Before starting my encounter with elephants, let me give you a short introduction about the elephants. Elephants are social animals just like humans. They live in closely knit family groups that are led by the oldest female of the herd. Adult males are rebellious and solitary and associate with the herd only for mating. India holds the largest number of asian elephants – around 25,000, of which southern India is home to around 12,000 elephants. In addition to deforestation, disease and poaching, human-elephant conflict seems to be the most widespread and difficult issue to tackle in elephant conservation. Conflict often occurs when humans move into elephant habitat.
In 2004, when I was working in India, I had a strange request from a scientist friend of mine who works with elephants. He asked me to help him out in ‘elephant census’ in Bannerghatta National Park in southern India about 20 km from Bangalore. So I became a volunteer along with 20 other members for 2 days.
The park spreads around 25, 000 acres. It has hills and valleys with the valley containing moist deciduous forest habitat, while the rest of the park is dominated by dry scrubland and dry deciduous areas. For each of the volunteer 2 forest guards were assigned. I carried a binocular & a camera, while the forest guards carried a small drum, walkie-talkie, the maps, food and water, and two loaded rifles. That was the first time in my life I have actually touched the rifle. I asked naively ‘do u ever use the rifle? for which the foreste guard answered that just one month before a forest guard was trampled by a solitary elephant despite of having a rifle. The gravity of the situation was slowly sinking to me. I got the bottom line message that ‘u don’t take it easy with elephants’.
And so we set off for the elephant census.
The temperature was hovering around in the 90s. We were basically targeting water bodies and ponds where the elephant loves to hang out because of the heat. We were very particular in not going too near them to precipitate an anxiety attack from them. They are highly territorial. Anytime we came across a thick bamboo bush, the guards bellowed loudly at times beating even the drum when they were not quite sure what was lurking behind the bushes. Besides elephants, the Bannerghatta national park is also home to a wide variety of wild animals and reptiles like poisonous snake and scorpions.
We counted atleast five herds for the first day. We photographed the dung, and the footprint of the elephants. It was a productive and tiring day. One of the guards spotted a small honeycomb on our way back and he made a bold attempt to grab it from the few bees that were hovering around it. We plucked few broad leaves and used them as our container while the forest guard poked the honeycomb with a twig to extract the honey. Needless to say, that was the best fresh honey that I’ve ever tasted in my life!!
The next day we were not that lucky to spot a single herd. It was almost late afternoon, when we approached a valley. One of the range guards climbed a tree and spotted a herd at the bottom of the valley, wallowing in a flowing stream. Since we were not sure about the number of elephants in the herd we thought we could approach them a little closer. It was a difficult climb downhill with thorny bushes and no paths. We had to be careful about the reptiles too. After climbing down almost half of the distance one of the rangers told us to pause suddenly. He stood straight straining to catch some sound. There was an eerie silence. All I could hear was the gentle rustling of the trees and the shrubs and my own heavy breathing. Then I realized something was wrong. The ranger guard who was in front of me saw some 5-6 elephants that were coming towards us with their trunks lifted high and were trying to sniff our scents.
Thatz when I saw some 30 feet away a glimpse of a brown mass. I felt rooted to that place just like the tree… and that split second the guard grabbed my hand and started to run down hill on the other direction coz the wind will be in the opposite direction if we run downhill. I don’t know where we had that super human strength. We were bolting like winds and I couldn’t cope up with the speed of the guards where I stumbled and fell twice. That guy never left his grip he just dragged me till we reached the bottom of the valley. It was the mother of all runs. After reaching the valley the forest guard pulled out his rifle and fired a shot in the air. A deafening boom. My knees were shivering and my whole body was covered with dust, bruises and scratches.
By then the guards explained to me that probably that chase was a mock charge because calves were there in the herd. If the elephant were to chase us really they would have got us within no time.
Till this day this incident remains one of the most memorable events in my life….
