The jungles of Kanha made popular by Kipling’s Jungle Book have always held a great attraction for me. For some reason these forests have always brought to mind, the true image of what a ‘jungle’ should be. A mix of Sal and rolling grasslands, Kanha is a wildlife lover’s paradise. Of course the star attraction still remains the tiger. But my last visit to Kanha left me with mixed feelings and several questions.
Perhaps the most memorable time in Kanha for me is the early morning ride. It is bitterly cold, but exhilarating if well clad. We leave before sunrise in an open jeep and just soak in the atmosphere. It is dawn and the trees are still shadowy but the grasslands look like a fairy land with glistening dew. Then the sun comes out and the forest and grasslands are transformed magically. As we drives along, we encounter the special feature of the park, the hard ground swamp deer or barasingha, a sub species found only in this park. A magnificent animal where the male has a royal bearing with twelve point antlers (the name barasingha is derived from this). The rolling grasslands are also home to thousands of spotted deer or cheetal and other animals and birds. But these unending grasslands as we see them now were not so. There were villages in what is now the park. Kanha National Park has a history of phased relocation of villages outside its core zone. Since 1960, as many as 27 villages have been relocated. Successfully or not remains a question. Our visit to one of these relocated villages brought home the fact that people still miss their earlier location. It was not clear if life has changed for better or worse. Park officials staunchly believe that the barasingha population and the general health of the park would never have been what it is today, had the villages not been relocated. But was the option of leaving the villages inside even considered? Do we have any evidence at all that the villages inside would have spelt doom for the park? As we drove through the vast Kanha and Saunf grasslands (both are now relocated villages) I was left with this niggling doubt.
We had just returned from the early morning ride when word came that a tigress with four grown cubs had been spotted. So we were back in the jeeps accompanied by park staff to the location where the tigress had been seen. Once we got there, there were elephants to take us to the thicket where this mother and cubs rested. I hesitated before climbing on the elephant. Never before had I indulged in this practice, very prevalent in some of the national parks in Madhya Pradesh. The logic given by the park authorities is that every tourist wants to see the tiger. Its best then to locate one tiger and take tourists there. Only one part of the park and in it the resident tiger population is then exposed while the rest remains undisturbed. I am still not convinced about this. For one, this continues to put the spotlight only on the tiger while taking away from the rest of the park and its inhabitants. Why does only the tiger continue to be the star? It also takes way the thrill of seeing the tiger only by chance and by the draw of your luck.
No doubt the spotting of this splendid animal with four grown cubs in the thicket where we would never have been able to go by jeep was a memorable experience but for once there was no feeling of exhilaration that a chance spotting gives. Also many unanswered questions. Did I do the right thing by even agreeing to go see the tiger under the circumstances? Was this appropriate?
No comments:
Post a Comment