Sahyadrica

A dried-up leaf. A rolled-up leaf. A blotchy leaf. A pooped-upon leaf. After seven months of no respite, I found myself looking at these enthusiastically. Everything moved. Everything was something. Something resembled something else. Sometimes, something tried to be something else. I may have been imagining things, who am I to blame? The soggy boughs, cloud-diffused skies, a slight mist, a faint song of the birds. Add to that the huddled trees, clustered canopies, a subtle breeze. I perceived things differently. Who am I to blame? A leaf tumbled up a tree in front of my eyes. Another flew off. One burst into ridiculous shades of colours. The extravagant - or ridiculously colourful - Orange Oak Leaf ( Kallima inachus ) butterfly of Kanha Tiger Reserve. Someone, somewhere, imagined that this butterfly looks like the leaf of an oak. Somewhere long before, something perceived a limbless leaf to be a safer bet than donning ridiculous colours. And then it decided, hey, why not have the best...

I spent most of the year exploring Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, more-so for the tigers than any other animal, and while the alarm calls of chital and sambar, and the occasional roars and growls of tiger still echo in my ears (thanks so much to my colleague’s ringtone), I witnessed a place that is much more than just about tigers. There are also ants here – yes, ants – I stumbled upon a trap-jaw ant ( Anochetus cf madaraszi ), a first for central India and a new record for Madhya Pradesh while I was contemplating a few seconds before deploying the last camera trap one summer evening, and observed one of the most adorable behaviour among the ant Brachyponera cf luteipes of tandem-carrying , where a fellow sister-worker carries her companion in her jaws to the site of food – a second for India after I saw it first in Valparai. Fascinating what all is hidden or happens beneath the feet of tigers. I lost count of how many tigers I saw on how-many-an-occasion – yes, tigers are more com...