FIRST WILDLIFE EXPERIENCE

It was a typical frigid winter evening with dwindling daylight during late January in 1989 in Upper Nilgiris. Like a satiated, stomachful snake, the Ooty-Upper Bhavani bus, TCB 1298, was slowly yet steadily slithering up the serpentine ghat road. It was my maiden voyage to visit my friend, AE/Upper Bhavani along with another mutual friend.

Suddenly something on four legs sprang from a pine grove on our left, darted across the road, and disappeared among the dark woods on our right. We both were upon our feet in a jiffy and craned our necks to catch a better glimpse. Alas, it was gone with the wind! It looked like a ‘deer.’ With disappointment writ large over our faces, we started cursing our luck. However, nonchalantly driver Krishnan told us, “Don’t worry, sir. I will show you at least ten more”, which we were, of course, overjoyed to hear though were a little skeptic.

It was quite dark when we arrived at Korakundha and there was not much to see in the dark. The bus crew got down with the mail bag that had earlier been handed over to them at Kundah and delivered it to the tiniest post office I have ever seen. The lone postmaster opened the mail bag, sorted out the mail, and then handed over a sealed packet to the bus crew saying, “here is the Upper Bhavani mail”, which was given to us to be duly handed over to AE, and we were ready to go.

True to his words, barely a few minutes later, Krishnan showed a couple of “sambhars” that were standing hesitantly near the bushes on our right with their eyes gleaming. My very first wildlife sighting! We were ecstatic and thrilled to the core. As we were savoring the scene, slowly another sambhar herd sauntered across the road and joined that couple and then all of them vanished into the thick tea bushes.

Now, driver Krishnan was absolutely in his elements enumerating his exploits with a rapid-fire Rajnikanth accent. We saw scores of hares hurtling across, sambhar herds scampering into the woods, a sounder of wild boars bolting into the bushes, hitherto unseen and unheard birds! It was stupefying, surrealistic, simply out of this world. Then, as we were negotiating a hairpin bend, Krishnan said, “here comes the climax” and braked hard ahead of a huge herd of sambhars swarming around in the midst of the road, which we had to literally swim through, nudging them apart with the bumper. Later I learned that it was located below the Ramiah road junction where there was a check dam, and now it is one of my favorite spotting grounds.