Three magic stories that created a Naturalist aspirant

What didn’t happen in 37 years happened in May 2022.

I’ve travelled extensively in my life, from scenic places to jungle lodges to basic hotels to posh hotels, in India and outside India. I’ve loved every trip, but never felt magical post a trip.

After the rains

In May 2022, over a weekend, I stayed in a place called “After The Rains” in Meppadi, Kerala. I knew that this place offered a good view from the room — this is all I knew about this place when I booked it. It is a 10 room property. Our room was next to reception / restaurant. The day we checked-in, it was raining continuously so we were staying in our room the entire day and didn’t explore the property. The place was fully covered with fog with no visibility beyond 10 meters (through out the day).

Next day, we checked out of the property and walked towards our car to load our luggages. Just before doing this, we wanted to see what’s beyond the reception / restaurant area and started walking. We explored all other 9 cottages — each of them were named after a fruit. Each cottage offered a different view of nature. Every cottage was COMPLETELY surrounded by varieties of plants and trees — it was nature at its best.

There was a cottage named after the fruit Lilikoi (Passion Fruit). The view from this room was fully covered with fog. For some reason we kept looking at the fog. In about 2–3 minutes, 30–40% of the fog cleared. That’s when I saw Magic #1. The view I saw was a portion of a large dense mountain that’s at least 500 meters from the room, with a valley, with water flowing from somewhere (thanks to fog, couldn’t locate the source), and a flock of birds flying in the shape of “V” above the valley (at the same eye level as mine). I’ve seen these scenes in wildlife documentaries in 4K resolution, but when I saw it in REAL, I just fell in love with the scene. I’ve never seen something as beautiful as that scene. It didn’t strike to my brain that I should photograph the scene, because I was 100% in deep love with that nature. Nature hit me hard. Magnificent. In 2–3 minutes, the hero view was lost as the villain fog took over again.

We continued our walk to explore the property and later figured out that its a 45 acre property that’s super rich in biodiversity. All we experienced were bird sound all around, with many butterflies flying around, and trees and plants of all heights.

Nature again hit me hard. The nature bug started to bite me.

Wayanad Wild, a CGH experience

In May 2022, we stayed in another property called Wayanad Wild, a CGH group hotel. This is situated at the top of a hill, and about 40 Kms from After the rain.

We’ve been regular customers of CGH, and we’ve heard rave reviews about Wayanad Wild. So, our expectation from this property was high.

The property is run by a general manager named David Raju — one of the well known naturalists in India. He has co-authored a book on wildlife of South India and he specialises in dragonflies. I got the opportunity to meet him at the property. Until meeting him I didn’t know there are 250+ varieties of dragonflies! David had just attended a dragonfly conference in Wayanad and he had a dragonfly pin in his shirt. What passion! David was my Magic #2. I ended up buying his book from the property itself.

In the property, there was a room called “The Draco Club” — a room dedicated for learning of flora and fauna. I spent almost 2 hours reading various books, and other materials related to wildlife. Many wildlife myths were decimated after reading those materials.

There was a presentation for 1 hour on “Flora” by Maneesh, another naturalist in the property. Post that presentation, the way I started to look at plants and trees totally changed. There was so much logic and first principles in the way Flora functions. I fell in love with the logic or reasoning behind some activities that happen in plants / trees (for eg: a plant without any fruit, how does it pollinate?)

In the property there were three other naturalists — Jishnu, Jyothis, and Chaithali. Each of them specialise in a topic — Moth, Butterfly and others. I happened to go along with them in a night trek (in rain) to spot various reptiles and insects.

The passion with which they explained, and the various reptiles we spotted, and the rich rainforest environment in Wayanad Wild made me fall in love with nature even more. Until I met them, I didn’t know there was a job role called Naturalist and I never thought I will meet people who specialise in niche topics like dragon fly, moth, and butterfly. Maneesh, Jishnu, Jyothis and Chaithali were my Magic #3. I started to understand 0.001% of nature.

Fully swallowed by nature

With above three magic events happening back to back, it was very clear to me that I was experiencing something that I have never experienced before. When I reflected overnight, I understood that I started to finally appreciate, understand and feel nature everywhere.

Some reptiles that gave me an “eeech” feeling started to give “oh wow, what’s special about this” feeling.

I started to look at plants and trees differently. I started to read a lot, and browse lot of videos to know more about flora and fauna — by doing this, I discovered a different world altogether — the large number of beautiful people who are contributing in keeping nature alive.

Another learning that hit me hard was the rich biodiversity that exists in India. I was blind to this great insight.

I also figured out that I want to become a naturalist, not as a profession, but with genuine interest to learn nature better, to understand the logical interconnection in nature, and to further teach others.

I’ve become very curious like a kid to learn the various components that form the single word called n-a-t-u-r-e.

Forever grateful for the three magic events that happened in May 2022.