With the laziness beginning to wear off and the extra trips through the buffet line starting to show, I knew it was time to satisfy the body’s need to get moving again. We are limited to our hiking freedom due to the danger of elephants and other wildlife. Before arriving here, we thought we would be out hiking quite a bit and possibly even leading such treks. Due to some legality issues of foreigners leading groups and more importantly our safety, we have learned that venturing into this jungle is best with a local guide. While elephants are not man-eaters, they are quite unpredictable and can be very aggressive (and known to rag doll our species with great ease). Fortunately, we have been put in contact with Greg at Jungle Retreat and Bella – local jungle man!

Both have quite different styles: Greg is the get-to-the-top guy (great for me!) while Bella is much more the silent-stalker for wildlife sightings (great for Em!). Ironically, and we will not tell Bella this as he would be devastated, we have seen more large mammals with Greg. This morning while jolting down the trail, Greg came to an abrupt stop before back-tracking and telling us to back up. Seconds later, a small herd of elephant crossed the trail about 30 m in front of us. One mother had enormous ears and was guessed to be well over 50 years old. There were also a couple babies in the group. We hung out, let them do their thing (which was lethargically chomp the local shrubs and grasses), and then passed. Just a few minutes further down the trail, we heard the langur (acrobatic monkey) consistently chant their panic call. This is to alert the other langurs that a leopard or panther is nearby. No we did not see a cat, and do not expect to, but we are feeling our chances of spotting one (even the tiger) increase when we’re out with Bella.

While Greg is a young 20-something who looks fairly western, Bella was born and raised locally, and looks exactly like you would imagine a jungle guide should: camouflage pants, old green shirt, and carries a machete. Watching him track wildlife is fantastic! In addition to finding clues through pugmarks and dung, Bella gains information by feeling the warmth of local branches or tapping his machete against the trunk of a tree. Most prevalent for successful tips is his sense of smell. He will often stop on point with his nose in the air and then lead us a certain direction. We’re not sure how much of this activity is for show and how much has some practical wildlife-tracking purpose, but we enjoy all of it! In addition, he keeps conversation to a limited whisper while predominantly using hand gestures. While we understand some basic stop or come signals, we were a little uncertain to some of the other twirly finger maneuvers during our first outing with him. But with time, we are getting it.

With Bella, we have tracked an elephant, a group of wild boar, langurs, giant squirrel, spotted deer, and more birds than I know what to do with. During one short afternoon walk, Em spotted 28 different birds and 8 additional ones she could not positively identify. Some feathered highlights include: grey-headed fish eagle, fish owl, Malabar grey hornbill, several types of parakeet, sunbirds, and many more. While we are stoked to just be out in such a foreign ecosystem, Bella is a large-mammal specialist and seems determined for us to see “rare-animals” like the tiger. We’ll see!

With a stall in the monsoon, the weather here has been excellent…some sunshine, some clouds, very little rain, and temperatures in the mid 80s. Instead of an early monsoon meteorologists were predicting with the bad weather a couple weeks ago, now they are fearing heat waves and draughts up north in the next couple weeks. With most all of India (and this part of the globe) dependent on the monsoons, we hope the rains come soon.

Labels: India