Gavi is quite different from the section of Periyar near the Thekkady gate. All guests should take advantage of Cardamom County’s outbound excursion to Gavi in order to fully appreciate the unique beauty of wild Periyar. The scenery and the animals are incredible, and this full-day trek is an experience you will cherish always.
Lisel Ashlock
After coming across the Emerson item, and linking it to my own experience as a lapsed researcher, now entrepreneur, I went back and looked at some of the posts Seth wrote while taking coursework last autumn. The courses were remarkable for their relevance to what we do at La Paz Group: Environmental History; Environmental Archaeology; Ecology and the Environment; and Environmental Governance. The history course, in particular, had a syllabus that I appreciated for acquainting or re-acquainting me with some of the roots of thought underlying my chosen occupation (whatever that is).
Now a few days later I have discovered that on today’s date in 1817 Henry David Thoreau was born. A little more digging, and I see he serialized some of his writings in a magazine that still publishes today. He apparantly wanted his ideas spread as far and wide as technology would enable. Surprisingly modern for a man who embodies “back to nature” more than most. Would he have blogged in today’s world?
No need to speculate on silly questions: his writing speaks for itself. On June 1, 1858 he published his first of three tracts in The Atlantic Monthly. It is a lovely meditation on the true nature of pine trees, poetic insight, and moose meat, among other things nineteenth-century. Four years later to the day the same magazine posthumously (he had just died weeks earlier) published his second tract, called Walking, which has about as fine a statement as I can find anywhere: Continue reading
Last year, Sung wrote about the bats in the bamboo stands next to Cardamom County. I’ve always been aware of their presence, but I always lacked the equipment to get a closer look, and even more prominently lacked the equipment to photograph them. This year, my arsenal remains limited, but I have one more telephoto lens than I did previously. From the restaurant’s roof on a sunny day, I’m less than 20 meters away from well-lit subjects. On a windy sunny day, the subjects are generally stirring, as mentioned by Sung – the ideal time to photograph them. 
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I have mentioned at least once why we like the publication, not least for our sharing some etymological roots with it, name-wise. Its journalism is among the best for helping us keep things in perspective. Sometimes we find entomological common ground as well. Milo, our in-house odonatographer, might have easily found a place for his work in the reader-contributed collection above, but we are just as happy to be the outlet of record for his work.
It’s always a delight when I stumble upon a pond or stream with dragonflies and damselflies flying around, defending their territories, basking, hunting, and propagating, their very existence a pleasure for me to witness. However, the rare joy is when I find a gem of a habitat – an area so ideal for odonate life that while I photograph one new species, I have to avoid being distracted by the other four or five more colorful new species I’m simultaneously seeing out of the corner of my eye. I had one such explosive pond-wading experience several days ago while visiting a spice estate near Kumily. Continue reading
One who loves Nature Mother will love this walk, especially during monsoon. You feel the soft earth on the bog, hear the whispering movements in the forest and smell her flowers everywhere. Nature Walk is a three hour trek which passes through evergreen and moist deciduous forests interspersed with marshy grasslands in Periyar Tiger Reserve. The trail normally covers 4 to 5 km area of Reserve escorting along with a tribal forest guide. This program offers an excellent opportunity of Bird watching, butterflies and other wildlife of Periyar Tiger Reserve. Continue reading
The Border Hike is a full day trek inside the Periyar Tiger Reserve along the border of Kerala and Tamil Nadu (one of Kerala’s neighboring states), exploring the length and width of Periyar. The route passes through undulating terrains, at altitudes ranging from 900m to 1300m. Trekkers enjoy looking from the slopes and hills down onto the forest and the vast plains below. Continue reading
Our Central Reservation Team recently visited the Periyar Tiger Reserve.
We were really happy and enjoyed a lot in the Periyar Tiger Reserve. We saw a bunch of elephants and a bison very close to them. Rafting of 3 hours was very good and the chance to be in nature was appreciated. We hope to visit again the next time we’re back in Thekkady.
– Mr. Shyam, Mr. Ashley and Mr. Sumesh
We recently met Mr. Manoj, a tourist escort who is a regularly visitor at Cardamom County. He was happy to share some photographs from his most recent trip to Thekkady.
I visited Periyar Tiger Reserve along with my some of my business friends. We were really pleased to have such good sightings. We saw elephants, bisons and many birds, but the main attraction was the natural ambiance of the park which helped us to unwind. – Mr. Manoj
The Cornell Plant Pathology Photo Lab, run by Kent Loeffler, has an archive of photography worthy of a rainy Sunday afternoon…for now just admire this photographer’s discovery and click through (on the image below) to the other eight pictures of the month on the site:
The Periyar Tiger Reserve is one of those places that gets your adrenaline flowing just a little more than usual, because you’re always on the verge or the high of an interesting sighting or sensation. A good reserve does that. It fosters enough of a preserved environment that exploring it brings you back to a pre-industrial state of awareness.
Today I visited the Newport Bay Conservancy in Newport Beach, California. It’s not quite as wildly invigorating as Wild Periyar, but it was a beautiful day and the birds were hungry.
Click the image above to go to an article, not for the faint of heart, about why encounters with real, wild nature are more valuable than those most of us have, which are increasingly sanitized, gentle and unreal:
…Ecologically speaking, this sanctified nature is not nearly enough. “We live more and more in an enchanted illusion of what nature is, which I think is counterproductive to conservation,” says the Cornell University biologist Harry Greene. It’s the back half of that statement—counterproductive to conservation—that contains surprises… Continue reading
Two days ago I camped with friends in the Periyar Tiger Reserve. We had wonderful sightings: a herd of elephants with a baby, a single bison grazing in the forest, and a bear (a very lucky sighting but from a long distance). It was nice to spot animals at a very close distance and to catch them on camera. I visit the reserve frequently as an official forest watcher, but it is a different experience for me every time.- Mr. Salim
Mr. & Mrs. Sutton staying at Cardamom County visited Periyar this morning and wanted to share their wonderful sightings with us.
While staying at Cardamom County we visited the Periyar Tiger Reserve and enjoyed a lot there. The first thing which attracted us was the Periyar’s naturally blessed landscape. Our kids were very excited and happy to spot elephants, wild dogs chasing sambar deer, bisons, wild boars with their piglets and some the birds too. We were so lucky to spot the elephants with the little one after a short period. This was a unique experience for us and our kids and we hope for the same in future. – Sutton Family
The Guardian‘s Environment section covers the odd spring weather’s effect on one of the rich varied beauties of the animal kingdom (click the image to the left to go to the story). Whether this is just an oddball season or another sampling of climate change impacts, it is disheartening to think of the depletion of color that might result: Continue reading
The Periyar Nature Walk gives visitors the opportunity to explore the dense Periyar wilderness, enjoying nature, sighting wildlife, hearing the rustle of wind and smelling the wild blossoms. The trek often passes through evergreen and moist deciduous forest interspersed with marshy grasslands. Continue reading
What is it with publications in New York? They catch our attention most weeks, if not most days, with something that helps us understand our natural and/or cultural world a bit more thoroughly. Or interestingly. Click the image above for an example from today’s New York Times. If the wonders of southern India’s traditions were not enough to get your day going, then the plebeian wonders outside your own window might:
I’ve logged thousands of miles to catch a glimpse of one exotic creature or another, to Costa Rica to be dazzled by the bird known as the resplendent quetzal, to Hawaii to admire sea turtles, to Venezuela to spy man-eating anacondas. So it seemed more than a little odd that the one time I made a sighting worthy of a scientific publication, I was looking out of my living room window.
Ficus. The word brings to mind many things – the juicy sweetness of a ripe, freshly picked fig; the summer heat of any tropical or Mediterranean setting; fertility. But recently, Ficus means one thing to me: strangler figs. This may sound morbid, and in a branchy way, it is. Many species of ficus begin their lives epiphytically – generally after a seed is dropped by a bird or arboreal mammal onto the upper branches of what will become a host tree. Over time, the seeds will germinate and sprout aerial roots, which make their way to the ground by either hanging freely or by crawling down the host tree’s trunk. It is not at all uncommon in Indian forests to see roots hanging from the canopy.
In early summer the forests of the Western Ghats are roaring with the sounds of insects. Crisp dried leaves crackle underfoot, and monkeys howl in the distance. I didn’t really expect to see animals – any intelligent enough to survive would be sleeping in a cool hollow somewhere. Despite the heat, the woods are beautiful, and the scenes unfolding before my eyes as we trek deeper into the reserve grow more and more unusual, with trees’ limbs and roots seeming to grasp and grope. Continue reading
Last year I wrote about the maize mazes carved from growing corn fields that reminded me of the mysterious Nazca Lines in the Peruvian desert. I just discovered Polish artist Jarolslaw Koziara, whose work falls more into the category of land art installation, with carefully crafted plantings to create geoglyphic imagery. Continue reading
Organikos 