. Read on ..........

Redrawing the line between Myth & Reality

“Kreegah! Tarzan bundolo”

With a blood curdling scream, a sinewy, half – naked man brandishing a shiny hunting knife drops down from the dense forest canopy above. The unwary creature that has the misfortune of facing this apparition would probably be too shocked to react or resist.

To the uninitiated, it means “Beware! Tarzan kills!” and it is uttered in the language of the great apes by Tarzan, alias John Clayton,Lord Greystroke. He was a creation of Edgar Rice Burroughs and perhaps, to me, the first introduction to the jungles and its denizens. With Tarzan, there was Tantor the elephant, Numa the lion, Histah the python and many more. Bolgani, the great apes, responsible for Tarzan’s development from an English orphan to the Lord of the jungle, were a species of mythical primates not described in any book of natural history.

This introduction to the jungles started at an age when the line between myth and reality was too thin to understand and I worshiped Tarzan as a hero; to such an extent that I carved a hunting knife out of wood, stuck it in my waist band and went about climbing trees!

Tarzan was the first conservationist I came across in my life. He killed to eat or in self defence. No trophy adorned his tree top house though game was plentiful in the dense jungles he lived in.

Years later, in my school, I discovered Kenneth Anderson and the real jungles. They were much closer and their denizens lived in a real world. I learned to differentiate myth from reality from thereon.

Tarzan and Kenneth Anderson were similar in many ways. They treated the jungles and its denizens with reverence. They killed only when an animal was a nuisance or for the pot.

They also taught me the fundamentals of jungle craft. I learnt that an elephant had to be approached from downwind because they had a great sense of smell though they were short sighted; that an animal could be followed in dense jungles by following broken grass or boughs.

It is irrelevant here that I never really got to use those lessons it real life but I was proud of the knowledge I owned.

Reincarnation of Kenneth Anderson - Part 2

A few years ago a leading publishing house brought out two Omnibus editions of Kenneth Anderson's books. Each volume was a compilation of three books.

Volume I :

1. Tales from the Indian Jungles
2. Man-eaters and Jungle Killers
3. The Call of the Man-eater

Volume II:

1. The Black Panther of Sivanipalli
2. The Tiger Roars
3. Jungles Long Ago

He wrote eight, but why two of his other books were not included is a mystery. His first book published in 1954 "Nine Man-eaters and One Rogue" and "This is the Jungle"

The Omnibus editions fail on two counts. First, it does not include the maps and pictures found in the original publications. Second, the errors are numerous. Maybe the proof reader was not a fan of either Kenneth Anderson or wildlife. However, for anyone who hasn't had a chance to discover Kenneth Anderson earlier they make a riveting set of books.

Perhaps I should thank the publishers for their effort for introducing this master story teller to a new generation. I say this because even Google fails to throw up enough material on Kenneth Anderson.

However for those interested in the originals, you can download two of them (Nine Man-eaters and One Rogue & The Black panther of Sivanipalli) from the Internet Archive

Happy reading

Reincarnation of Kenneth Anderson - Part 1

To the lovers of India's diverse wildlife two names will remain deeply etched in conservation history. That of Jim Corbett and Kenneth Anderson (any comparisons of the two would be improper). The former, perhaps, had a more universal following because if his international footprint but it is the latter who always remains close to my heart.

I first met Mr. Anderson sometime in the late 1970s. Well? His ghost, you may say, because he left the world and wild he loved so much in 1974. BPS, my school in the Nilgiris, boasted of what then was considered the 'best school library' in the Blue Mountains. Among the books and journals that adorned it's shelves were the National Geographic Journal, The Time Magazine, Newsweek and many others unseen in high school libraries. Between these prominent publications, nestled in a corner of the non-fiction section was a shelf full of books on shikar stories. Kenneth Anderson's books demanded my immediate attention because the events he described occurred close to where
I sat reading them.

Perhaps it was his ghost, that I have forever been haunted by his descriptions of the jungle. Descriptions so vivid, that they remained an enduring mystery I wanted to experience sometime in my life. Those wild jungles lived on in a recess in my mind during my undergrad and PG years but never really went away. Even as I chose my profession as an ophthalmologist I carried along the passion for India's jungles, dreaming that some day would come that I could contribute to preserving them.

For that, I thank Mr. Anderson. He kept the embers glowing with just enough light that it never distracted me from my education.

Now that I'm a professional, and reasonably well settled in life, I find that the time has come to retrace my steps to my school library. I need to pick up the threads and start "GHOOMING" in the jungles again!

(Picture courtesy: Black Panther of Sivanipalli, George Allen & Unwin Ltd 1959)

Resurrection

Life's ups & downs tend to leave a vacuum occasionally. Perhaps that vacuum was responsible for that stupor I have been experiencing lately.

That might just be true considering the fact that between the last post and this I had added to my photography gear. Looking at the world through the viewfinder on a DSLR instead of the LCD screen that we are all so used to takes a bit of re-adjustment, but the pleasure is for all to see.

I needed to shake of the stupor and start where I left off.

So where else to start, but Bandipur.

Here I am.

A resurrection.

Of Damp fur & Dripping feathers

It's been awhile since I traveled the blogger's trial, and inspiration always comes from my favourite pilgrimage spot - the jungles; or so I thought.



When dark clouds gather, it speaks of impending downpour and we all go in search of a little sunshine. Call it mid-life crisis or cross roads of life, it demands a little space for yourself and some time to ruminate on the events of life alone. A pilgrimage was due and I was going to take it.


Some three days of unexpected rain with no sight of blue sky overhead I thought the jungles would bring some sunshine into my gloomy days so I packed my bags and fueled up my car to hole up in Bandipur. Just to be sure, I called up my old friend Gangaswamy. He was on safari in the jungle but his assistant assured me that there was no speck in the sky that foretold any rain. Phew! What a relief, I thought, as I dumped my bags into the boot of my car and started off.

The first inkling that things were not going to be all that sunny came as I crossed Satyamangalam and started climbing the Dimbam ghats. The grey clouds, it seemed, was stuck to the bumper of my car and following me as I drove uphill. 150 kilometers and there was no let up in the rain.



I stopped, as I always do, at "MONKEY CROSSING" but none of my old friends, bonnet macaques, were around to greet me. I popped out to take a quick pic and started off apprehensively.


Farther up the road I found them sitting on the parapet wall, huddled together miserably in the cold. The young ones clinging onto their mothers for warmth and the adults, perhaps praying for a ray of sunshine. The usual enthusiasm they display when a vehicle slowed was absent, so I guess they had been getting drenched for hours.



250 kilometers; Gundlupet behind me and less than 10 kilometers separating my from an old hide out, the rain was still following me. As I turned into the resort on the edge of Bandipur National Park my old friend Gangaswamy was in his office. "What sir, you always seem to have the rain following you?" , he greeted me. It was not meant to be a chide but it pricked.

























The overcast sky reflected my mood. I knew this trip would be a wash out. I felt like that wet vulture just then. All predators would be holed up and a deserted kill from which he could forage for scarps would be delayed till the rain let up!!

Why the vulture was looking so miserable is another story.

Off season in Bandipur

If you are a genuine lover of wildlife there really is no 'off-season'.

Wildlife need food and water to survive and they migrate to areas that offer them sufficient quantities of both.

Bandipur in March, April & May can be disappointing if you go only to see the tiger, elephant and gaur. The first is a rarity even if the season is right, you know that royalty has passed when you see their pugmarks overlaid on the dusty jeep track. I

It can even be more disappointing when you realize that while you spent a good twenty minutes waiting for that elephant to cross the road, this regal cat had a just come to the water hole a few hundred yards ahead, drank its fill and gone back into the shrub to lie up, perhaps beside its kill. We could hear it cough intermittently just about ten or twenty meters beside the road, in the thick lantana.



This is for the uninitiated. There are, if you know the secrets of the wilderness like my four year old, many other things that make the drive in the jungle interesting. He spotted a pair of striped neck mongoose foraging beside a waterhole.





A little further up the road he hissed, "Serpent eagle" and sure enough there was one on a low branch surveying us with its beady eyes. The driver was impressed.


Others followed; a changable hawk eagle, a graceful peacock, a hoopoe and many more that my son will soon learn to identify better than me.

Gangaswamy - version 2.07

An old boss of mine used to say that nothing was constant but change. It's inevitable.

I've known Gangaswamy for a few years now and I have a mental picture that had hardly changed in about half a dozen years. Suddenly, in 2007, I sense that the inevitable is taking place.

He has been an ebullient character. You hear him before you see him and it had been like that from the first time we encountered him in K Gudi, and then later at Bhadra. This time it was different. He's been shunted to Bandipur now and he seemed unusually subdued.

He always had something to tell you; about the jungle , the wildlife, his subordinates, the resort and anything under the sun. He was irrepressible when he had had a bit of some 'mood elevators' inside.

So when I found him draped on a chair with the earphones plugged in place and listening to music it was unusual. Out of courtesy he switched off the music and offered me a seat. "The season is dull, Sir. This Cauvery issue is not good for the tourist industry." I had been warned about agitating farmers blocking roads and stoning vehicles but the route I chose seemed to have no trouble makers. He was lamenting that fact that his resort that boasted 60% occupancy even on weekdays did not have 50% even on the weekend. I clucked in agreement but did not volunteer to add to the conversation.

"You know about the routine here. I needn't tell you anything", he seemed almost regretful. "Even the wildlife seem to share the mood , Sir" , he added. "There has hardly been any sighting for some time now".

I wasn't expecting anything significant. I had made this trip to appease my son. Summer was building and most waterholes were already dry. The grass was dry and prone to catching fire quickly. The big two, gaur and elephants, were migrating to Nagarhole rather than risk hanging around. The Kabini reservoir would see the largest assembly of the Asian elephants on it's banks in summer.


As a matter of fact we had just encountered a large bull gaur feeding beside the highway on our way to Bandipur. He was too engrossed in the leaves he was munching to be bothered by the traffic passing by.

We were prepared for a disappointing trip but in the end it wasn't all that bad. More of that later.