Islands in the Sky

A NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHER AND A WILDLIFE BIOLOGIST EMBARK ON AN UNFORGETTABLE QUEST FOR THE REMOTE MOUNTAINTOPS OF THE WESTERN GHATS

- Aathira Perinchery

It’s a busy road. Vehicles whizz past every few minutes. Not surprising, for we are just a kilometre out of the crowded hill town of Munnar in Kerala, where tourists throng to savour crisp mountain air, manicured tea gardens, and clear blue skies.

But it’s around 8 p.m. now, and the delicate sliver of the sickle moon pales against the magnificence of a diamond-studded night sky. The occasional aroma of tea from a factory nearby wafts in with the wind; loud music playing at one of the many resorts in the valley below carries across too. It’s around 8°C in mid-February: far too cold for someone like me who lives by the sea. I shudder in the chill as I stand on the road carved along the contours of the hill, a steep earth wall on one side and a deep gully that falls into a small river on the other.

This road has also been recently widened. A thick layer of smooth tarmac, and below it, a swanky new concrete culvert dug deep to channel the narrow stream that arises out of the slope. We’re on a quest to see the endemic wildlife that dwells in these high mountains. But both Prasenjeet Yadav, a National Geographic Photographer and Explorer, and I have our doubts: what wildlife could possibly persist in such a small strip of highly disturbed roadside vegetation?

“Look!” The eagle eyes of Hadlee Renjith, our tall lanky naturalist, don’t miss much.

At first glance, all you see is just another green leaf in the pale torchlight. A closer look reveals an almost undiscernible rhomboid outline on it. A frog! Around two centimetres long, the size of a ₹10 coin, he stays huddled. His bright, pear-green body has dark granular freckles, much like you’d see on the fruit.