Walk that talk - Half mast.

Single handed efforts with no particular direction – that should be a fairly accurate description of the past few months of my life. There is not one feat that I am particularly proud of, but these months have given me pictures that will stay in my memory for a lot many years to come- in full color.
Rural and interior Karnataka, Andhra, Pondicherry, Chennai, and the length and breadth of Kerala. I haven’t kept a journal, but I have a hard-disk full of images.
My bottom’s sore from the two weeks and a couple of thousand miles solo on the motorcycle. So now, I am going to sit down and show you some pictures.


Some things never change. The 'mundu' for one. Even the most 'progressive' malayali wears one, and many a time, half mast.
This is a scene from Kuttanad in central Kerala - a land of lush green paddy fields, water bodies and genuine country life.

Paradise, Happy to Stay lost

I am not sure if it was the exhaustion of the ten kilometer hike in the rain-shadowed wilderness of Chinnar, or the love for the rainforests that made us take off that night on a drive a few hundred kilometers long into The Periyar tiger reserve.

The guard at the check-post was a burly middle aged man, who wouldn’t let us in. It took us three hours and nearly one hundred phone calls to get him to open the park gates for us.

(Tourist information: Kerala Forest Development Corporation charges Eight hundred rupees per person for entry into the jungle, which is allowed only in their all terrain vehicles. It is OK to not love nature, but at the minimum what you can be is respectful of life out there.
The chances of spotting a tiger here as a tourist is next to non-existent, so please don’t go in on a casual Safari - It is not worth the money that you pay, and the jungle will not like you. And for goodness’s sake, please don’t smoke!)



The mist was a both a surprise and a disappointment. We had a few hours of light still remaining in the day, and the musky odor of elephants hung in the air, only that the visibility was reduced to a few feet.
Not too far from a tribal settlement, a man herding his cattle back home took us deeper into the jungle where he said there would be elephants.
A few meters into the slush, my shoes were wet and swarming with leeches. The socks were soaked in blood, and rest of the walk had to be done barefoot. All through out the trail, there were fresh hoof-prints in the sludge - even an occasional pug mark or two, just no animal in sight. And so when we turned off the slushy grass on to a little patch of rocky land, the beauty that struck me was just too sudden to be let in.
What lay ahead, was a little piece of tropical paradise. We were suddenly left standing on a rock-face engulfed by green overhangs on three sides, and the deepest of jungles on the other. The valley below was at least a kilometer deep, and there were springs gushing out of cracks in the rocks. We were standing above the clouds, where even the wind did not stir. If the place were any more beautiful, it would have been a sin.

Do not go by the picture, I just couldn’t do any justice to the scene.

Re-wind. Play.

The little bully, the physicist and the big always-happy-guy.
None reminds me of me.
But I recognize all of their faces, even the shy little one.
It was as though I had found an old journal, cleaning up the room - its paper crisp and yellow: A little crisp-er than meant to be, and writing a little grey-er than it once used to be.
Some memories have names, and some do not, but they are all hazy, warm, and dirty from a day of play.

I miss school.

A Gentle giant, and the 100th post

In the moist evergreen forests of Kerala, it is an overwhelming feeling just to be – you do not necessarily have to see it all to believe it : the fact is that you couldn’t, even if you wanted to.
The air is always heavy with the sounds and smells of what is on the other side – of a tree trunk or the thick undergrowth - of creatures watching your every move.
There is a rhythm ( I’d even go as far as calling it silence) to the noises of the jungle; for when there is a crackle of branches and a rustle of leaves, you will turn and look, and you will probably spot this colorful bundle of fur on a leap that is nothing less than unbelievable.

The giant Malabar squirrel is quite huge as the name suggests. What is unlike how the name sounds though, is that he is a particularly cute fellow.
It builds nests on intricately branched heights of trees, and hardly ever comes down : a reason why the creature cannot be spotted very easily.
The natural predators of this threatened species are leopards and large birds, but the real threat is from the two-legged cousins that live on the other side of the tree line.

Don't expect a loner to behave.

At first light, we still had a few minute’s drive ahead of us before we reached the first check-post into the jungles. Force of habit is an incredible thing to be working against - the otherwise interesting discussions on quantum physics and philosophy do not really work while your body keeps repeating just one word : “Sleep”.

And then our senses were yanked wake by a sight least expected. We were taking a turn when we saw a young bull elephant around the corner – a shy loner with piercing eyes.

The place was an isolated patch of wilderness – not inhabited, but with a lot of human activity along the road. There was no food in sight, and this was no known migration route. The herd was nowhere to be seen: this guy was danger.

The engine was turned off, and for a longer-than-usual minute, we waited as he surveyed the scene, and then slowly crossed the road to disappear into the bush alongside.

The opportunity was too good to be let to pass – a few cameras exited the car, and the men behind them inched forward slow as snails, trying not to infuriate the tusker. The car’s engine went on, ready for action if the need arose.

Amidst the clickety-clack of shutters the elephant turned around, and that is when I noticed the smudged swelling on the side of his head – This was a loner in musth.

Musth (or, alternately spelled, must) is a periodic condition in bull elephants, characterized by a thick, tar-like secretion called temporin from the temporal ducts and, far more notably, by highly aggressive behaviour. …

…scientific investigation of musth is greatly hindered by the fact that, once under the influence of musth, even the most otherwise placid of elephants may actively try to kill any and all humans.

The thinker

thinker, originally uploaded by toothlesswonder.

And the thinker just sat there in the comforting warmth of a clear day.. refreshed by the winds from the sea, by the breeze which might have risen in a valley of snow.
The sky, the beach, and the river that met the ocean fashioned beauty beyond compare – solemn, and deeply colored.
What is a better place to think than by a sea without limit – which was as blue as its sky?
For that was all he ever did – Think. Except on those particularly rough days when the sea was black, he would offer to take the helm.
But today was not one of those days.
He watched the last group of ducks paddle their way home to the village by the sea. It would be another hour before sun set, and it wasn’t going to rain.

I'm off on yet another weekend trip - and this time to a friend's wedding in Trivandrum.

Running the wrong way

Now, getting back to where we left off:
It was Seven in the morning, but it was long since the day started in the forest. By the reason of its quietness, the walk seemed longer than it naturally should have. And perhaps adding to it was the disappointment from the lack of any real sightings in the morning.
We had woken before first light, and even as we walked through the slush of the previous night’s rains, the pale light was only setting in, giving the dry river bed a shade of solemn grey.
We had hoped to walk into the elephant herd – which we had a chance encounter with, in the dark of the past night, and I was ready – unlike then - with the right lenses, the camera on, and ready to go.
It was dismal crusade – even the persistent elephant scent this morning was a lot lighter, compared to the sharp musky odor that hung heavy in the air the previous night.
The leeches were feasting on my leg, and many were trying to suck the juice out of my shoes as well. There we were – at the riverbed - risking snake bite and impending rain.

The walk would have been a disappointment, had we not spotted this guy high up in the foliage.

[In the pic: A Malabar Grey Hornbill]

Hop. Skip. Jump and SPLASH!

There’s absolutely nothing that can beat a bath in a river on a hot and humid summer day.
Run , tear your cloths off, woooooosh and SPLASH!
Whatta whatta fun! :)

These kids were spotted at the river, and this one appeared to be demonstrating his bowling skills as the other two watch closely.