Just landed in Ahmeadabad and pigged out on amazing Gujarati food. Our first stop is Kutch and hope to give regular updates on the film.

I’m currently working on a small documentary film with Anand Kumar on elephants and conflict in a plantation landscape (Anamalais) in the Western Ghats. Elephants use this landscape–the tea estates, the coffee, the swamps and riverine vegetation, and the remnant forests–as part of their annual ranges. However, every year, between September and February, these elephants spend a substantial part of their time out of the surrounding reserves and in the plantations. The mix of swamps, rivers, forest fragment which are surrounded by tea estates and human settlements have a lot of juicy secondary growth of vegetation, lots of grass and many perennial water sources which they find irresistible (I think) in an otherwise dry period of the year. They occasionally raid food godowns to get at rice, salt, etc., and in the process come in contact with people. There have been occasional deaths of people over the decades and most have been because of accidental and sudden encounters with them in the night. The purpose of the documentary is to build positive attitudes of people towards elephants and also highlight things to do when elephants are around in order to minimize conflict. The film is being done in collaboration with NCF and is supported by The Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, Sanisoft and Canon.

“Conflict” is a funny word and it means different things for different people. There is some real conflict with elephants and then a large part is perceived. Like the iphone 4 antinegate scandal, the people who complain the most are the ones who are not directly affected. The most amazing thing I discovered was that the attitudes of people whose very houses the elephants break once in a while, are very tolerant of the elephants and their needs. They like them and some are even happy to have them around. It is really the  people of the upper classes that complain a lot about the elephants, who are frankly, affected very little directly by the elephants.

In the process of filming these elephants, I have had the privilege of following one particular herd. Its a herd with 6 large elephants and one small calf. The older ones are named ‘Smart Female’ and ‘Step Ear’. I’ll document my journey and days spent with these elephants in the upcoming posts.

Saw-scaled viper sidewinding in the desert

This photograph is one of my favorites from the whole trip and something that I’ve been wanting to photograph for a while now. It was a lot tougher than I thought. I wanted to capture the snake with a wide lens, to shoot the landscape behind it, but then again, this snake is one of the most deadliest snakes in the country and I didn’t want to risk getting bitten. I also had to get a sand dune which overlooked other sand dunes. To make matters worse, I had only one chance per dune to take this shot as once the snake went over it, it would leave its marks behind. I also had to try this early in the morning as the dunes get very hot as the day progresses. After many tries, finally managed this one. I bumped up the contrast a tiny bit in the post to give the dunes more distinct structure.


What’s the film about ?

World Health Organization estimates suggest that over one million people are bitten by snakes in India each year; between 20,000 and 50,000 of these prove fatal, as many as the rest of the world combined. Although shocking, these statistics are still just estimates and as such sadly hold diminished weight. There is presently no conclusive data that confirms exactly what the situation is. But this is all set to change later this year when the Registrar General in Delhi announces the findings of the most extensive survey of snake bites in India ever.  The results are rumored to confirm the most extreme predictions.

So WHY are so many people in India still dying from snake bites each year? India is home to only one of the World’s 10 most deadly snakes yet the number of fatalities far exceeds this statistic.

SNAKE BITES will probe the fascinating natural history that lies behind the report’s findings. Herpetologist, Romulus Whitaker, will unpack not only the statistics but the particular species of snakes that are driving them, taking us on an eye opening excursion through the world of India’s venomous snakes. From the Hook-nosed Sea Snake of the Gulf of Mannar to the Black Cobras of the deserts of Rajasthan, Rom will get up-close and personal with these magnificent animals.

Personally, I’m very excited to work on the project because of the excellent team. We will also be working with some amazing gear. From very high speed Photron SA-3 cameras which were used in Planet Earth to film the sharks, to time-slice rigs which were used in the Matrix movie to get the bullet time sequence.

What an amazing journey it was. The monsoon rains hit us a lot harder than we had anticipated. We missed out on some wildlife (Paul specifically came down for the Purple frog), but we made that up by capturing some amazing stories and meeting some wonderful people across the Western Ghats who are doing great conservation work.

Paul has been diligent enough to write a lot during the expedition. Over the next few weeks, we will start putting the stories together and hopefully will put them up somewhere where everyone can access them. But for a change, its very nice to be back in Bangalore, in dry clothes.

The plan is to head up to Agumbe/Jog/Sirsi from here but with these rains it will mean we might not make it till our destination at all and even if we did, the rain would mean no filming/photographing.

What started as a ‘Chasing the Monsoon’ is fast becoming ‘Escaping the Monsoon’. Sigh

Lot more stories coming up soon. We are heading to the more familiar jungles of BR hills and Nagarahole for the big wildlife and from there we start driving up the state along the Western Ghats.

Note : Sorry about the bad quality of this video. It’s a quick edit and we will put up much better quality stuff once we get back.

We spent a few days in Munnar and then the last few days at Valparai. Paul has been diligent enough to post about our experiences in each of these places, so I will just link to his blog – Munnar, Munnar to Valparai and Valparai.

After this, we will head back to Bangalore for a day or so and then continue the second leg of our journey up along the Malabar Coast.

Every year, I spend the monsoons up in the hills to really experience it fully. This time however, I’m going there with a BBC crew to do some stories and short films for the website. Paul and David are down here from London, and Mandanna and me are all following/chasing the monsoon during rest of month along the Western Ghats. Most places do not have any phone access, but whenever I do have access, I will post updates to my twitter feed. So stay tuned.