Seasonal Fashion! Multiple reasons to fall in love

The changing face of the dry deciduous forests is a thing of awe and beauty. The author takes us through these seasonal alterations in this lovely article.

-  DEEPTI GUPTA

When you imagine a jungle in the central plains of India, you visualise vast, spectacular tabletop mountains wrapped in lush green forests. A landscape to fall in love with! I was, however, utterly disappointed on my very first visit to the Panna Tiger Reserve. It was the last week of May and the forest felt dull and empty. Trees were bare-branched, very few trees had green leaves, and everything looked brown and lifeless. The Ken river valley, on the other hand, was entirely different, The trees were green, shady and soothing. The unexpected presence of wild animals, a group of ungulates grazing in extensive grasslands, accelerated my excitement.

After two weeks of reconnaissance survey, the first shower of the monsoons arrived. I was mesmerised by the magical way the forest changed in appearance. The part which looked lifeless just two weeks ago was full of life, streams were full of muddy water, and birds were chirping everywhere. There were many W herbivores even on the plateaus, which were empty just a month ago. I began to realise how a forest responds to each season and if one does not understand seasonal changes in a dry deciduous forest, one may end up disappointed.

Panna is unique in terms of terrain with its 'Terraced topography', which stands for tabletop mountains aligned one below the other. I could embrace this beauty deep down in my heart from a watchtower situated somewhere in the middle of the jungle, a stream going through the valley, the beginning of a plateau which is meeting another plateau of the same evolutionary age, a canyon and a river bed with many ungulates feeding on the fresh grasses.