Dear friends and family,
Kalai vannakkam!
Jamie and I made it safely to the field station at Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary by bus and got all set up here. We met Nandita, Gita, Mara, Soumya, Boma, Bharanaiya, Datta, Mohan and Mr Raghu and his Amma. Needless to say, it was a lot to take in at first. But since then the pace of life has been very relaxed, especially compared to the frenzied streets of Chennai.
Our projects got off to a good start. I’m doing a bird survey in some of the disturbed areas near the field station and in and around a coffee plantation that borders the sanctuary. It gets me up nice and early to see the birds at their peak time in the morning. And in late afternoon I get to be out there as the sun sets next to the hills. Boma, one of the field station’s trackers, is absolutely indispensible as a guide! Jamie is doing a project on seed selection in legumes involving a lot of statistical analysis.
On Wednesday my adviser, Datta, was singing a song in Kannada about the moon blooming in a garden of stars. That night it was indeed a full moon only this time I saw it from the feet of the Nilgiris, or “blue hills” in Tamil. What I’m trying to say is that it’s beautiful here. It’s usually no more than 75 or 80 degrees Fahrenheit and we’re so high up that we see clouds floating about the hills at eye level just across the valley from us, after having come all the way from the Indian Ocean only to crash into the Western Ghat mountains here.
The wildlife is right at our doorstep. There are the eagles swooping overhead and the hummingbirds flitting all about. Boma tells me a leopard killed a dog the other night outside a house within 500 ft of the field station! I’m under a strict warning not to go beyond the nearby dam because of marauding elephants. And I’m to wait a moment after opening my door to listen for cobras and vipers that may have snuck in while I was gone – Datta nearly was bitten by one once in just that way!
All in all I’m extremely content – our next four weeks here will definitely be a singular experience. If there’s anything to complain about, it’s only that it’s so cloudy you can never see the stars!
I hope everything is well back in the States.
Isaac H.
pseudoisaac 