Ghats are one of those landscapes that overwhelm the senses, the lush tropical mountains steeped in flora and fauna, many of whom have these regions as their only domicile, defying the quintessential interconnectedness of a world forever in flux, espousing exclusivity instead… whether thrashing through the forests, treading the criss-cross trails amidst tea gardens or trudging through the sholas, there’re so many complex biological tapestries on display… a region seemingly in statis due to its reluctance to expand beyond a few contours, yet underlined by frantic displays of evolution and frequent turns of weather…
Around this time last year, I spent a week around Munnar, mulling over misty green mountains that are an end unto themselves, unlike portals to uninhabitable lands which I usually crave, and underestimating the correlation twixt altitude and temperature irrespective of the latitude… from whatever sojourns one could manage in between the almost incessant rain, the biodiversity never ceased to enthral…
The wildlife felt like ‘twas kind of dazed too, with all the peripheral activity and its own long list of monsoonal chores… the ungulates ruminating and babysitting, abundance of vegetation and fewer predators around rendering them more rotund than their counterparts in other geographies… the primate is pesky as usual, looking out for an easy morsel from a perch only he can find comfort in… the reptiles are busier than usual, their poikilothermic dispositions soothed by the precipitation, spurring them into action… the avifauna is typically inquisitive and fidgety, prancing in the grass, singing to the trees…
Biodiversity hotspots have contradictory undertones… there’s a plethora of life but no dearth of death either, resources are plentiful but so is the competition for them… there’s new species being discovered everyday but so are new diseases…
Musing on shola forests and their endemic wildlife, Eravikulam, Pampadum Shola and Anamudi Shola National Parks, Western Ghats, Kerala…
