My first sojourn in to the Western Ghats Wilderness
In the year 2011, I joined work at Beroe Consulting, Chennai and in 3 months managed to buy my dream camera of that time, Nikon D90, which i fondly use even after all these years. The camera is a champion, and has since then survived so many challenges of weather, and worser, multiple mishandling!! :)
As a kid, I was very interested in Wildlife, nature and Western Ghats, however, having grown up with only Doordarshan at home, my exposure to wildlife had been very very limited. So once I got my camera, I wanted to do a trip to the Western Ghats, which happened to be my Top Slip trip. This trip completely changed my outlook and left me with a never ending wonder of nature and Western Ghats
Trip included the following
Travel to Pollachi and book the stay in top slip, hop bused and wait almost all night in bus stand itself to catch an early morning bus to top slip (didnt have the money to book a room for the night)
Staying 2 days in top slip - No activities, trek 500 INR, safari 400 INR, both were way too expensive for me at that point.
Evening was my first Nat Geo moment, when a whole group of deers arrived, never seen a group that big run in front of me, glittering in the evening lights. Talked to every single villager there to know what kind of animals they have seen there, and about their interesting tiger encounters. Some stories even include tigers making noises like sand thrown in the air.. one person even went on to say that tiger stretching muscles sound like crackers!! :P the tales though were little too exaggerated, they were interesting. Not that I had anything better to do there, otherwise.! :)
Night time was just madness, with news of elephant activity around. The forest guard gave me instructions not to come out side of room, and assured that the elephants would come my side that night. He was also full of interesting stories about life in wilderness, tigers, elephants. It was such a shocker for me, to know he was going to walk with out a torch light in an elephant infested area towards his village. His only safety is to listen carefully to the sounds from dry teak leaves on the ground.
The night was too ling, with so much animal activities happening around. My heart was in my mouth, when something walked across the thin asbestos roof of the cottage. Some of the bisons, wanted to scratch their bodies on the wall. From the inside of the room, it looked like the elephants are tearing apart the walls to come in and stampede me in to a floor mat. !!! :P Â Hadnt prayed so fervently in a long time like I did that day. The wait for the dawn was a really really long one.!
After dawn, packed my bags, took the government bus to pollachi and back to chennai.The experience, though might not be great in terms of sightings, it was an eye opener and left me in complete amazement of Western Ghats. Writing this in 2017, I have not stopped going to Western Ghats since then. My passion for the landscape was fuelled and I realised how much little I know of the animals and the landscape. i owe it to God Almighty for all the learnings I had, and the opportunities to visit extremely precious places in Western Ghats in the following years.!!!
"No words can over hype Western Ghats!!! the place just keeps beating your expectations every single time you go!" - Myself
- Sherjin Joel
(Wildlife Enthusiast, Traveller)