Tequila Uchila

Uchila.

Uchila is a fishing village somewhere between Mangalore and Udipi on India's western coast. And Akuna Matata (no, I haven't mis-spelt it), is the resort in Uchila where I spent an idyllic weekend.

The bus from Bangalore reached earlier that we anticipated. As soon as my morning ablutions had been completed, I headed off along the beach to where the fishing boats were coming in with the morning's catch of shark, mackerel, crab and an assortment of fish that I had never seen before. I watched as the fishermen carried the boats in from the water. And I watched as the women of the village bid for baskets of the catch, covering them with tyre-tube rubber weighed down with bags of sand to keep them safe from the brahminy kite and crow bandits.

After breakfast, the Arabian Sea, clad in its green-blue best, tempted us into its folds. The waves looked mild but perhaps the nearing monsoon winds were already lending them power. We enjoyed being tossed around for a while before a strong current out to sea convinced us to get our feet back on solid ground.

Back at the bungalow everyone was settling down for a snooze, so I decided to explore the village. The villagers watched bemused as I walked along the path in the midday heat with camera in hand. They must have wondered what it was that I saw in the bugs that inhabited the bushes on either side of the road. Anyway, I learnt very quickly that the coastal humidity can turn a fresh dry t-shirt into a soaking rag in a matter of minutes. Garden lizards scampered out of my way as I headed back to read in the relative comfort of the indoors until the day cooled a little.

The evening low-tide exposed rocks that were home to hundreds of skittish
crabs that scuttled away as we clambered up. We poked around in the cracks and pools disturbing the fish and the anemones until the returning tide sneaked up on us and had us scrambling to get back to dry land. The sun sank gently and beautifully into the sea.

Sunday morning, after the fish auction, it drizzled lightly. I walked along the beach, narrowed by the high tide, playing with the sea's ebb and flow, stopping to examine an eel here and a starfish there. It's a wonderful feeling to know that the marks you leave behind are being wiped clean by the sea and that the people who come after will have a flawless beach to walk on. I'm sure there's a beautiful moral in there somewhere!

Football on the beach is as exhilarating as it is exhausting and after fifteen minutes we gratefully stopped for a lunch of deep-fried prawns and prawn curry and rice (at least, that's what I ate). Lunch was followed by the arrival of the monsoon which we watched bear down on us from the west. It's a magnificent sight; the dark rain clouds charging in from the sea and the water being whipped up by the monsoon winds.

Another weekend went by in a flash. And what a weekend it was - Sneha's birthday, Paul popping the question, Lisa accepting, tequila cheers and Taboo!

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The High Life

Yercaud.

The bird song that woke me on Sunday was a little too loud. I blinked as my eyes adjusted to the pre-dawn light and tried to remember where I was. "Ah, yes... the weekend in a tree house!" The bird sang again and I crawled across the creaking floor to the doorway and peered out at the leaves silhouetted against the grey of the morning. Covering myself with a blanket, I sat and listened as the chorus of birds greeted the rising sun.

It was still too dark to distinguish between the birds and the leaves, so I shook off the cobwebs in my head and tiptoed back into the room, washed my face in the alga-green water, grabbed my binoculars and headed down the ladder and out. I'm sure the others were awake but didn't share my feathery obsession.

As I walked through the coffee shrubs to the road, a little Jungle Owlet silently glided out of the leaves and alighted on a twig in front of me. A glance over his shoulder and he was off again. Just past the gate of the estate, an Asian Fairy Bluebird was hunting from his post on the tree by the road. The deep red eyes, in sharp contrast to his blue and black coat, ignored me as I watched him shuttle to and fro across the road.

Up the road I went, towards Pagoda Point (or Pakoda Point, depending on which sign you choose to believe) smiling happily at all I met on the road, stray dogs and humans alike. Anjali had mentioned that she'd seen some woodpeckers near the check dam that we'd walked to the day before, that's where my footsteps turned. A crowd of Jungle Babblers babbled noisily in the clump of trees caught in the turn of the road. Among them, a Brown-fronted Pygmy Woodpecker made his way up the trunk of a silver oak. A pair of Gold-fronted Leafbirds flew from tree to tree near the check dam.

By this time, my stomach was crying out for breakfast, so reluctantly I turned back. A Crested Serpent Eagle sat watching me watching him, and then regally spread his wings a flew over the valley and into the distance. The White-cheeked Barbets sang a loud chorus and the Plum-headed Parakeets screamed along. As I walked through the gate to the estate, I spotted three Greater Flameback Woodpeckers getting breakfast and I was reminded to go get my own.

'Twas quite a morning with Magpie Robins, Scarlet Minivets, Ashy Woodswallows, Coppersmith Barbets and Rufous Treepies added to my list.

After breakfast and a guided hike to the edge of the Shevaroy Hills, we drove down to Yercaud town, found some bicycles and rode some way around the lake. After lunch, we left Glenrock Estates and Yercaud behind and drove back to Bangalore. The tree house stay was too short; high in a banyan tree, it was surprisingly large, easily holding all five of us, though the bamboo partition for the bathroom is not for the shy. Perhaps I'll visit again some day and listen to the Racket-tailed drongos scream outside the window once more. And perhaps I'll pay more attention to the many butterflies that flitted through the trees.

Ten Sunny Days

It was like a scene out of an old sepia tinted movie. Just outside an abandoned railway station, a dust covered traveller steps out of a bus with just a bag on his back. The bus leaves in a cloud of dust, and every face turns around to watch the new arrival. But that's where the movie switches back to colour.

To the people of Kallidaikurichi, a chinese face is a rarity. Rare? I don't think they'd seen one in the flesh until I stepped off the bus. They have, however, seen Jackie Chan in Tamil dubbed movies sitting on mounds of sand in their open air theatres. And so, for ten days, I was Jackie, and expected to teach little kids kung-fu.

But that wasn't why I was in this sun-scorched village in south India. Abhi was looking for someone to help with her survey of waterbirds in the tanks on the border of Kalakkad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve, and I wasn't about to let such an opportunity pass me by. And so we visited the tanks and counted birds by the hundreds - egrets, herons, storks, moorhens, jacanas and kingfishers. The birds that were the highlight of my stay though were the Cinnamon Bitterns and a Red Collared Dove. And the Ashy Woodswallows chattering animatedly in the Palmyra trees silhouetted by the sunset.

There were Bark Geckos and the Fan-throated Lizards aplenty, and a walk by the canal showed us a few baby Checkered keelbacks.

The heat prevented us from venturing out most of the day, and so I spent a lot of time in the nursery helping Ruthamma with the saplings. It's a joy communicating with someone without words. We spoke sans words about butterflies and trees and slugs and mosquitoes.

It was fascinating to hear the story of the tilted lingam of the 1200 year old Thirupudaimaruthur Temple from one of the priests. The temple is named because the lingam was found in the hollow of an Ashoka tree by the king who built the temple. Legend has it that a sage was coming from a long way for a darshan, and found the river near the temple in spate. Unable to get to the temple, he prayed and the water subsided. When he got there, he found the lingam tilted to one side and he asked god why, and the god replied that he had tilted his head to hear his call. And that's the story of the idol in the temple.

Atree, the organization that was playing host to me, has various programmes to get the local people involved in conservation. One of them is the flying fox census that the kids of the village participate in. And so, one evening we set off to this temple compound with huge trees where the bats roost and waited for them to take off to their feeding grounds and then counted them as they flew by. The kids have been doing this once a month for the last two years for this particular population of 2000-3000 bats.

Ten days went by in a flash washed in sunshine and lemon juice. Ten days of eating breakfast, lunch and dinner off banana leaves with my hands. Ten days of trying not to spoil Jackie Chan's name. Ten days of birds. Ten days of stalking the insects and frogs in the garden with the 105mm. Ten days of stories that would fill volumes!

And then it was time to say goodbye and time to get Ruthamma to smile for the camera.



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