Sahyadrica

We rode on the most slumber-inducing roads of Kanha Tiger Reserve, cloaked in ancient Sal trees from above and clasped from below by an ephemeral mattress of post-monsoon understory herbs. The stillness of the night lingered on as if it would never let the sun rise over this piece of land, and a pale mist clung to the undergrowth until the warmth of the sun scattered it into bits and pieces. The mist that arose from the crystal waters of Sonder Lake formed communities of rising mist, and slowly drifted landwards, from where they rose higher and mingled into an azure sky. This was a new day. The park was thrown open for tourists after three months of quiescence, and like a newborn baby bird covered in a protective cover of its down feathers, it looked back at us with its thousand and more eyes, in the shape and form of birds, mammals, lizards, and insects, as we arrived in olive-green gypsies to witness this rebirth. A Gaur "toddler" looks curiously at us while his yo...

The road wound around shoulders of a number of mountains, past terraced fields ripe with wheat, and dived into valleys where bridges could not be built, and from this mountaintop to that it went, offering vistas of the Shivalik – the outer mountain range of the Himalaya –, where scars of landslides are seen everywhere, and only a handful shrubs take hold of the crumbling crowns of these ancient monuments. We stopped on the arm of a mountain that protruded into a gentle slope, at the last village on the mountain, for a meeting and a little ceremony of distributing solar lanterns to the residents of Amotha, 1290m from the mean sea level. Amotha Village lies under the crown of one of the Shivalik mountains Standing atop the edge of this Shivalik, I took a deep breath and inadvertently closed my eyes. The sun shone gently to my east, and a distant rumble of clouds rolled over beyond the mountain, coming from the way of the snow-clad Himalaya that lay further north. a path cuttin...