Sahyadrica

This article first appeared in Pench Stripes Magazine , February 2016. The late summer showers trigger a peculiar phenomenon in the forests of central India. The air is moist; the sky a riot of blues and oranges separated by dark wobbly clouds, and the ground is moistened after a long spell of dryness. This sudden change in the temperature, humidity, and the moisture in the ground has signalled a sudden rapid change in the undergrowth. Underneath the surface of the moisture-laden forests, a million animals await to form their own clouds. Vibrating and pulsating with fervid life, the winged termites, called alates, begin their nuptial flight, volleying into the sky as if on a mission. If you happen to be sitting in the veranda, you will witness an upheaval of countless wings silently rising upwards with the warm air that is expelled by the cooling land, gliding down to the lights on your porch, flying aimlessly in an infinite loop around an incandescent source of light. But the...

It is the coldest day of the year. I’m riding with Omprakash on his motorbike scanning for signs of one of Kanha’s enigmatic species – other than the tiger – the vultures. And there are none to be seen. We are scanning the Kanhari beat as three other teams scan different areas of Kanha known for their vulture populations. A beat is a small unit of a range, but it can be large enough for a team to explore within a few hours; and we have only two of those. It is .7 degrees below zero, and the grass is white as bone. The frost grows on it like fungus, crippling the movement of Kanha’s singing grasslands and turning them into silent tombstones. I am cold and cursing myself for not bringing hand gloves along as my breath turns to clouds. Our beat adjoins Kanha, from which the tiger reserve gets its name. It is one of the first villages to be relocated outside the park. Since then Kanha has seen a dramatic land use change. Agricultural fields gave birth to grasslands, and sal trees...