Few beings would know the Western Ghats as well as the Nilgiri tahr. For centuries, the ungulate has freely roamed the wind-swept shola forests interspersed with grassland habitats. The stocky, well-built goat, with distinctive curving horns and sure-footed gait, is perfectly adapted to steep cliffs and alpine meadows. Males, known as saddlebacks for the silvery…
First comes a clue: This river is born in the Western Ghats of Maharashtra, and it’s also the nation’s second longest river, as per Wikipedia. If you haven’t guessed it by now, it’s the Godavari River that is often referred to as the Ganga of the South. One of the largest river systems in the…
Every time the hills of Kerala slipped, cracked or came rushing down as mud and water, one name returned to public conversation with unsettling regularity. It surfaced in newspaper columns, television debates, official committee reports and private conversations among administrators and activists. Often it was spoken with irritation, sometimes with anger, increasingly with a quiet…