Silence In The WOODS

Teeming with fl ora and fauna, the Silent Valley National Park in Kerala is an untouched rainforest that allures with adventure and quietude.

- SATHYA SARAN

I HAVE TWO WORRIES nagging me—noise and leeches. I have been warned about the leeches, and have safely tucked my pants into my socks to prevent them from attaching themselves to my ankle. But the noise factor, I know, is beyond my control.

As groups of tourists load themselves into the jeeps run by the forest department, which are to drive them from the check-point in Mukkali, a sleepy town in Central Kerala, to the Silent Valley National Park, the chatter coming from them is incessant. If we are to hear the forest and its faint whisperings and calls, silence is imperative. I cross my fingers and hope the chatter subsides soon. Our jeep driver is cautious, and as we drive painfully up the unpaved gravelly road that winds its way through 27 kilometres of the forest, silence envelopes us.

The Silent Valley National Park in Kerala, first explored by botanist Robert Wight in 1847, has been a protected eco zone since 1981. It was slated to be the site of a dam, but the protests that rose from environmentalists and nature lovers across the country and many parts of the world, persuaded the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, to abandon a proposed dam-building project. Today, the park, which has a core area of 90 square kilometres and a buffer zone of 148 square kilometres, is the closest thing that India has to an untouched rainforest, resplendent in its variety of flora and fauna.