The Land of Tea

The capitol of the Nilgiris district of the southern-most Indian state of Tamil Nadu is Udhagamandalam, or Ooty for those who can't pronounce the full name. Nilgiris means "blue mountains" in Tamil. Indeed, the Nilgiris are a bluish hue - outside of the protected forest areas much of the natural vegetation has been cleared for eucalyptus stands and tea plantations, reflecting green-ish blue light across the hillsides.

Ooty is home to a number of NGOs and government offices dealing with conservation issues in the Nilgiris.  We sought out a few for interviews. A Mudumali national park wildlife officer told us that the three greatest threats to the park were poaching, invasive species, and forest fire. In previous years poaching was a huge problem, but recent government-run programs to employ villagers as anti-poaching watchers have brought improvements. Lantana, a bushy shrub, and parthenium, a toxic plant in the aster family, are the region's two worst invasive species, affecting food webs, agriculture, and human and animal health. Lantana, along with recent erratic rainfall, has made the park more susceptible to forest fires. The wildlife officer shared stories of his efforts to increase the park's fire management capacity, as well as to start programs to provide sustainable vocational training for local adivasi youth. He also revealed that, as is the case with many of India's national parks and protected areas, there are currently about 300 families living inside the park. India's conservation protocols require that these people be relocated (for more on this controversial issue see the post on the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Wildlife Sanctuary).  In a deal many are calling the "golden handshake", the government has offered families living in the park 10 lakh rupees (1 million rupees or about 21 thousand dollars) as well as land outside the reserve as incentive to leave. By all accounts this is a great deal. However for many families, the emotional and historic significance of their ancestral home in the park outweighs the financial benefits of moving.

Making our way to Ooty's sister town of Kotagiri, we met with the director of the Keystone Foundation, a natural resource and rural development NGO that has been working in the Nilgiris since 1995. The Keystone Foundation emphasizes the need to include local people in natural resource management decision-making. Its work includes reviving natural vegetation, environmental governance, documenting indigenous knowledge of biodiversity and local cultural practices, and promoting the sustainable harvest of non-timber forest products such as honey, beeswax and fruit. The Keystone Foundation also works to implement the 2006 Forest Rights Act, a piece of legislation restoring rights of forest use back to traditional forest dwellers and indigenous people. This legislation, enacted by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, is seen as a threat by the Forest Department, an entrenched bureaucracy with a history of managing forest land for timber revenue rather than wildlife or the livelihoods of local people. The story of the Forest Rights Act and the Forest Department is a fascinating one that I will discuss in a subsequent post.

Tea cultivation plays an important role in the economy and ecology of the Nilgiris. The state government, under pressure to increase local incomes and standards of living, provides subsidies of 60,000 rupees per acre for tea cultivation and has ambitious plans to expand production. However the Keystone Foundation maintains that this incentive system leads to superficial land values and no recognition of the significance of the greater landscape. A lack of rules promoting soil and water conservation results in loss of trees and soil through erosion.  The money spent on tea subsidies would be better spent encouraging the cultivation of local millets that have less environmental impact and increased food sustainability benefits.  But tea cultivation provides reliable income for 10 months of the year, and it is much more difficult to quantify the benefits of preserving traditional crops and intact ecosystems.    

Deciding our understanding of the Nilgiri biosphere reserve was incomplete without seeing tea production up close, we talked our way into an impromptu tour of one of Kotagiri's big plantations. The tea warehouse was a massive dimly lit space, filled with giant steel machines and the fragrant aroma of Nilgiri tea. Sunlight from the skylights filtered down through motes of tea dust permeating the air. A fine film of tea layered every surface and clogged every knook and cranny of the machines.

Tea leaves are plucked by hand and carried into the processing warehouse, where they are left to wither for a number of hours under fans.  This tea factory used the CTC method (crush, tear and curl) to process their product.  After being bruised and fermented, the tea leaves are then passed through a machine with cylindrical rollers with sharp teeth that, yup, you guessed it, crush, tear, and curl the leaves.  Over 80% of tea production in India is of this sort and is suitable for use in teabags or for the loose tea used in making the ubiquitous Indian chai.  CTC tea produced in the Nilgiris has mild tannin, a generic flavor, and is low cost, contributing to its popularity in the Indian domestic market.  

The Festival of Raksha Bandhan

A few weeks ago the festival of Raksha Bandhan was observed in India. This unique celebration is dedicated to the love and affection shared between a brother and sister. The country over girls and women pray for a long life for their brothers and tie a symbolic rakhi bracelet around their wrists, symbolizing the strong emotional bond between siblings.  In response, brothers promise to protect their sisters, and often give them small gifts of sweets or jewelry.

The origins of Raksha Bandhan are not well known.  One early example of rakhi-giving is described in the Mahabharata, a Sanskrit epic poem from ancient India, in which the princess Draupadi tied a cloth around the god Krishna's wrist where he had been hurt by a thorn.  In exchange, Krishna promised to protect her.  

In my Jaipur household the actual giving of the rakhis was a solemn event. The women quietly moved among their brothers and sons, tying on rakhi amulets made of string, glitter and plastic jewels and blessing them by applying a tilaka mark to their foreheads.  The men in turn gave the women some small item of costume jewelry (I really liked mine - dangly earnings made of wire and glass beads). After the serious ceremony the mood lightened as the boys compared their rakhi bracelets, the women gossiped, and everyone ate Raksha Bandhan sweets like rasagoola and ladoo.

Some of the members of my extended host family showing off their rakhis

A Walk in the Woods

     (in the Nilgiri biosphere reserve)

The Nilgiri biosphere reserve and its constituent parts - source: Wikipedia Commons

Continuing our quest to see more of the tri-state Nilgiri biosphere reserve we bused south from Mysore through the heart of three abutting national parks in three different states - Bandipur National Park in Karnataka, Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary in Kerala, and Mudumalai National Park in Tamil Nadu. Our timing was a bit unfortunate - it was April, the driest time of the year just before the monsoon starts in late May, and most of the core areas of the parks were closed due to the increased likelihood of a careless cigarette butt thrown out of a window starting a forest fire. But upon arriving at Mudumalai National Park we found that although the core area was closed, it was still possible to see some of the buffer area on jeep tours and guided walks. So after finding a cheap but decent hotel and meeting the resident toad living under one of the beds we went out for an evening jeep safari in the lands buffering the core area of the national park from human encroachment. These areas are used for low impact human activities, such as limited grazing and fodder collection, and serve to protect the core area from such activities. The landscape in this area was very park-like - dense stands of trees interspersed with open grassy areas with closely cropped grass, probably grazed by both wild and domestic animals.

Our jeep safari was a bit of a disappointment - we didn't see much other than chital deer and some hulking vultures squatting in a tree, waiting for a pack of stray dogs to leave the corpse of a calf. Supposedly our tour guide kept getting wind of elephant sightings from other jeep drives, and so we tore back and forth trying to find an elephant for ourselves.  No luck.  We did, however, get to ride on the roof of our jeep!  

Next morning we ventured out on foot with our guide into the buffer area. The stillness of the early morning misty forest was broken by distant music from a village temple. Primary targets for the morning - elephant and tiger. In addition to the English-speaking safari organizer, we also had an inscrutable local village man with us. He wore a dohti and turban and padded through the dewy grass with bare feet. Not once during our three-hour walk did he look at or speak to us tourists. It was his job to 1) find us some wildlife, and 2) make sure we weren't eaten by/stepped on by said wildlife. Going on safari in elephant territory on foot is quite a different experience than in a jeep. As Lonely Planet puts it, hiking safaris sound great until you really consider the phrase "trampled to death".  As we slipped through the morning forest we kept our eyes open for tell-tale signs of the proximity of wildlife. These can include warning calls from other animals, broken branches, and of course, scat.  Our guide was very excited when he found this still-steaming pile of elephant poo. "Very fresh" he said. "Elephant must be close".

Sure enough, just a few minutes later, we saw it, our first wild elephant encountered while on foot.  We kept a very respectful distance from it, and because we were downwind and very quiet, our guide said that it likely didn't know we were there. Elephants have excellent hearing and sense of smell, but poor eyesight. After a few minutes, it faded into the scrub, moving surprisingly gracefully for such a big animal through the dense vegetation. I'm no expert, but this one looked to me like a young-ish female. Any thoughts, all you elephant aficionados out there? No tigers seen on this trip, sadly.  Now that would be an intense on-foot encounter!

India's Second Cleanest City

On our way from one national park in the Nilgiri biosphere reserve to another we passed through what, according to India's urban development ministry, is India's second cleanest city.  In a 2010 assessment of 423 cities with populations of over 100,000, Mysore in the state of Karnataka scored 71 out of a possible 100, which puts it in the "recovering but still diseased" category. Three other cities (Chandigarh, Surat, and the part of New Delhi administered by the New Delhi Municipal Corporation) also achieved this better than average but dubiously described ranking ("diseased"? Oh, yes please!).  

Not a single Indian city managed to score above 90 ("healthy and clean").  Jaipur, my current city, scored 31, barely made it into the "needing considerable improvements" group, while almost half the cities considered fell into the lowest "on the brink of public health and environmental emergency" category. Cities were ranked, among other things, on drinking water quality and prevalence of open-air defecation.  Not really a very cheerful picture. 

But Mysore is lovely.  I didn't necessarily notice that was cleaner than the average Indian city, but found something about it to be very appealing.  The Mysore Palace certainly helped.  This magnificent building was the most recent official residence of the Wodeyars, the rulers of the kingdom of Mysore from 1399 until the independence of India in 1947. The building was completed in 1912 and is lit-up to spectacular effect at night. The rooms inside are lavishly decorated with massive paintings and gilt furniture, plus decorative screens to allow the women of the court to peer outside to observe ceremonies without their modesty being compromised.  Mysore also boasts a fascinating bazaar selling everything from essential oils to cooking supplies to heaps of coconuts. Sadly we were only able to linger in this second-cleanest of cities for a day or two. Our time in south India was growing short, and we still had one and a half biospheres to visit!  Next stop, Tamil Nadu!

Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Wildlife Sanctuary

The second biosphere reserve on our itinerary was the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, a massive 5,500 square km area straddling the borders of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala. Encompassing about eight separate yet contiguous protected areas of various designations, the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve preserves a variety of grassland and forest types in the hilly landscape of the Western Ghats in southwest India. One unique characteristic of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve is the prevalence of indigenous tribes, or adivasi, in and around the forests.                                                                                                  

Our first taste of the Nilgiri was through a wonderful visit to the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Wildlife Sanctuary, a protected area in Karnataka several hours from Bangalore. The Bangalore-based NGO and research organization ATREE (the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment) invited us to visit their field research station in the wildlife sanctuary. Never ones to turn down invitations to wild and wonderful places, we hopped on a bus from Bangalore to Mysore and then onward to a series of small villages inside the sanctuary  And a sanctuary it is - we actually saw wild elephants from the public bus on the way to the field station!

The wildlife sanctuary is named for and located around the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple, a Hindu temple dedicated to the Lord Ranganatha, locally known as Biligiriranga. Sitting perched on top of a hill with a commanding view over the sanctuary's forested hills, the temple supports an abundance of simian entertainment. Walking through the monkey-infested temple grounds at the top of the hill was rather like making your way through a minefield - unpredictable monkeys rushing here, chasing each other and occasionally showing an unseemly interest in bananas I may or may not have had in my backpack.  

While staying at ATREE's field station we took a safari or two into the surrounding jungle. On our first trip we met a rather feisty young male elephant.  Lurking in the trees just off the road, he first watched our jeep for a moment and then lumbered out, head swinging and looking a mite aggressive. Our driver responded promptly, gunning the jeep down the rutted road, not enthusiastic about what an angry 10,000 lb mammal could do to his vehicle (and passengers). Also seen's include the ubiquitous langur and rhesus monkeys, chital deer, and a most impressive animal I've seen nowhere else, the Indian gaur. The gaur is the largest species of wild cattle in the world, bigger than the Cape Buffalo or American Bison. These truly massive animals are very shy, and we caught just a glimpse of two individuals as they faded into the lantana in the dim dawn light.           After the bustle of Bangalore, the BRT was a glorious retreat - the blare of bus horns replaced by bird song, the  smell of half-combusted disel fuel replaced with fresh mountain breezes.

One of ATREE’s partner organizations in the Biligiri Rangaswamy landscape is an NGO called Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra (VGKK), a social entrepreneurship organization dedicated to the sustainable development of the tribal people living in and around the biosphere reserve. In the BRT the VGKK works mostly with the Soliga, a tribal group who have lived in the forests of the BRT for thousands of years.  Their lives and livelihoods are inexorably linked to the forest in which they hunt, gather wood and forage. This largely sustainable use came under threat in the 1970s from strict wildlife and forest conservation policies instigated by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The 1972 Wildlife Conservation Act and the initiation of Project Tiger in 1973 have been responsible for tremendous conservation successes. However the “inviolate area” theory upon which Indian wildlife conservation is based has done enormous damage to tribal groups who suddenly find themselves evicted from land they have lived on for centuries.

Within the BRT Wildlife Sanctuary VGKK has built an “organic village” complex containing a school for Soliga children, a community hospital, and a vocational training center. The Soliga school sounds like a very rigorous institution: the children’s schedule keeps them busy from 5am until 9pm! ATREE and VGKK have also involved the Soliga in a participatory resource monitoring program, building on Soliga traditional knowledge to promote environmental education and ensure the sustainable harvest of forest resources.

The success of this community-based conservation experiment has high stakes – in January 2011 the wildlife sanctuary was designated as a “Tiger Reserve”, a very restrictive conservation category that excludes all human use of the area. This designation requires that all 574.82 sq km of the BRT be free from human habitation. In effect, 1,500 people will be evicted for the benefit of the estimated 35 tigers living in the reserve. Although the evictees will be compensated with money and property outside the reserve, many do not want to leave their ancestral land.  ATREE is helping the Soliga present a case to the Forest Department that their innovative participatory conservation strategies will protect the tigers without requiring mass relocations. The outcome of this legislation is being closely watched by conservationists of every persuasion and could well mark the beginning of a new trend in Indian wildlife conservation policy.

Bangalore Kolkata से ख़राब है

(in which Bangalore is revealed to be an inferior mega-city to Kolkata, despite what all the tech-heads think)

Emboldened by our success in reaching the salt-encrusted tiger swamp, our first Indian biosphere reserve, we hopped on a plane from Kolkata to Bangalore in hot pursuit of our second.  Bangalore, India's 3rd most populous city and the capitol of the state of Karnataka, is the gateway city to the Nilgiri biosphere reserve, a fantastic landscape of forested hillsides and tea plantations spanning three states. Known for its parks, renowned research institutions and universities, and high-tech industries, Bangalore ranks highly on most people's list of livable Indian cities.

But in this self-described Garden City I failed to find a single garden. My Bangalore experience was a wilderness of crumbling cement, congested roads, and cockroach-infested budget hotel rooms. It probably didn't help that I spent most of my three days in the city in and around the chaotic wasteland of the interstate bus terminal. Hey, the accommodation was cheap, transportation was easily available, and I only had three meetings to conclude before we could get the heck out.  One evening we succeeded in escaping the grey hell in order to find the city's commercial center.  But here too, gaudy signs and blaring traffic left me cold.

Bangalore, I do not love you.  But maybe I didn't give you are fair shake.  When next I come again, show me your fair parks and multi-billion dollar corporate headquarters, and then, perhaps, I will give you a second chance.

Here are some pictures of the few sights of Bangalore I did find appealing.

Typical south Indian food: dosa on the left and idli sambar on the right. 

The Sundarbans

The unique ecosystem of the Sundarbans is highly vulnerable to climate change. Sandwiched between the freshwater flow of three major rivers from the north and the ever-shifting sea to the south, the mudflats and islands of the Sundarbans are constantly eroding, accumulating and being reshaped. One potential impact of climate change in the region is increased storm intensity. The good news is that the Sundarban mangrove forests serve as a buffer, mitigating storm surges before they reach inland areas. The bad news is the increased risk from typhoons for the four million people living in here.

The entire Sundarban ecosystem is also extremely low-lying, at or within a few meters of sea level. Current climate change projections estimate that a sea level rise of 28 cm above 2000 levels is likely to occur in the next 50-90 years. This would result in a 96% decline in Sundarban tiger habitat, with similarly dire consequences for the area's human inhabitants.

Accurate maps of the Sundarbans island system are hard to find, partially because the landscape is always shifting and maps are not accurate for very long. Another reason for the lack of detailed maps is the government's thought that good maps facilitate poachers, illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, and black-market cattle smugglers moving cows across the border from Hindu India to Muslim Bangladesh. This coarse map from the Sajnakhali Wildlife Sanctuary museum is one of the best I've seen.

When asked to identify the biggest environmental threat to the Sundarbans, many of the government and NGO officials in Kolkata and Canning with whom I spoke did not mention climate change. Rather, these experts cite human population density and poverty as much more immediate problems. The Sundarbans is one of the most densely populated areas in the world.  Over half of the region's historical mangrove forest has been cut down for firewood and other subsistence needs. The remaining forest, both inside and outside of the national park, is regularly exploited for timber, fuel, pulpwood, thatching materials, honey, bees-wax, fish, crustaceans and mollusks. The West Bengal Forest Department is responsible for the preservation of the protected areas. However even this somewhat entrenched bureaucracy recognizes the impossibility of strictly enforcing all the rules. Sundarban subsistence harvesters are extremely poor and lack alternative means of making a living.  Before the Sundarban ecosystem can in practice enjoy the full protection that it has on paper, the socioeconomic situation for local people must be greatly improved.


The relationship between local people and the Forest Department has gotten much better in recent years. Twenty years ago, villagers regularly killed wildlife that strayed out of the national park and also illegally entered the park to poach tigers and other animals. Nowadays poaching has been much reduced and villagers will turn straying wildlife over to the Forest Department. In exchange, the Forest Department has done an increasingly good job of involving local people in environmental decision-making through joint forestry management (JFM) programs. The Forest Department has also taken steps to improve socioeconomic conditions in the villages and increase resiliency to climate change by digging wells, planting mangroves along the mud embankments separating agricultural fields from the sea, and promoting economic opportunities.


From the Sajnakhali Wildlife Sanctuary we took a day-long boat cruise through the watery roadways of the Sundarbans. The 3-meter rise and fall of the tide was dramatic as the mudflats at the edge of the forest disappeared and then reappeared as the day wore on. We didn't see the famed Sundarban tiger, but encountered birds galore as well as many chital deer, the tiger's main source of food.  Right around camp we ran into the resident mongoose begging for food at the kitchen door, as well as a fat 5-ft water monitor lizard. Small fishing boats plied the water, some sticking to the legal side of the channel and some stealthy drifting through the backwaters, deep into the protected forest. These men risk more than arrest and fines by working in these areas. Sundarban tigers are notoriously predatory towards humans. Small Sundarban fishing boats are typically operated by two people, and stories abound of one man disappearing off the back of the boat with barely a splash, his friend in the prow not noticing his absence until the lull in the conversation becomes awkward.   

Sundarban boat safari: looking for wildlife

Local fisherman: legal or illegal?

Who invited the mongoose to dinner?

Chital deer

Red fiddlers

Water monitor

The tiger fence lining the landward side of the protected area. Looks flimsy but is apparently a decent deterrent.

Prime tiger ambush spot. Stripy bodies blend really well with these variegated ferns

Tiger fence close-up. The net is soft, but the tigers don't like the floppy feel of it and generally avoid it.

Sunset view from the watchtower of the Sajnakhali Wildlife Sanctuary

Casts of tiger prints made during the most recent tiger census.

For those of you with a 2009 India Lonely Planet - check out info box on pg. 536.  Yeah. this is THAT guy.