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The Living Forest
When you walk through a forest in silence, the forest washes over you and bathes you in its energy. You breathe the pure supercharged oxygenated air. You can feel the force of the trees under which you are walking. And you can hear the movement and calls of the animals and birds that the forest…
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Once upon a forest
When you sit silently, you become a part of the surroundings. Your ears initially buzz with the residual sound of the bustle you left behind. But after a while, they fall silent and then you begin to hear the sounds of the forest.
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Kumbhalgarh Tiger Reserve
In an area as thickly populated as this, where cattle are routinely sent into the forest to graze, this is like offering candy to a kid. Human animal conflict is inevitable and so is its result in which the animal always pays the price with its life.
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Zoo in Corbett
Let me introduce you to the tiger. He is not an object. He is not a spectacle. He does not exist for your pleasure or like all politicians, for photo ops. He is not living in your land; you are encroaching on his. The tiger (gender neutral term as it refers to the species, and…
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Tiger by the tail
There is a welcome awareness about the need to protect tigers in the wild and the wild places they live. Welcome even more because it comes now at a time when the tiger population in India (numbers are even more elusive and ephemeral than the tiger) has fallen from 100,000 in 1900’s to less than…
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Kumbha
Human intervention in our national parks is a very serious problem in all parks. In some of them we have highways and train tracks running through the park paid for with the lives of animals crossing them. In others there are villages or temples which result in both pollution with paper and plastic as well…
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What did you see? Nothing!!
Kabini River Resort on the bank of the Kabini Reservior, bordering Nagarhole Tiger Reserve. I am in the Gol Ghar (which is actually rectangular) at tea and snack time after the afternoon safari. “What did you see?” asked an American who had come to Kabini for the first time. “Nothing. Totally dry. Five safaris and…
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We are living beings, not binary code
The big challenge we have today is to teach our children these lessons and help them to connect to the earth, to its inhabitants and to each other. We are living beings, not binary code. The earth is not at our mercy but waits and watches to see what we do. Then it will do…