The Gir Diary - In Pursuit of the King

chillibreeze writer — Vinay Nair

Need an editable PowerPoint map of India

The emotions that rise in you as you stand watching an owl are various. You begin examining its build with absolute fascination. The bird is almost like a block of stone! The horizontal breadth of its shoulders blend unmistakably into the vertical of its torso and then, quite abruptly, it all ends.

You cannot see its claws, its ears, or even its wings. Then, as it peers at you with its deeply set and wise eyes, you cannot do much more than guess what it is thinking about you. It gazed at each of us differently and I thought it looked at me with pure disdain and disgust.

Oh just as well - I was part of a group of eight people that had climbed a bank across the road trail into the forest and intruded upon its peaceful morning slumber. After a few minutes of excited chatter about our discovery, we climbed back into the 4x4 jeep and left the owl alone on its lofty perch.

It was close to 7 at dawn in the middle of January. It was cold. It was windy. And I had never been happier. We were still eagerly looking forward to an hour’s drive through the dry, deciduous forests of the Gir National Park in search of the king of beasts. Little did I know then, that this chance encounter with the Spotted Owlet (Athene brama) was to be the highlight of my trip.

That trip had started three days back in the city of Baroda. I was travelling with another bloke, unceremoniously named Nikunj, with whom in the past half year I had chartered abruptly planned trips on motorcycles. And in those journeys we had found obscure waterfalls in the very east of Gujarat, laughed carelessly on a bridge on Narmada Dam with a powerful current sweeping down, got lost in the Dangs and rolled down the misty hills of Saputara with the engines turned off. But now, it was time to head west.

Our plan was to ride across the gulf hugging the coast and into what it is now the last abode of the Asiatic Lion (Panthera leo persica) in the world – the Gir. And maybe after we had got a glimpse, we would head north to the open skies of the Rann of Kutch, which is home to yet another endangered species - the wild ass.

We drove out of Baroda at 3 in the morning. It took us the better part of 16 hours to cover the 450 kilometers to Gir. We had seen the sun rise over the marshy open plains of Bhavnagar and been through the sad villages of lower Gujarat. As we passed through the village of Talala towards Gir, I pinched myself to impress the fact this was the very first time that I was entering a relatively untouched forest.

It did not conform to one’s stereotypical images of wilderness. It was neither green nor dense. There was none of that chaos of the sound of birds or mating reptiles. Instead, there was an eerie quiet pervading the land. The only sounds I could hear were the rumble of our motorbikes and the crumbling of dead leaves under its wheels.

The slowly undulating hilly landscape was parched and dark yellow at this time of the year. As we rode deeper into the forest, the road got progressively worse until it finally disappeared into a bumpy trail. But we couldn’t care less. We had left civilization behind for good.

The setting sun cast a long golden light over the landscape and we caught occasional glimpses of the Spotted Deer (Axis axis) jumping right across the trail. They had velvet-coated antlers that resembled stark tree branches and they moved in long jumps with their agile and thin delicate legs.

We finally reached a small town called Sasan Gir, which housed the headquarters of the Gir National Park. It had lodging for tourists and also provided guided tours through the forest. But that would only be the day after. Right then, I did not want anything more than a bed, where I could slump, and maybe, a bowl of hot soup with which I could while away the night.

I could feel the rush of blood in my legs again as we parked our motorbikes somewhere and wobbled our way to the visitor’s lounge. The guy at the counter said there were no rooms available, although it was clear that most were empty. He summoned a short bald man and said he would arrange a room for us in a nearby hotel with similar rates.

Later, it turned out that the authorities illegally kept the rooms exclusively for foreign tourists. An Indian tourist would pay 500 rupees for a room overnight, but a foreign one would pay 50 dollars, which of course doesn’t work out equal! Nikunj shrugged this off with his usual ‘this-is-how-things-are-in India-and-this-is-how-we-are’ jig.

I tied my bag back to the motorcycle, and we made our way out of the headquarters into the little town and down an alley, at the end of which was the hotel Umang. Its owner came out regally dressed in a Rajasthani kurta and spoke very softly behind his imposing moustache.

Our room was a square box with no windows and an attached bathroom, which was fortunately spotless. Nikunj dove for the bed and was asleep in minutes. I was tired. But I had too much on my mind to permit sleep. I strolled out and found a pile of bricks to sit on.

We had traveled more than four hundred kilometers at one go and had taken in too much of the ragged beauty and the stark ugliness of the land. I remembered the relentless sounds of the road and the words of a Kerouac quote came back to me “ ... .. never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless nightmare road. All of it inside endless and beginningless emptiness ..”

I looked at the sad lights of this desolate town and at the brightest star-studded sky I had seen in years. And for that one moment, I did not know who I was or why I was there. But tomorrow we would start our search for the king.

After a not so amusing cold bath early the next morning, I ambled out of the hotel lobby with a cup of tea in my hands and found railway tracks nearby that hugged the very edge of the town, overlooking a dense but dry wilderness. Standing adjacent to them, I let the sun warm my face. It was a cold but crisp blue winter morning with bright sunshine, and the town of Sasan Gir looked a lot more cheerful.

Later, I accompanied Nikunj on a walk back to the headquarters to enquire about a motor tour through the forest. We found that tours took place twice a day at early mornings and late afternoons. We decided we would go on one later that afternoon and maybe, if we still had any money left, another one early the next morning. And so, we had 6 hours to kill.

We walked on mock trails near the headquarters that illustrated the biodiversity of the forest. I was particularly curious about a tree locally called the Kadayo (Sterculia urens), which I had seen the day before, scattered in the forest. It had a peculiar smooth finish of silvery gold on its bark. Its branches were entirely bare and I thought they made great photographic subjects.

There was also a small museum nearby, talking about the forest and its history, and a very beautiful photograph of a female monkey, jumping across the water, clutching her baby in her arms. There were also a series of bright red buttons, giving out the sounds of the animals of the forest – from the roar of the lion to the haunting wail of the hyena. I wished I could hear those sounds for real later that day.

It was 5.05 pm and the winter landscape shone a beautiful gold with the late sun. And I couldn’t help but stare at her. She was dressed in traditional Maldhari attire: colourful, but predominantly green cotton blouse with sleeves upto the elbow and a black skirt. She had a black thread tied around her naked waist and her arms were painted with symbols I could not recognize except for the swastika on her wrist.

A big silver metal necklace hung from her neck to her stomach. She looked at me with her large brown eyes for a fleeting moment and turned her gaze away as our jeep moved deeper into the forest. I laugh when I think about her. I laugh at the insane gnawing disconnect between peoples of this country. I read somewhere the existence of India is a myth. And it is.

India is just an idea. That girl and I are both of this land. But when we looked at each other, we did not understand…

The Asiatic Lion once roamed the entire western part of India, all the way upto Greece and across to Iran. The Gir was the only place in the world where both the large cats – the lion and the tiger were found together. The tiger has since then vanished from this dry land, preferring instead the darker forests of northern and eastern India.

In 1907, there were only about 13 individual lions left – all confined to Gir. There are of course theories which dispute this. The numbers may have been exaggerated to emphasize the plight of the specie and the actual figure is now said to have been around a hundred. But it makes no difference if it was thirteen or a hundred.

Imagine if there were only 100 human beings on earth. How precariously close to extinction we would be and how precious each individual. This was well recognized by the Nawab of Junagadh when he declared the Asiatic Lion as a completely protected specie in 1907.

The numbers of the lion have since steadily risen and there were 349 of them when the last census was conducted in 2005. But the Maldharis have been living in Gir for generations too. The Maldhari men rear cattle – graze and water them. And the Maldhari women take care of the important things – the children and the household. They live in mud dwellings called ‘Nesses’ and they have a unique way of life, which we fashionably like to call ‘sustainable.’

But what really is sustainable? Nothing is.

The successful conservation story of the Asiatic Lion has given rise to a new conflict. The lions have been accused of feeding upon the easy prey of the cattle of the Maldharis. The Maldharis for their part have been accused of destroying the forest by overgrazing their cattle and even poisoning the lions.

For centuries, the Maldharis have lived off the land alongside the carnivore population of the Gir. They blend into their environment and with time, they have become part of the ecosystem. And that is a fact we seldom understand when we draw the margins of national parks and sanctuaries. We herd wildlife and the natives into blocks of land and expect them to get along; never really understanding the complexities of an ecosystem. It is laughably naïve.

Lions live in groups called prides. Each pride has a dominant male and upto two females. The female hunts and the male spends most of his time marking his territory. When a new male fights and dethrones a dominant male of a pride, he also kills the cubs of the dominant male so as to ensure that only his genes are passed forward.

Male lions are extremely individualistic and they maintain a large area as their territory. Therefore, males that lose out in battles move out and search pastures anew to have a territory of their own. And hence they spread out into ever-increasing human populations and feed on easy prey.

In recent times, lions have been found at places as far as the southern coast of the state. Having been efficiently protected and given their space for a century, they have made a remarkable come back illustrating just how resilient nature is. The concept of the conflict between the lions and the Maldharis is an easy escape from the fact that as the outside human population increases, the pressures for space inside a national park or a sanctuary is inevitable. We do not need to separate the lions from the Maldharis. We merely need to leave them alone.

We drove through the forest for about two hours and found no sign of the elusive lion. Not even so much as a roar. In the winter months, the Gir is dry, and as you watch it, you see that everything is a mirage. Falling leaves cloud everything into obscurity. The movements of its creatures are lost in the backdrop. Its landscape is beautifully barren and silent and as you ride through the forests, you get the feeling that it is silently waiting for the harsh summer months and then the blessed monsoon beyond. Its winter sky is remarkable for its colours; from the deepest blue at the top to the green tinge in the middle and the flaming orange near the horizon. We saw no wildlife that afternoon except for the ever-present spotted deer and two particularly playful mongooses.

We hoped we would see more the next morning on a different trail through the forest - maybe the Indian Hare (Lepus nigricollis) with its large transparent ears or the wicked eyes of the Great Horned owl (Bubo bubo) or even the most elusive of them all - the Leopard (Panthera pardus).

We reached the hotel at 7 30 p.m and were told there would be a documentary shown in an open theater at the headquarters. So, we walked back. The open theater turned out to be descending steps at the end of which a projector was kept. The documentary was a BBC production about the Asiatic Lion that I remembered watching years ago. And now here I was at Gir for real!

I looked around at the unique audience. There were Europeans, Africans and some other foreigners. I hardly watched the documentary. The sun had gone down. Sirius shone brightly in the sky as the young moon cast silhouettes of trees everywhere. Old Hindi music floated in from somewhere and the lazy town began to turn in for the night. And I was glad I was away from the madness.

We did not find the lion the next morning either. We saw nothing except for the spotted deers and the sambars (a large animal that although unrelated, looks like the American moose) and of course, that owl. We could still go to a nearby controlled enclosure built for the breeding of lions called the ‘Gir Interpretation Zone’ that mimics the various environments of the Gir and is used to enlighten tourists. It is at Devaliya - 15 kilometers from Sasan Gir. But we had come to see the lion in the wild, not those that had been tamed in a zoo.

We came back to the hotel to find that we had run out of money and would have to leave for home immediately. I was not particularly looking forward to riding four hundred and fifty odd kilometers again in 16 hours. I couldn’t quite actually believe that it was over. But we packed, paid our dues and left.

The Gir has so much more to it than just its animals or the issues surrounding it. It is one of, if not the last wilderness of this state. It has the allure of desolation. Its colours are infinite and its moods are numerous. And it is the last home of the king.

Chillibreeze's disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article.

Out of 5 “chilies”, our editorial team gave this article...

—About our writer:

Vinay writes for chillibreeze.

The Gir Diary - In Pursuit of the King

>> Read more articles written by Chillibreeze writers: