Let’s start from where I signed off my last blog (The Unsubtle Art of Letting Go) —as I watched the sun set behind the imposing Janjira fort and packed my bags to head home after a week of tottering in the picturesque Konkan region of Maharashtra (India) the anticipation to return home was palpable to say the least.
But before I could tuck into warm home cooked food and call it a day on my bed that seems to know the right embrace for me even without any memory foam — a pit stop reckoned. The Phansad Wildlife Sanctuary is situated at a couple of hours drive from Mumbai and was on my must-visit list for quite some time. And since I have flipped on the dicey side of the mid-30s last year, time is something I have began putting a high premium on. As anticipated, the short trip to Phansad proved fruitful with a couple of hours of patient sitting yielding some beautiful sightings.
What I remember this short trip for the most is meeting Pranav, a precocious naturalist in his early 20s. In an age where internet fueled craze for validation runs rife, he came across as someone whose presence was a personification of assurance. And in the wee hours of the morning sitting by a watering hole hearing sounds one could easily get nightmares about, his calming presence made all the difference.
Having reached back home after this brief stop over, the vagaries of day to day life ensured this brief encounter was duly filed and allotted a room in the mind place to dwell upon at a later time.
Time — it had other plans.
In the ensuing week, a botched up dental surgery resulted in first — physical discomfort and then a state of mental lock down with next to no verbal communication. For weeks, I wasn’t sure what I dreaded more — the inconvenient pain through the day or the uncertainty of the correctional procedures scheduled in the evening or the anesthesia induced involuntary blabbering before calling it a day. Once the last of the surgical stitches were off and the flag of flickering hope began reclaiming ground lost to excruciating pain, a birding trip seemed like the obvious therapeutic activity to do.
It is times like these that I send out a silent payer for residing close to the birding hotspot of Kumbhargaon (Bhigwan) in Pune. It is a matter of couple of hours to see the scenes change from concrete laced urban facades to a proverbial waterhole of avian jamboree. Not to mention the open and undulating grasslands further ahead. It was the eve of Mother’s Day and we were driving our way onto one such scrubland, our naturalist having maintained a rather uncharacteristic stoic silence about what we were going to see on the trail. The scorching afternoon sun wasn’t helping and my mind soon began wobbling to the rhythm of ours vehicle’s motion over the uneven terrain.
And then, as abruptly as a deer caught in the headlights, we stopped. I opened my eyes and scanned over what looked like an unending stretch of golden brown grasses interrupted only by thorn bearing trees towering over them. As I gulped down a few sips of now lukewarm water, we noticed movement on the horizon dotted with hillocks. A blur of ashy grey strips was hurriedly moving towards us. Took us a moment to register — Indian Striped Hyena! My look to our naturalist was returned with a wide smile, making me break into one too — albeit with a slight delay, as if the jaw muscles had lost memory of the act.
As she reached further close to our vantage point, even the Hyena let out one of her blood curdling laughs — only this one was met with a sight that is better seen than read about.
A Mother’s Day indeed.
Around the same time last year, I had written (Finite Time • Infinite Possibilities • Infinitesimal Us) at length about experiencing motherhood in third person in the presence of a tigress at the Tadoba Tiger Reserve (TRR). This time though, I was focusing on the Hyena’s cubs. Thinking about how they learn the ways of the wild and then move on to survive each day on their own without any safety net. We watched the Hyena family right till the twilight faded into an oblivion and returned to our accommodation in anticipation of what the next day had in store for us.
Regular readers of this blog don’t need to be told about my love for all things Owlsome. So when the words “Mottled Wood Owl” made their way to my ears — the jaw clenched sending what felt like an hammer blow right at the center of the head. As if in stimuli, the body froze but the eyes strained and looked far in the direction that our naturalist was pointing to in the sun.
The silhouetted figure had a quintessential unkempt look so we decided to get down and trek from the other side of the hillock to sight and document this lifer in the early hours of the morning. But apparently we were not the only ones interested in these owls. A group of black drongos was mobbing this pair for reasons only they’d know off. All our attempts to track the pair on foot ended up futile. A cup of hot chai beckoned, we called off the owl trail and proceeded to the more greener grazing fields closer to the village.
Unlike the Mottled Wood Owl, This was not the first time I was sighting the Greater Painted Snipe. A master of disguise and an aberration in the otherwise well defined sexual dimorphism seen in our avian friends. Unlike his peers, the male GP Snipe is dull and drab, the female a riot of shades of emerald, heck she even has a necklace to moot. What I did see for the first time though was something I had only read in books thus far — a family being brought up by Mr. Snipe. It was a sight to behold, not merely on account of the reversal of gender stereotypes in nature, but for the tenacity with which the male was moving his fledglings around.
From a fierce mother to a dotting father — felt like we’d seen it all in 24 hours. The grazing lands were also host to nesting sites of other birds such as Black-winged Stilts, Lapwings and the “Decked up but nowhere to go” aka Oriental Pratincoles! Tip-toeing our way off the grass we signed off a rather eventful weekend.
But the best of the month, dare I say — was yet to come.
The Indian state of Rajasthan is known to be a boiling pot in summer months. With temperatures crossing 45 degrees on a normal day, a plan made in the comfortable months of January to visit the Ranthambore Tiger Reserve (RTR) had started to look as an irrational act. However, sunken cost fallacy got the better of us (thankfully) and we landed in the arid landscape of Sawaimadhopur.
The RTR is fabled space. Every landscape commands your absolute attention.
The tigers here feature in international award winning documentaries and have carried the onus of successfully re-spawing their numbers in the region. Their majesticity and aura is something one has to be in their presence to experience. Like this instance of watching a young female leopard climb atop a tree to save itself from a young tigress as she lay waiting for the leopard to tire out and come down is the kind of stuff that is only spoken off — rarely seen.
And yet, we lived in that very moment.
The RTR is also well known for its avifauna, particularly it’s owls. While the Dusky Eagle Owl eluded a sighting, what we managed to see and document was nothing short of exasperating for the love of all things Owlsome!
The joy of such phenomenal sightings was exponentially increased by tucking in local delicacies and the fact that I could savor them without the nagging thought of pain and discomfort. In hindsight the entire month seems like a time wrap of sorts. I may not be able to put a finger on when exactly it happened, but there was a moment sometime this month that I just stopped feeling discomforted by stuff happening around me. Not to be mistaken with being numb — this was rather the opposite. It heightened my focus on the what I was enjoying doing than worrying about the eventualities of it all.
Ever so often we hear and read about the how loss of a dear one, the unannounced arrival of responsibilities, or even taking up parenthood for that matter bringing about a similar change.
Is this what brings the calm when everything around feels like the eye of a storm?
Is this what being one with nature does to us?
Is this what coming of age feels like?
If you stayed back to read till the end leave a 👏 for me to know. Have you experienced a similar calm, in midst of nature or otherwise? If yes, do leave behind a comment with your experience.
