Of Tea Estates and Wild Elephants

Of the many ways one can encounter wildlife, encounters outside protected areas are often the most fulfilling. Our visit to Valparai in late 2022 is especially memorable for this reason.

Set in the picturesque Nilgiri hills of Tamil Nadu, Valparai showcases tea estates and rainforests till the eyes stretch. We were spending time photographing the endangered lion-tailed Macaques on that evening, when the lodge manager got a call that a herd of wild elephants had wandered into the tea estates.

We hurried in our car with the lodge manager, and after some searching - lo and behold!! A whole heard of elephants with a few calves were happily looking around in the estate.

As we started to take a few pictures, my friend explained what was happening: In the colonial times the British cut down large swathes of the forests to develop the plantations, but they did not cut down the entire forests. Especially in the valleys between hills, we can see the forests. The wild animals in these forests still treat it as their home, and in the evenings and nights they move from one clutch of forest to the next. This movement happens through the tea estates!!

The good news is elephants stick to the valley, and we were watching it from near the top - posing no real threat to the elephants. As we stood mesmerised by the little valve’s playfulness and the love of the mother elephant, the sun started to set on the distant hills, draping the green hills with a golden shade not easy to forget.