After our trip to Bandhavgarh, in the middle of May, we traveled on into another special landscape. A landscape of stately sal forests spreading to the horizon, amidst sprawling meadows and plateaued hills. Here, everyday, a stage is set for a grand play of life and death. This is the land of the deer and the tiger, the quintessential prey and predator—a land that holds an essence of wild India. Kanha.

Kanha lies within a vast amphitheater marked by the sweep of the Satpura mountains to the west and the Maikal range to the east. The soils and rocks are ancient, seeming as old as the Earth herself—a piece of primeval Gondwana, the great land that sailed the primordial ocean. This is a land that gathers the waters for the Narmada river, flowing to the west, and the great Mahanadi, to the east. And here have lived the old peoples—the Gond, after whom the great land was named, and the Baiga, living off the ancient forests and the deep soils.

It is special, too, for both of us, being the landscape where George Schaller carried out his landmark study described in The Deer and the Tiger, a touchstone for wildlife researchers in India.

Kanha simmered in the summer heat and the monsoon was still some weeks away. Like green arms, the forests seemed to hug the browned meadows that awaited the rain to spur another renewal of life. Herds of gaur, heading for water and forage, added grandeur to the landscape.

In the grasslands, were herds of swamp deer, the so-called hard-ground barasingha, whose cousins of wetter turf one can see in the Terai grasslands of north and northeast India. The males, with handsome antlers and the relative calm that comes after the rutting season…

… and the females, prim and perfect, weaving their way through the meadows…

There are other deer, too, in Kanha: the diminutive and shy chevrotain, the cautious and excitable muntjac, the lithe and graceful chital, and that great deer of the forest, the sambar. The forests and grasslands resounded with the bellows of chital stags, for this was the peak season of their rut. We watched, as Schaller must have more than four decades ago, males displaying and sparring, pawing and preaching, fighting and mating.

Late one evening, we went up to the Bamhnidadar plateau, looking for another elusive ungulate, the four-horned antelope or chousingha. Although unlucky in this quest, we were treated to a panoramic view of the forests and meadows of Kanha. Along with the panorama of forests on view, the grand assemblages of ungulates on the meadows of Kanha must rank among the best wildlife spectacles on offer in India.

With the prey come the predators, engaged in the perpetual tussle of survival, the life-blood of ecology and evolution. There are tigers, of course, and in their shadow, so to speak, are leopards, wild dog, sloth bear, jackal, jungle cats, and other smaller and interesting carnivores. With the help of the langur and a little luck, we got to see some of them. On a drive through the forest, we stopped when we heard the alarm calls of langurs. We closely, and quietly, watched them as they closely, and noisily, watched something else moving through the forest.

Our patience was soon rewarded; as we watched, a leopard appeared at the edge of road and crossed over.

And later, a sloth bear with a grown cub…

and then, a delightful sighting of a jungle cat resting in the shade of a little rock overhang to escape the heat of the afternoon.

Jungle cat resting (Photo: Harsha J)

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The sal forests swathe the landscape, and the Bauhinia climbers, bedecked with flowers, garland the sal.

Yet, the really large, tall trees are few. Here, perhaps, is a sad story of past logging slowly transforming into a future progression of hopeful regrowth. The tree trunks are studded with the gems of orchid blooms and shoulder the burdens of strangler figs. On the boughs, perch Racket-tailed Drongos, making their metallic calls. Their glistening black plumage and tail extend down thin streamers tipped  by black spatulae—the drongos, perched erect, attest the trees like exclamation marks.

And at the edge of the meadows, tall sal trees laden with fruit toss their branches to the wind that has come to carry their seed.

The drama of the deer and the tiger and the other wildlife will play on, on the evolutionary stage, and shall forever mark this landscape, here, in Central India. Yet, it is sobering to recall that the present assemblage of wildlife is but a truncated one, for the blackbuck, the buffalo, and the elephant, which roamed here not too long ago, not to mention the cheetah, are all seen no more.

We can despair at what we have lost, exult at what we can experience, and hope for what may be ahead—as we should, here, in the heart of India. And if you still do not believe that the heart of India is here, right here, in the great landscape of forests and meadows in and around Kanha, what can we say? See, for yourself!

The heart of India (Courtesy: Google Earth)

We thank Harsha J, Sarath C R, and Payal Mehta for their company and hospitality during our stay at the Banjaar Tola lodge.

Here in Central India, in the middle of May, the forests appear to be baking in the sun. The seasonal drought has turned many trees in the tropical forest nearly leafless and the grasslands are brown. The heat of summer is hard to escape, here, in the heart of India.

Finding water, is key. The deer make their daily beelines to the waterholes…

through the browned grasslands, unmindful, perhaps, of lesser predators, such as this jungle cat…

Although, it is good to be alert perhaps, when you reach a waterhole…

For a tiger may be waiting, nearby. This one, though, snoozing under the trees and the bamboo, behind a little rise and beyond our prying eyes, appears to be merely waving a disdainful paw.

The heart of India is tiger country. People come here to see tigers and be awed by their presence. They have learned that where there is water is a good place to wait to see a tiger. Some have learned to mark the tiger’s progress through the forest by the alarms of the deer, or the paw prints on the dusty roads. Others note that the tiger needs such a forest to exist. But, is this the main message from the heart of India? Don’t we need such a forest, too?

The heat is stunning and the soil is parched. And yet, the trees, as if knowing something we do not, or from habits derived over the ages, are putting out fresh green leaves. There has been no rain—only an anticipation of it. The mahua and the sal have fresh leaves, too, and the branches of the latter are laden with winged fruit. Perhaps there is an anticipation of wind, too. Even in this heat, as fields lie dry and fallow in the human countryside, the trees have found their moisture and are investing in growth, and in their future. And from the forest, the waters of the Charan Ganga continue to flow.

Deep in the forest, lies a great idol of Vishnu, the Sheshshaiya, a supreme deity signifying, pertinently, existence and preservation. The waters of the Charan Ganga appear to emerge from his feet. It is not hard to imagine, in a hot, dry summer as this, that a place from where springs clear water, which can keep the trees green here and for miles downstream, must have some divine origin.

A different perspective may obtain if one can emerge above the forest, high above, and soar on the wings of a vulture such as this one. Then one sees the vista of forest in the landscape around the spring where rests the Sheshshaiya.

From here, it seems it is the forest that taps, and soaks, and channels the water through aquifers to emerge as a spring. The forest is divine, in an aesthetic sense, but needs no divinity to perform this basic hydrologic function. Now, it seems that Vishnu, as a being signified by the idol, is but a wise person who, like the tiger, found a good place, close to water, to rest under the shade of the trees and the bamboo. His presence, as a preserver, is but a marker of what needs to be preserved.

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The anticipation was not belied. The wind and rain were coming. As the day came to a dusky death, and as the jackal trotted away into the growing darkness of the evening…

… so did the clouds gather, with gusts of wind, thunder, and lightning.

The fruits of the sal trees, around the courtyard of the Mahua Kothi lodge where we were staying, took wing. Whirring like a fan, they dispersed away with the wind, until the ground was carpeted with the winged sal seeds. The naturalists of the Mahua Kothi lodge joined us in watching this magnificent spectacle with delight and an excitement that grew with every gust of wind. As interpreters of nature, from the humble sal to the royal tiger, for us and for the many other visitors, these splendid naturalists do a daily job, whose value is immeasurable.

With the pre-monsoon thunderstorm has come the wind to carry the sal seed, and the water to nourish the soil where they may grow. And yet, the water is an unwanted burden on the fruit itself, as it makes it short but enormously important spinning journey away from the tree.

Such is the economy of nature that, even as the parched earth soaks the water, the sal shrugs it off its seed.

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