Sahyadrica

That yellow tint to leaves is forlorn. It is sad to see them shrivel, shiver, and fall off. I’m standing in front of a line of bamboo islands I’ve been watching for three winters. The cold January breeze helps them shuffle and shed their green coat – it is time , it whispers as it blows the leaves away onto the hardened ground. They say winters of Kanha are the shortest. But I found that we age faster in winter. Kanha’s winters are louder because of the rustling leaves, and the sound picks pace as the seasons age. The longest is summer that proceeds winters with such subtlety that you don’t realise it advance like the winter – winter grips you through your bones, summers are hard to comprehend. No one — man or woman — feels an angel when the hot weather is approaching , stated Rudyard Kipling in the classic Plain Tales from the Hills. And it remains, and lingers, and makes one endure, or yearn, for a better season. Then it happens, the sky bursts under pressure, rain tear...

The rotund rock formations can take the form of the most bizarre shapes when viewed through a layer of hot air rising from the sandy gravel on the banks of Tungabhadra. We stood at the northern bank of the river, on an island called Virupapuragadde, awaiting the ferry that would take us to the ruins of the capital of the Vijayanagara Kingdom, Hampi. It was hot, and Laxmi, the sacred elephant of the Virupaksha temple, was being bathed by her mahout as a horde of tourists photographed her from all sides. Under a stony pillared mandapa built five hundred years ago on the bank of the river sat women who offered their hair in grief, as an honour to the departed. On the eastern side of the bank children jumped into the river from boulders resembling elephant humps, and played in the quieter regions of the rive as River Terns glided overhead, scouring the waters for fish. The Tungabhadra River and the landscape of Hampi A day earlier, we arrived on the northern shore of Tungabhadr...