I travelled all the way from Bangalore to Salem for 4 hours, salem to Bodi for 8 hours, Bodi to Munnar for 4 hours and finally Munnar to Eravikulam for an hour, and then another 1.5 hours in the queue there to see a very special creature- the Nilgiri Tahr. I’ve been fascinated by this animal much before seeing it for real. I've seen videos of it climbing up and down steep hills as if it was just walking on plains that left me in awe. Turns out, the evolutionary trajectory of this animal is even more interesting. It travelled all the way from the hilly chilly Alps to the plains of Iran to escape the cold ice age. It then crossed the Himalayas and came all the way to the Nilgiris, where it now is. Compared to its journey, mine felt like nothing.

Even more interesting is that it is evolutionaryily in between a goat and a deer- a half-goat-half- deer, how cool is that! It managed to escape from the British butchery of Indian forests and from its predators due to its high latitude habitat. It rules the very top of mountains where lay steeply angled rocks, feeding on grass that grow in their crevices. Other animals can't step foot in its territory, literally! Amazing, no? The high altitude and the rocky nature of its habitat meant it was not suitable for tea cultivation, so the greedy British spared their homes.

I caught my first glimpse of this animal just as I deboarded the bus that took us to the gate of the Eravikulam national park. But not in all its glory. It stood on plain ground, to my disappointment, accepting food from people, even more to my disappointment. “ The park’s museum boasted so much about this goat but it's getting whipped on its bum by the park rangers and running away from them", in the words of my 14 year old cousin.

Anyways, after a long wait to get the bus and seeing the first tahr right after getting down, the others stopped by for snacks. During this time my mom and I took a restroom break, bought honey from the store there and visited the Eravikulam national park museum. Finally, we started walking up the path to see more Tahrs. We saw a few more Tahrs grazing around on the grass. There were some that stood so still like a statue. The view was very scenic- to the right stretched out the hill and valley landscape of Munnar hills with tea estates, rocky hills and tall trees all stitched together as an intricate tapestry. To the left was the tall mountain with the rocky top that we were ascending with water streams pouring down as if the rock was crying. We kept walking and talking stopping to take pictures with the beautiful backdrop. My uncle then got a crazy photo idea- he wanted us to sit on the wall facing the other side. The hill was steep and tall at that place which made sitting there like that very scary. But I didn’t want others to know I was scared so I pretended I wasn’t. I was releived after the pic was taken and finally got off the wall. We then got to our first highlightt- a baby Tahr. It didn’t have horns, it’s fur was softer and it was just so cute.🥺 We took pictures with it and then waited for the baby in the group to catch up with us and take pics with the Baby Tahr. While we were waiting I finally managed to see a couple of Tahrs standing on steep rocks and feeding. One of these decided to quickly climb down, squeeze past the fence and charge onto us, most likely in hopes of getting food. I was shocked and scared (it’s got huge horns) and just moved away. My younger cousins started screaming and my uncle started shooting it away with his cap. This scared the poor thing and it started running, scaring even more visitors. Finally this fiasco ended when one of the park rangers shooed it away from the road. We continued walking up and were pleasantly surprised to see water from the mountain streams coming out of a pipe. We took turns drinking this water and oh it’s the tastiest water I’ve had. Who said water is tasteless, huh?

Then we climbed up further and reached the grassland altitude of the hills- the Nilgiri sholas that I have only read about in books. It was quite a experience to actually walk up the hill myself and see the transition to grassland myself and feel the air getting colder and lighter. We finally walked till the end of the visitor limits. Here there was a board with the name of the park and we were waiting to take photos there. Around this time my other uncle called us who was waiting in queue for the bus back to tell us that they were going to leave. So we quickly took pictures and as we were getting ready to leave the mist started coming up towards us. It was a beautiful sight to behold so we decided to take some more time to witness it and take more pictures. Finally we started walking down with hopes of catching up with our uncle in the queue. So the journey back was like power walking only. After coming all the way down I was shocked and disappointed and asganed to see a Tahr with a plastic cup in its mouth. This, and the friendliness of the tahr to humans lobbying for food, and the fact that the national park was a predator free zone which meant these Tahrs were not used to running fast while chased from predators made me realise that these protected Tahrs would never be able to survive by themselves in the wild. It made me wonder if this whole conservation and national park thing was doing it more harm than good?