Wildlife

We've been in Munnar in Kerala's Western Ghats these last few days. A bucolic idyll and home to the world's highest tea plantations, it's been a more than welcome welcome break from the oppressive heat and chaos of the coast. We'd been living pretty cheap of late and decided we'd splash out on a one day tour of the local area with our own private driver - getting the local knowledge on our surrounds.

We started first thing in the morning - taking in tea factories, cardamom, pepper, sandle wood and tea plantations, waterfalls and breathtaking scenery. Beautiful, but pretty standard stuff for these parts. After lunch our driver dropped us off to commence our 5 hour trek in the Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary.

Maybe it's my Aussie upbringing, but the term 'Wildlife Sanctuary' conjures images of migrating water birds and a few furry creatures scampering about the place if you're lucky. And if there are any dangerous creatures present, measures are taken to keep any visitors out of harms way. So I thought nothing of signing the declaration they handed me. It mentioned stuff about trekking being 'highly' dangerous and that while 'all care is taken', they won't be liable for any accident occasioning death or injury. Pretty standard cover your arse stuff.

It slipped my mind that we were in India. It slipped my mind that the owner of the farmhouse we were staying in insists we only take auto rickshaws home after 7:30 and not walk back through the surrounding tea plantations as wild animals some times creep in during the night (for 'wild animals' read: tigers, elephants, panthers, leopards and boars). Maybe it's the genteel surroundings - a strange cross between Australian Tablelands, South Coast England and the Swiss Alps - that never allows this threat to really sink in.

Anyway, our driver secured our tracker and guide and introduced us, he was a young local guy from an indigenous tribe that (among others) had been entrusted as caretakers of the land. He smelled of last night's campfire on a dewy morning and looked more like a Koori (an Australian Aboriginal) than Indian. As the four of us (tracker, driver, Cheryl and myself) commenced our trek, it became more apparent just how much he had in common with the Koori trackers. At one with his land, his movements and sensory perceptions took on animal-like characteristics and sensitivity. He had this piercing gaze that seemed to scan his whole field of vision with hunter precision, his ears twitch at the slightest sound and our driver mentioned he could smell animals from across the valley.

We begin to track some elephants - which is not so hard given they leave behind great steaming piles of shit and knock over any trees that may be in the way - when a sound stops him in his tracks. He holds his hand to quiet and still us, his animal senses working over time. I watch his face intently to see if it will betray anything. He looks concerned then relieved before muttering something in Malayalam.

"Tiger. But not too close." our driver translates

Tiger?

I had no idea there had been sightings of Tigers here. There are a few select places you go to increase your chances of seeing one and this wasn't one of them. I'm at once incredibly excited and a little concerned.

On the excited trip - I love tigers. They're my favourite land animal (for reasons I won't bore you with here) and laying my eyes on one in the wild is one of those boxes I must tick - if not on this trip, then at least in this lifetime.

On the concerned trip - This love of tigers also involves a deep respect for their ability as the most stealthy, ferocious and single minded land hunter on the planet. Their their paws can break its quarry's back with a single blow, the jaws crush wind-pipes and neck vertebrae for good measure and it will stalk it's prey for days (giving up earlier opportunities) just for the fun of it.

With all this in mind, I'd kinda been banking on seeing one within the confines of a 4WD (Big Cat Diaries style)...or at the very least on top of an Elephant. Only a few days ago we'd met a French couple who had encountered wild elephants and their guides had taken rifles along in case anything went wrong. Ours was armed with a half sized machete and we were on foot (flip-flops to be precise). We ploughed on, never really realising how vulnerable we were. At the time, we were still bird watching as far as I was concerned and I thought this little tiger show was something they put on for hapless tourists.

Back to the story. So, after several hours of walking around examining piles of shit and animal tracks and a distant Bison sighting, our tracker spots a lone elephant across the river on the opposite slope. We scramble up to higher ground only to see it disappear over the other side. Perched atop an overhang with an incredible view of the Western Ghats out of Kerala and in to Tamil Nadu, I pour my backpack's contents on to the rock and we hang out and eat, drink, take in the view and hope the elephant wanders back in to view some time soon.

After a while some tribesmen appear at the clearing where we'd spotted the elephant. We assume they must have been tracking him too. They seem apprehensive about following him down that same slope, but eventually conjure the courage and disappear from view. Soon after, two of them re-appear. Running at speed - like 'run for your fucking life' speed. I never thought it possible for a human to run so fast, down so steep an incline. Then we see another two. One is running too fast and he takes a really bad spill, tumbling head over heels a few times before miraculously regaining his footing and keeps on going...never letting up.

Their reaction seemed all so out of proportion. No elephant could have followed them down such an incline, yet they just kept running and running and running - at literal break-neck speed. The final two soon follow in similar fashion and by now the four of us are in hysterics (fed by that universal humour of witnessing other people's misfortune, whilst safe in the knowledge that they're gonna be OK). The distance and the river between us rendered their terror silent and the spectacle took on a farcical nature that was a cross between Benny Hill and The Gods Must Be Crazy. We waited for that elephant and I tell you, if an elephant had bumbled over that hill in slow pursuit I would have suffered a fit of such rock slapping laughter that it would have required a Heimlich Manouvre just to get me breathing again. But alas, the bumbling elephant never made his entrance and the hysterics died down to absent chuckles.

The hilarity over, I began to stuff the regurgitated contents of my backpack back in to its belly (careful to leave not a scrap of rubbish behind), when our tracker's eyes bugged out of his sockets like tongues. He shot up pointing and shouting the only English word in his vocabulary:

"TIGER!"

A tiger bounded over the top of the hill and with feline dexterity gracefully bolted down the exact same slope as the tribesmen - making a beeline straight for the trees they had taken shelter in. When at the very last second something scared him and it changed its tack and veered right, leaping off a considerable drop in to a clump of trees below - never to re-appear.

Full disclosure: I didn't see that last bit ^^^^. I'm afraid that brief, yet crucial paragraph has been constructed using the eye witness accounts of Cheryl and our driver with some flourishes courtesy of my minds eye reconstruction. Where was I? I was there, packing my pack. And from the angle I spun round on, the guide's finger seemed to pointing to a rather bland rocky outcrop. Cheryl described everything to me and was kind enough to say that it was all so quick and far away that it could have been a large dog, that it didn't really count as a sighting. But the fact is that I missed out on the punchline that made what we had witnessed less of a joke and more a playing out of a real life and death drama, of two top-of-the-food-chain dominant life forms scaring the bejeesus out of each other. I had been thwarted yet again at seeing a tiger in the wild (first time: Sumatra) and my first close encounter with one lacked the teeth of actually seeing it.

The fact is, they are so rare now and are fighting a losing battle against extinction. Even where they are protected, their habitat isn't. Being located largely in the third world it only takes a small payment for officials to turn a blind eye to poachers and loggers. Sadly, unless conservation efforts miraculously manage to turn things around, the days of this magnificent creature ruling the Asian wild lands are numbered. Those that are left are understandably shy of humans and are notoriously difficult and dangerous to encounter - with that camouflage they are only seen when they want to be seen.

We make our way back to the car without event. Part of me wanting to catch a glimpse, the other (much louder) part hoping he stays on the other side of the river. Still, I won't give up until I see one in the wild, with my own eyes.