Happenings of Mahseer; My Time in Tiger Land
So Sumantha explained how he had some projects in mind for me while we drove the usual hazardous style to the happy homestay, There seemed to be a large chunk of meat for me to get my teeth into- part of that being tiger meat. So after lunch at the homestay I continued the day shadowing him, sitting in various meetings in varying offices with larged varied people; journalists who I would never see again, Manoj who was helping organise the Sports for Conservation event, someone I would get to know better later. The only thing that didn’t vary was the language…it was mainly in Hindi…but magically I got the gist of the discussions.
The main project which I would be conducting mostly on my own was to work with the WWF and learn about the women’s self-help groups in rural communities- who mainly produce a vermicompost (compost using worms) which I would become very familiar with. For this I went on a few trips which a women from the WWF named appropriately named Geeta (meaning vulture- which are part of our conservation effort) who had been working in conservation for 10yrs now. Conversation and communication was slightly limited but obviously her English was better then my almost non existent Hindi. Again I manged top grasp what the villagers were talking about and common sense of the subjects told me the rest of Geetas sentence before it struggled to come out of her mouth, so in a way I like to think we helped each other out.
Into the Valley
A couple of days after id been aquainted with fred, we had barely got back from the safari when she asked me if id like to accompany her to the lodge in Vahngat. Riverine woods was place Sumatha had built as an eco-friendly cottage accommodation surrounded by native plants and employing local people. He’d done an excellent job. Though still tired from the safari I decided to accept Fred’s invitation.
Getting there involved a bus ride then an hours trek (thank god it was downhill) on a steep slope which marred with my clumsiness could have been fatal…thankfully the fates decided I should not die this way. Apart from the danger of the drop before we even got to the slope we march for half an hour through the dense misted forest….a tiger -known to be aggressive towards humans had been spotted here recently. Sumantha had insisted someone come and meet us half way, but Manoj being himself was late…..Fred piked up a big stick as we entered the woods. It was very misty and damp adding to the eeriness of the gallant dark trees and dead leaves lying like unclaimed bodies of battle on the floor….It could have been a case of being ravished in ramanager if we came across the tiger- though being ravished by a tiger would mean in the way of being seized and carried away by force as I had read about in Jim Corbett’s books.
Manoj typically timing impeccable met us after we had walked though the woods and had reached the slope. He greeted us with umbrellas and shared Fred’s cigarettes, while I wondered if the tiger lay below with its mouth open ready for us to land….just like my cat used to o on the bird table- tigers are much more gifted in stealth then that cat. It was great hearing the French and Indian make comments teasingly in Hindi and later, in the many times I sat around outside the kitchen of the lodge- waiting for chai or food, the banter that went on always seemed like good fun even if I could barely make out what was being said.. I knew enough to glare jokingly at Manoj when he mentioned my name in a sentence, looked my way and laughed….The banter with the staff looked like great fun though I’m sure for Fred who could understand most of what they were saying wasn’t as entertained ‘ boys’ she would say and roll her eyes (or the equivalent that she would do which was pursing her lips to one side and closing her eyes.) The situation for me was more like a comic strip with blank speech bubbles to fill in…
We walked through the fairy tale green village where the sports event was going to be held the following week. A big open space was available for playing cricket on and our mission this visit was to bus/trek to a nearby village where a Mela was being held. We were to put up posters that Manoj had seemingly slaved over but was still rampant with mistakes. Posters can go anywhere in India with no one bothered about messiness of old 5 yr old posters still clutching to their wall, though of course we asked permission from shop owners before pasting the posters to their shop fronts with a glue of flour and water some one had mixed that morning..not out of eco-friendliness but sheer lack of glue. With messy hands Manoj helped then switch from the paste to black marker and corrected his typing error of LPW to the cricket abbreviation LBW.
Me, Manoj and Fred had drunk rum and discussed the usual as foreigners do when all together….their own countries. We laughed muchly through broken communications but the following night I was given the option of returning to the homestay in Dikuli…..I took it, not wanting to intrude anything, as at that moment I didn’t know if there was more then just a friendly spark flying around.
Ramnagar errands
One morning we set out on a mission to buy rope, foam, ans several other obscurities.
I was always fearful of lonely planets description of Ramnagar as a dusty little town, turns out it reminds me of those parts of Rajasthan, like the old city of Jodhpur in particular with those jumbles of shops that sell only polythene,or metal or bike tyre inner tubes, and you wonder how they make a living. Though as this part of India doesn’t really have any local handicraft, there’s not really any shops with pretty things directed at tourists. There’s the typical bangle shops all grouped together selling an array of cheap jewelry, toiletries and cosmetics.
The one street rule of shop gatherings applied here, with the linen and sari shops on one though mayb with other odd ones dotted around the town. The cheap cotton products shops grouped in another area and the chemists lined up opposite the non signposted doctor. Dusty yes. But useful and cheap. We went to a shop that sold every type of rope possible except typically the one we needed to play tug of war with….We went to another where we found the right rope but the shop keeper refused to cut it to length..he was obviously waiting for the day that big sale would come and he would sell the whole length!…..eventually we found another shop with better rope and bought ten meters ( later Fred would kick herself as we obviously needed 30…then it would be a last minute dash)
We bought some pieces of foam…which was far more expensive then I thought it would be…but was of very comfortable quality. This was for the lantana furniture that was being made…Lantana is an invasive weed that is a nuisance in the forest as it takes up much ground space from native plants plus Isn’t very nutritious for the animals. However this is a very useful product when harvested- as I would find out when I met a man who had written his whole thesis on this plant that was bought over from Mexico.
Lantana Lady
Fred was heading the Lanata project and in other parts of Indian the weed had been molded in to strong furniture, like the piece we were buying foam for. The idea for the project was to offer the opportunity, to boys from a known tribe that engaged in poaching, to go to Bangalore to learn how to make furniture out of this free and abundant raw material .The trouble was getting two rural village boys on a train- some of the women in such villages had never seen roads I was told. Later when I visted their village I would find this wasn’t true of the Kunjar tribe from which we had harvested the boys. The people had been driven out fo the forest and were now living in very poor conditions on the edge of the road. In the end they succeeded in finding to young boys up for the challenge and enthusiastic about making a living from such work. From the shape of the village you could see why they’d taken the initiative to make a move to a big city, in the hope of a better life for them and their families. Don’t get me wrong they seemed happy enough, but then again they had learned to live with the hardship they incurred.
Fred was greeted by many of the people/shop keepers she already knew and her skill at Hindi was well respected (and slightly feared) by the men and enjoyed, by local women. We went to buy some more raw material for another project. Neema dolls. Sumantha had told me about this. Neema was a girl who lived in the village of Ringora between Ramnagar and Dikuli. Sumatha had told me she was a ‘character’…. and when I met her later on I was surprised by her moodiness, however she made these obscure but pretty dolls simply designed, using of a shredded grass with platted arms and ribbons around their waists. Some of the dolls were carrying bundles of wood on their head, representing the women who went out to collect the wood from the forest. This was another attempt of the Masheer Conservancy to develop local handicrafts that could be sold on oder to prevent that excess wood being collected for selling/trading. Money made from such project could be used to buy cooking gases- which although isn’t best for the environment in the long term, in the short term it helps to take the pressure of the forest and its wildlife. Until an alternative is found. In my opinion the sooner an alternative is found to using LPG for cooking the better, otherwise we are just encouraging gas consumption and dependency.
At first I thought it would be a good idea if the dolls stood for something, like the Peruvian Worry Dolls or dream-catchers, something that would offer an incentive to buy, in the end it became clear that the dolls told of the hardship the women face in the forest, putting there lives at risk by entering the wild animals habitat ( conflicts have been common in the past) So guess eventually the dolls will represent protection of these hard working women, as again production of such handicrafts would help keep the women from having to work excessively in the dangerous forest areas.
Geeta Bachou!
So one of the other things we got involved in was a Mela in the Ramnagar itself. The conservancy had taken advantage of the display; hill top tribes accompained byl music and costume parading around the town on floats, singing and dancing. We decided to get a few floats going ourselves, in the form of gypsies displaying banners for the vulture campaign, yet another project of ours.
The story with the vultures is that once upon a time Indian used to be rife with vultures, and it needed to be, with the biggest cattle population in the world. These cows which I don’t think I’ve made enough of a point of saying how there EVERYWHERE,(its like the Cravendale advert.)…for religious reasons ect they aren’t killed or eaten, and when they die cannot be burnt or disposed of….so this is where the need for vultures come in. When the carcass is put out in a field by either a farmer or someone who has removed it from the town the vultures come and feed. However, a couple of years back a new anti-inflammatory drug came out for veterinary use. Diclofenac; evil. This drug was given to sick cattle in the hope it would save the farmer from losing ones of his heard…though 9 times out of ten the cattle would die anyway and the drug would remain in the body for up to 3 days…the vulture who would then come to feed upon this carcass would ingest the diclofenec and with the doses to the cattle needing to be large it would be fatal to the vultures, who would endure 3days of pain before death released them.
Without an important part of the food chain- the savager other problems would arise, stray dogs would feed on the decaying cattle carcasses usually picked clean by vultures, their population would increase with this new source of food and running among towns would quickly spread disease to other dogs and humans. Its crazy when you think of one species of vulture, only one per cent of the population (counted at the depart of the British) remains
Corbett Tiger Compost
So with the compost project I went out a few times with Geeta to visit the places where local people were producing vermi-compost.
One village we visited was near a some land where an elephant had outwitted the electric fence (which usually turn off during power cuts anyway) and ruined some crops. We also dropped in on a family who were using producing bio-fuel to use for cooking. They offered us Chai and sugar cane (which I remember been given once as a child by my dad….however with the bark tough on this stick i was given my teeth weren’t strong enough to remove it and get to the sweet interior, the children happliy biting, spiting and chomping away laughed as a failed miserable to get more then on or two bites.
We visited a forest corridor the WFF were monitoring and i saw my first set tiger pug marks. this had been before my trip to the park for safari….and would be one of many to come.
The villages were a sight of beauty, despite what people may think about cutting trees to create room for agriculture, the forest was protect and the land used for agriculture here was a to grow food….even so with such a large population I met some people who Geeta told me were ‘landless’ and therefore very poor, and only able to do labour work.
Despite the poverty the village was beautiful and I was taken to some more houses that were producing the compost, and inspected the banana leaves and the worm eggs amongst the dirt….one lady tells me in Hindi translate wed by Geeta that she used her vermi-compost for growing onions…and the crop grew the biggest onions shes ever grown. Just inspecting it before it even sieved you can feel how rich and moist the worm castings are.
After this we went in to the forest across the now dry river from the village, no tiger pug marks this time but there we did spot peacock marks, porcupine burrows and fresh elephant droppings…we also encountered several groups of men and women heading deeper into the forest to cut wood. We had been told of a tiger frequenting this part of the Forrest so when the village men accompanying us started to head deeper into the bushes after the elephant trail Geeta, a little anxious called called them back.
Shoot to Kill
When keith who had previously worked on the project returned from seeing his partner to the airport, we had a nice drinking session where I met yet another friend of the project, a man named Param who I was introduced to with the added note that…he too works in conservation..but in a very different way….I later found out he had a very different approach to dealing with poachers…He believed in the shout to kill policy enforced in china and told me about once getting out of his gypsy with a shot gun and firing at some poachers….Fortuantly he’d had a few drinks and his aim was off, otherwise he might of been in trouble…he’s still backing the policy though.
He’s also making this amazing documentry film about a village where every year a festival is held in which 300 or so men throw rocks at each other….The idea is, every year the blood of one human must be sacrificed to the goddess (I’ve yet to read up on it) There used to be human sacrifice of some sort, but as the outside world go more sensitive they started instead to have these rock fights, where rocks…not stones, as big a people’s head are lifted and thrown at other men with the intention of drawing blood….Only when the priest judges that sufficient blood, equivalent to one human, has been spilled does he have to run through the fighting crowd without being hurt and declare ‘enough!’
The drinking session me and Fred set to work on the vulture exhibition for the sports event we were hosting . The display would be made up of laminated photographs which we spent the night making holes in and stringing together along with descriptions underneath (in English and Hindi)…the hope was that we would give people at the event something interesting to look at and they would take away with them awareness of the situation of this large bird. Fred had previously made a life sized vulture with another volunteer, Ollie (who I heard much about…So we were to take that along to and hope that on the hill it would magically become real so we would be know as miracle makers who added another bird to the decreased population. We were up till 4am with more whiskey and an album called ‘look into the flower’ on repeat (it played 4 times over). Other prep for the event had included some art work on by my hand in the making of a flag bearing the Mahseer logo for the girls tug of war event….I had spent an hour carefully copying the Hindi- it could of said anything….before Sakir kindly came up and offered to help….He corrected most of it ..though he also wrote in straight lines (and re-wrote it in bold print so I could paint over with fabric paint) So it turned out making sense and looking good.We also put to gether a display board (well reycled polysteren bordering on its 5th reuse) on Sustainable tourism and the bio-diversity of the Ramganga river.
We visited a school (which surprisingly reminded me of my previous high schools,) this was a town school though and very different from the young huts in villages with kids sat out side drawing or playing. It makes them so happy if you wave at them and they find me and Fred so fascinating, though to be fair were not you average westerners….short red hair and nose piercings dressed as I do….and then Fred with her 15 facial piercings wearing combat trousers….there more used to seeing wildlife fanatics kitted out in desert type outdoor wear…We were at the school to arrange a drawing competition that would be exhibited with the vulture display. We gae them the title of ‘Unsustainable Tourism is a Curse’ and left their imaginative minds to create some hilariously cruel ideas but also some good art work.
Looking through the drawings later, one featured an overly bloody car/animal road crash ( very common here) another took the curtsy of writing ‘ the blood will become in the water’…i couldn’t make out weather he was trying to make a religious reference to ‘the water will become blood’ or he was just scared about lots of blood in his river’
Tiger Tales
one night I was sat having my dinner – I often ate alone at the homestay as Fred who did occasional work at tiger camp took her dinner their- suddenly I hear a chital-spotted dear raise an alarm call. It continues and gets nearer…..i carry on with my chapatti and then I hear the cow call – just downstairs, shortly after Sakir comes up and asks me did I hear the calls, yes I say as the cow moos again and the chittal continues to call….’tiger, 100%’ says sakir ‘just here’ motioning to a tree the other side of the wall. We cant see from the closed mezzanine where im sitting so I go out on to the roof and look one of the bigger trees just across the road, its pretty close, no wonder the cows scared. We cant see a thing because of the foliage and the darkness but the alarm calls confirm it, most likely a tiger has come over the ridge and down towards the road. I search for eye shine in the darkness but see nothing…its enthralling to know a big cat is so close but we can’t see it. Kieth had told me about a time he was walking down this road late one night..only to look behind and catch glimpse of a tiger following him. Unlikely to be a man eater it probably wasn’t interest in Keith as l0ng as he wasn’t a threat. Another story I was told involving a volunteer and a tiger. The guy had gone down to the river to get water while staying in Ringora village…on his way up he looked out as usual for pug marks….none…on the way back however, simply a minute later, he saw pug marks that had no doubt been stalking him as he had walked in the direction of the river. There’s many stories like this, and a thousand more within the villages, telling of attacks and man eating tigers….
5 Days in Dikuli
So five days of cricket…how on earth did I manage it? I mean I used to love playing cricket, but 3 matches over 6hrs was a bit much for four days. The first day was the girls event where so games were played which such skill I thought I was watching a senior netball match…one game quite like musical chairs…but strangely without the chairs and the music….anyways if I thought the shoves and grabs in this game were violent for girls I should of know of the next game…which was a bit like British bull dog except in this one team of girls drags only one member of the other team to the ground….a girl had a gash on her neck were another girls nails had cut into her skin…blood sports. I took part in the tug of war as one team were a girl short…..we lost…the girls all out up a gd fight, in all the games in fact. It was really enjoyable day followed by heading back to Vanghat lodge (Sumantha’s luxury eco-lodge) where we sat down by the river in the darkness drinking whiskey and raising debates. Then we were cooked the meat Keith had treated us to, and sat around a small fire until the alcohol and heat took effect.
The next few days were similar….except of course now the cricket was playing, so all in all me and Fred didn’t have much to do but tend occasionally to the exhibition, which none of the boys were interested in, 6ypical. More river drinking was had again that evening and again before Keith left, then again with some friends of Sumantha’s…..at the end of the five days I couldn’t believe it, the cricket, and our social sessions, were finally over.
One day we had walked up the track to the village form he lodge and Sumantha has spotted leopard pug marks, we had heard alarm calls that morning from the same direction…meaning we were treading the ground the leopard had been on only hours before….I spent the later afternoon wondering if leopards would play fetch with a cricket ball.
(see writen articles for more details, I’ll post them later)
Coming to an end
So after the sports for conservation had finally come to an end, it was time to write everything up for the blogs and media articles and sort out other things. I worked determinedly on my articles for the sport, the compost and the long article I was writing on the four tiger deaths….One night Sumantha informed us that a man named jay would be staying the home stay…he couldn’t take a room at tiger camp lodge as he was working undercover and so trying to keep his presence here unnoticed….He was the journalist who had cracked the Sariska case (when the government had insisted there were tigers in the reserve…he unearthed the truth… tigers were extinct from the locality.) Jay was here at Corbett of course to look into the poisoning of the forth tiger and the possibility of others….though I spoke to him later on the phone, the night he stayed we didn’t see him come in or leave..neither did we hear him….just an informative publication for me to read.
All in all my time on this project was amazing, so many times I pinched my self when riding in the morning sun light- either on motorbike family gypsy cum taxi, or local bus. I was finally here, I was doing interesting work with amazing people, I felt honored to have been given this opportunity. In a way it was hare to throw oneself into altogether, I was only to be staying a month, and in the grand scheme of such things, this is a very short time. If plans had been different, if I was at a different stage of my life, I had finished my studies, traveled some more, then maybe I could of committed myself to something like this. Hopefully this will be possible in the future. :> ill learn the local language, marry a local tribal chief and take care of the goats :>
Tags: 1, india
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