Here are some photographs from a place that is very special to me. It is a beautiful landscape that is called grass-hills. It is a high altitude grassland interspersed with shola forest (a forest of stunned trees, not more than 10-15 feet tall). This vegetation makes the landscape look "out of the world".The dark green is the shola forest and the light green is the grasslands.
Where the wind wooos and the clouds dance,
The sun gleams, The hills are the mute spectators,
and the streams applaud.
Waves of green reach-out to the sky,
Time stops and space is eternal.
The Nilgiri pipit is a bird found only in these grasslands. The orchid is also probably found exclusively in this kind of landscape.This is a place where nature rules and animals roam free. Also a place where it gets extremely cold (dew freezes in the night and forms icicles) and human are so awe-striken that they don't really care.
When i visited this place i realized that there are very few places that remain exactly the way they always were. Time has had no effect on a relative scale.The sheer grandeur and pure beauty of this place has left an everlasting impression. There was not a human apart from our team on those hills, and i got a chance to fulfill my longing to wander and ponder all by myself. I went climbing up the hills at dawn and watched the first rays of the sun climb down each mountain slope.
On the last night of our stay while i was trying to overcome the cold and try and get some sleep, i heard elephants outside my window. I could hear them hit grass stems on their feet to rid the mud before consuming it. Later when they almost walked into our front yard, we got out to announce our presence. We saw them in the half moon light and the supplementary torch lights. They heeded our presence and retreated. These experiences put me in touch with primitive human emotions that i never experienced in the past.Staggering awe, filled with respect for life and beauty. The feeling of being in touch with nature with nothing in between. These experience were enhanced with the company of few tribal assistances who guided our team in field work. Their relationship with nature is truly amazing.Their folk lore, culture and way of life is colored with the essence of these thoughts and emotions.
Finally a few hours before returning, when we were walking to our destination (where the work was in progress) we came across a lone Sambar stag out in the grasslands. A sight i will never forget - a solitary deer on the grassland surrounded by the earth and the sky.
Where the wind wooos and the clouds dance,
The sun gleams, The hills are the mute spectators,
and the streams applaud.
Waves of green reach-out to the sky,
Time stops and space is eternal.
The Nilgiri pipit is a bird found only in these grasslands. The orchid is also probably found exclusively in this kind of landscape.This is a place where nature rules and animals roam free. Also a place where it gets extremely cold (dew freezes in the night and forms icicles) and human are so awe-striken that they don't really care.
When i visited this place i realized that there are very few places that remain exactly the way they always were. Time has had no effect on a relative scale.The sheer grandeur and pure beauty of this place has left an everlasting impression. There was not a human apart from our team on those hills, and i got a chance to fulfill my longing to wander and ponder all by myself. I went climbing up the hills at dawn and watched the first rays of the sun climb down each mountain slope.
On the last night of our stay while i was trying to overcome the cold and try and get some sleep, i heard elephants outside my window. I could hear them hit grass stems on their feet to rid the mud before consuming it. Later when they almost walked into our front yard, we got out to announce our presence. We saw them in the half moon light and the supplementary torch lights. They heeded our presence and retreated. These experiences put me in touch with primitive human emotions that i never experienced in the past.Staggering awe, filled with respect for life and beauty. The feeling of being in touch with nature with nothing in between. These experience were enhanced with the company of few tribal assistances who guided our team in field work. Their relationship with nature is truly amazing.Their folk lore, culture and way of life is colored with the essence of these thoughts and emotions.Finally a few hours before returning, when we were walking to our destination (where the work was in progress) we came across a lone Sambar stag out in the grasslands. A sight i will never forget - a solitary deer on the grassland surrounded by the earth and the sky.
