Forest Tales

Elephant rides, fresh pug marks, an elusive tigress, darkness which leaves unknown fears in its wake, memories of battles with tuskers... Dudhwa National Park has many stories to tell Subhayu Mishra

It's 7.30 on a winter morning. We, a pack of four, huddle for warmth on Gangakali's benign back as she sways gently into the depths of Dudhwa's forests. The jungle shivers, the sun lances through some tears in the canopy and dewdrops endlessly wet the leafy rug on the forest floor. All of us, ready to train our field glasses should the elephant turn, on that heady scent: camera barrels poking apprehensions. Gangakali moves off the jungle path, breaking a few branches for space. Then she stops. The grass is flattened and smeared with fresh blood on our left. Gangakali is tense, the mahout is almost falling over - trying to preen through the mosaic of green. It looks like they are confabulating on the tigress's coordinates. A tawny fish owl stares in mock anger like we could catch the great cat in its eyes. But she has camouflaged herself beyond redemption, slinking off into the recesses of Dudhwa's jungles.

At eight the previous night, five days before the moon winks for the holy Id-ul-Fitr, four Mumbaikars alighted from the Uttar Pradesh state transport jalopy ten kilometers from Palia Kalan - a little settlement before the Terai jungle sweeps far out into Nepal. There we stood in the middle of a road leading to nowhere (it actually runs thirteen miles to the border of Gauriphanta), the taillights of the bus dying on us. We had found our way from the last outpost of urban India at Lakhimpur Kheri, seven hours by road, north-west of Lucknow. Stealing scrunchy sugarcane, between rusty side-bans of the bus, from bullock carts snaking their way to factories, we were filled with the heady scent of adventure like those sprightly bulls with psychedelic horns, yoked to unending carts. But dusk glides in low and fast in these parts. It caught us at Palia. The night was dripping black, the morning sun seldom so welcome in the tropics.

All pics: Subhayu Mishra

So the early morning elephant ride leaves us famished and, over toast, omelettes and steaming cups of tea, we lie on the dew-speckled grass, looking at the great cacophony in a clutch of Eucalyptus trees - drongos, orioles, parakeets and tree pies setting themselves ablaze in the sharp, winter sun. Small Tharu huts, christened after the tribals of the area, dot the borders of this clearing with netted windows that stare into huge tree trunks and the depths between them. Next to a rambling bungalow, a machan, at the edge of grass, overlooks a reed-needled lake filled with waterfowl and dipping otters. Wooden benches lie scattered under Sal trees where in shifty chequers of light and shade we drift in and out of countless siestas. The days are punctuated by two trips into the jungle, on the silent Gangakali and in a jukebox of a van that sends almost every creature scurrying for cover. This National Park, under Project Tiger, does not have a single good vehicle for tourists and you get to know that you can have one from Palia only after you've left it way behind. Fume and fret or grin and bear; a good vehicle is worth its weight in gold.

Even with that deafening rattle, there is a sense of alien space about Dudhwa. The paths are straight giving a tunnelled view of its depth and hardly a second tourist vehicle crosses us. Electricity is rare, the water is lukewarm for a bath well past noon in the solar heater and a miserly fire, around which we huddle and listen to hair-raising tales, is the only wellspring of warmth through winter nights. But the jungle is beautiful beyond belief. A dense forest of domineering Sal (Shorea Robusta) trees gives way suddenly to sprawling grasslands and sometimes, to glassy lakes. These grasslands are a leitmotif of the Terai, and in their sprawl offer ample grazing and frolic for chittals, hog deer, sambars and the imported rhinos (cordoned off in Kakrah for their legendary love for sugarcane) from distant Kaziranga. In the weed-laced lakes, the endemic wetland Barasingha chomps on succulent vegetation amid flocks of waders and water birds. We didn't meet the endangered Bengal Florican, a visitor to these parts lending glamour to countless coots, moor hens, teals, pintails and geese. However such grasslands are better visited in April when new grass sprouts from the ashes that controlled fires leave in their wake. From November till the burning in March, the reeds blind your vision and animal sighting is difficult.

From Dudhwa's lakes, we take these afternoon walks along its rivers, Suheli and Mohana. A stork-billed kingfisher between leaves watches its white-throated cousin perform another flawless dive. A changeable hawk eagle is perched on a skeleton of a tree. Suheli gathers the remains of daylight. A furlong away an enamel mosque looks like the only tooth in the old river's mouth. Birder extraordinaire turned muezzin, Naseembhai calls us for a bout of prayers - a guarantee for meeting the striped cat. The guards confirm that a tigress hunts on the right bank of the river, which runs close to the forest bungalow, and in the chill of winter when mating rituals run deep, she is on her catwalk for a mate. Our prayers at the mosque, however, go unanswered.

Anyway, it's an afternoon of walking to Billy Arjan Singh's haveli at 'Tiger Haven'. The grand old man is away at Lakhimpur Kheri and we turn back disappointed. A legend in Dudhwa and the nearby parts, he had reared the tigress Tara which allegedly converted to a man-eater, becoming the focus of controversy. Billy took on the government over this issue and the protracted fight ended with the shooting of Tara by the then director of Dudhwa National Park. Billy Arjan Singh remains a repository of knowledge on Dudhwa's jungles and is widely respected and admired. We cross Suheli, which is just a tape of water behind Billy's house, by a canoe. It's so shallow that even crocodiles find it hard to stay submerged. Once we scramble on to the high bank, the guide has a twinkle in his eyes. He takes a quick look at the watch, "Keep close and walk fast - this is tiger country." Five of us, with hearts in our mouths, walk through this place in the falling dusk, past fresh pug marks for the next hour and half. The jungle is poised, on the brink of what we don't dare to think of, much less turn around and see. The next morning, on the same path, we find that a large male has just sauntered by. The pug marks, fresh as daisies and large as fronds, are the stuff lores are made of. With the tiger in decline, meeting such a large male would have been an epiphany.

The last night by the ritual fire, Shukla recounts his freestyle fight with a wild bull elephant which had migrated from Nepal. A three-inch hole in his right buttock is so graphic, it looks like the elephant dug a sheath for his murderous trunk: there are tigers of course chasing motorcycles for a mile, arboreal witches, nabbed poachers and secret liaisons that Gangakali and Champakali are having with nonresident bulls. The dozen guards we roost with, the mahouts and guides, haven't got their meagre salaries for months. They toss potatoes into the embers, warm the cockles of our hearts and make spartan gruel and chapatis - a kindred food they offer us. That night, like the half a dozen we spent by the fire, they call out in stentorian voices to each passing profile, just making sure the jungle is safe for all.

At eleven we trudge back to our huts, starting to pack in slow motion. A distant train gathers strength on meter gauge and thuds past. The railway line runs through this forest with 18 trains sawing Dudhwa's peace time and again. Easily the most damaging of threats, passing trains kill animals, disturb the habitat and shake up the forest.

But a void in its wake is quickly filled by the jungle. We come out to the verandah, and indifferently flick on our headlamps. The beams play on leaves for a while and suddenly catch a pair of glowing eyes. We miss our breaths, and wherever we scour after that there are pairs and pairs of eyes staring back. A herd of spotted deer, on a night out, scatter embers in the air, for us to keep catching on our beams.