Bonding with nature in Munnar

There’s perhaps no better place to initiate children into the mysteries of nature in all its myriad forms than Munnar’s verdant tea gardens and lush ‘shola’ jungles. Thanks to committed conservation over the decades, wildlife abounds in these hills as never before, making Munnar’s environs a virtual paradise round the year. Nature is vibrantly alive here.

A ramble with my two grandchildren (aged 14 and 8) through the tea fields girdling our isolated home is an eye-opener. We are usually assured of surprising (or being surprised by) some form of wildlife. The other day we chanced upon a barking deer daintily nosing around for shrubs; seeing us, it bounded away. Timid jungle fowl scurry across our path now and then. One evening we inadvertently disturbed a porcupine rooting in a tea field; literally bristling with indignation, it fled, dropping a couple of black-and-white quills which the kids delightedly snapped up as mementos. And once, strung across the branches of a tree, we found a length of scaly skin shed by an obviously large rat snake.

Nightfall usually sees a couple of wary hares on our front lawn, eager to browse on the fresh grass, undisturbed. Quaint ‘honking’ breaks the stillness of the night as a couple of sambar (the large Indian deer) gatecrash into our garden to nibble off the marigolds and dahlias. The most unwelcome of all our nocturnal visitors are wild pigs that sometimes leave the garden and lawn hideously ‘excavated’ after an orgy of rooting around. My grandchildren are privy to all this.

Unsurprisingly, wildlife tracks are plentiful in our vicinity. I teach the kids to identify these — from the cloven footprints of barking deer, sambar and wild pigs to the deeper oval imprints left by gaur and elephants. They can also identify the patches of earth raked up by jungle fowl or porcupines while foraging. And once we chanced upon the awe-inspiring pugmarks of a tiger that had passed during the night.

Further, the children have learnt to identify the cacophony of bird calls at dawn: the constant twittering of bulbuls, the harsh screeching of herons in flight, the soulful whistling of the Malabar thrush, the lusty crowing of jungle cocks, the sharp ‘rat-a-tat’ of woodpeckers mechanically ‘drilling’ into tree trunks, the mournful call of hoopoes and the soft cooing of wood pigeons among others. They are also quite familiar with the staccato calls of giant Malabar squirrels and the eerie whooping of Nilgiri langurs in the adjacent forests — two highly endangered species. It seems as if nature is virtually clamouring for attention.

On one rare occasion we found a pack of five wild dogs (dholes), their faces blood-smeared, ravenously devouring a sambar they had killed overnight just outside our garden. For the children it was a sobering insight into the harsh reality of nature living off itself — quite literally and, of course, necessarily.

Then, unbelievably, one evening the legendary Padayappa, Munnar’s gigantic wild tusker, ponderously strode right through our porch as we nervously spied on him from behind discreetly parted curtains. An hour later, having feasted sumptuously on a clump of tender bamboo shoots in the garden, he shambled out quietly, quite contented. For the kids, there couldn’t have been a better demonstration of peaceful coexistence with a mighty denizen of the wilds.

We continue our regular nature-friendly rambles — absolutely no obtrusive behaviour, loud talk or littering. The frequent exposure to the natural world (and, of course, the pure and invigorating mountain air) reminds the children that they’re truly privileged to live in one of Kerala’s few remaining wildlife-rich ‘green lungs’ where environmental pollution is, mercifully, unknown as yet.

gnettomunnar@rediffmail.com