Vision of Life; by Sanjay: Tadoba, Rains & School Named Forest!

“In the forest on every turn ahead there awaits a story for you”… Me.

These are the words which I feel (read as, I live) every time I visits the forests & when the place is Tadoba that too in the rains then it’s like entering in the room of stories! Right from the guides to trees to gypsy drivers to forest labors to over flowing streams, every person & every place has some story to offer & rains if makes the usual sighting scene a bit dull (sighting of the tiger) then it opens up many other doors to the story rooms which we forget to visit in the zest of visiting the one with tigers, in short, it’s the rains which makes you able to see the forest from a different perspective.

In the rains, tadoba land is full of greens with floor of the forest displaying Junglee Tulas's (a wild shrub) carpet & as the gypsy wheels comes in contact with its leaf the entire surrounding gets filled with a fresh fragrance which can only be experienced & not told in the words! This, I got enlightened by the guide as suddenly the forest used to be filled with this heavenly fragrance & I asked to the guide from where this fragrance is from, on this, he answered, sir, ye junglee tulas ke paudhe hai, inko maslao to hi ye sugnadh dete hai, aur jipsy ke tyre ke niche aate hai to jungle mahakane lagata hai! On top of it, the clouded sky with sun breaking free from time to time makes entire forest playing light & shadow game & when on a turn you saw the Ghost walking towards you on a misty road, you feel is this a dream or reality! Yes, on one such rain morning, when we were wondering what we will be seeing as earlier day it has rained through all the evening & night & sky has just opened up, and suddenly from long a mall object was walking towards us & to my (to all those in gypsy) surprise, it was a male leopard. Again, this is bucket wish list ticked for me as a leopard walking head-on from the canopy of trees around, is something I have dreamed of for years & in monsoon safari when I expected of least of any sighting my, this dream has fulfilled! And what more but the leopard was with us for nearly one hour on different roads, reasons, we were silent totally, there were no other gypsies & the forest was free of tiger in that particular area, so the leopard can move fearlessly! As well though leopards don’t have fixed territory like the tigers yet they do mark their territories whichever they will be occupying & this guy was on such move, that’s why he was traversing all the forest so openly. As well his inward curbing stomach was indication that the leopard was hungry & along with marking territory, he was parallelly looking for food also & all these along with lesser vehicles in the park made me able to tick one of the longest pending wishes in my bucket list & this was possible may be due to I dared to visit tadoba in the rains also! The only problem was my both cameras got malfunctioned & I was cursing myself for not being able to get a single good shot (few I did get) but then I realize sometimes having camera is a curse as when you don’t get to see anything you get frustrated & when you get to see something & you couldn’t click it properly then also you get frustrated, as forest is to enjoy the moments & being able to click is a bonus, I reminded this to myself once again & forgot about good images of the leopard!

Another incidence (rains special) occurred on the next day when during one of our rounds on the main Chandrapur Moharli road (this road is open to all the people as it connects two towns though stopping on this road is not allowed as its part of the safari of buffer zone too!) when we get to know from a passerby that he saw a tiger entering in forest from the main road just some thirty minutes back & our Sherlock Holmes job started to trace that tiger. As there is one female tigress names Choti Madhu, which has very small cubs & they are known to be kept by her on the opposite side of the road where she has crossed in the forest (as per our informant), we started following her tracks thinking she also must be on kill & after taking rounds will surely return to her cubs as they are just a month old. We crisscrossed entire that part of the forest but no-where we get her pugmarks though the tracks were wet & then we decided to wait on a road where she was supposedly to return towards her cubs. After ten minutes of wait suddenly alarm calls of the spotted deer rang all around us indicating tigress was nearby & on move & our guess was right, we waited to locate the movement of the calls. On right side of us there was another parallel road & on left side of us was main road beyond which the cubs have been kept. And suddenly from right side some hen started shouting listening to deer alarm calls, they were local shepherds (sheep care takers) & as this forest is part of buffers they were allowed. We thought the tigress won’t go to that side as human movement is there as well the road was too much muddy & ours was only gypsy so the driver wasn’t ready to risk to drive further ahead thinking if the wheels get stuck in the mud, then it will be problem, so we hurried to main road & waited for nearly three hours hoping tigress will return to her cubs & has to come on main road to cross it but nothing happened! After that one gypsy came from park gate & we told them to go inside & check for the pugmarks of the tigress & as they entered from where we have come out of the forest & didn’t came out in fifteen minutes, we understood the only reason they can remain inside means they have seen the tigress & we also followed that gypsy & there she was sitting silently in a pond, hardly some fifty feet ahead from where we have returned three hours earlier! And those shepherds were still there unaware of her presence though she was very much aware of them & was just waiting for them to go away. Had we gone hardly a turn ahead while we listened the alarm calls, we could have seen her in open but we though she will be disturbed by the shepherds which she did yet patiently she waited there only. The tigress has made a kill right when we heard the alarm calls & has hidden it near by & was waiting those shepherds to move away & then to have her meal at peace; this is tiger in its best survival mode, display of which we have just witnessed!

That night it rained so much that next day morning even to reach to the park gate was not possible as many of the roads were flooded & wasn’t possible to drove the car through that flooding water so we waited at resort only! That evening I decided to take a walk around the resort on main road & in pitch black darkness around I could hear music of thousands of frogs singing together from the fields along the road & trust me at night few sounds are really scary, especially when you know its forest & anything can happen, though it was a main road on which I was walking but such experiences are wroth going through, with proper care & knowledge only! Many people wonder why I go forests so often, time & again I have answered this in many ways but when its rains even the so-called wildlife enthusiasts also wonder, why to take so much pan & labour to visit forests in these times when chances of seeing a tiger are less & I don’t blame them as my answer is, then they haven’t understood what a forest is, in the first place! In the rains I agree, chances of seeing a tiger are less but then you never know what you will be lucky with on for e.g., the sighting of leopard in the most relaxed way. The feel of the green forest, knowledge about things like Junglee Tulas fragrance & many such are the addons’! And one more thing, may it be harsh summer, chilling winters or drenching rains, life in the forests never stops for anything & its like an open school where you learn by mere observing all these species how they adopt with every season without any technology at their service & learn to coexist with nature, that’s the biggest gain I get by visiting forests often!

Last but very important for me (though repeated hundredth times), if we can keep buffers open in rains then why not core area too & why not all parts of the forests, as not only it gives means to livelihood to thousands of humans residing around the forests which directly helps wildlife but it will make wildlife open to all those urban people who are unaware of these treasures of nature & their responsibility to protect it! And combinedly all these i.e., tourists, gypsy drivers, guides are like eyes, ear & nose of the forests keeping all the ill elements who are enemies of wildlife on their toes, so open up all the forests on all 365 days & for that give proper infrastructure support to the forest dept!

Before I conclude, just when I was writing last para of this sharing, I came across a disturbing video of a leopard & news also, which wandered in a village in dazed condition. It was so disheartening to see the poor animal moving like zombie but fortunately someone informed forest dept & now the leopard is in habitation centre in Bhopal. The dazed leopard wandering in village like a domestic animal is a classic example of man-animal conflicts because all around us forest cover is reducing as well people around the forests are needed to make themselves aware about this conflict & wildlife tourism is the only & best effective tool to make humans learn coexistence, all those who are patient enough to read till now, please share as somewhere someone will act, adios with this note!

You can check some tadoba rain moments at link below...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/65629150@N06/albums/72177720310689088

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Sanjay Deshpande

Sanjeevani Dev.

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