Lake Avalanche, Ooty

It is a picture straight out of  a Walter Foster painting book- the mountains in the distance, grey with a hint of violet, pasted against a darkening sky....Swirls of clouds flit across the canvas, rest for a while on the mountain tops.... and then make haste. The mountains and the clouds are mirrored in the limpid waters of the lake.... the reflection so clear... that it looks like one harmonious entity... with the line of symmetry stretched across the lake edge! A gentle roll of the meadows...punctuated with a clump of trees here and a bush there....draw our eyes... all the way.. right up to the lake front. The landscape is simple, yet arresting- just how your nine year old would scrawl hills, lake and trees on her drawing pad. It is surreal. It is Lake Avalanche, 25 km from Ooty.

As the day draws to a climactic close, we huddle in the bus. We need to get to the parking lot at Lake Emerald before darkness and head out to Ooty from there. The bus lurches, rocks, sways and jolts rather dangerously...as it makes its way through the make-shift path- made worse by the afternoon rain. It slices through the thick vegetation on either side of the path. An overhanging branch forces its way through the bus window and gives a nice tonk on the head to an inattentive bus occupant. He needs that wake-up call!
It is a little like Jurassic Park- an electric fencing follows us all the way.. to keep one side of the forest and its inmates....supposedly out of bounds from us. There are warning signs as well... that the fencing is "live" and shouldn't be touched. This is India... we are sure that the electric fence is purely ornamental!! Our hope is that the animals can also read... but don't make a similar inference!

"Yes, we have animals in this area," Karim mentions rather casually. "You should remember that we are connected to Mudhumalai Forest on the other side. So, it's not uncommon to see animals. On this very stretch we've seen one Gaur (Indian Bison) which used to visit every year at a particular time. But, they are not dangerous. The black bear is dangerous- he attacks!" "Mary!" Karim shouts over the drone of the bus, "Wasn't it your relative who had a close shave with that black bear? He is lucky to be alive!"
"Mary is from a village close to Lake Emerald. A woodcutter in her village had a narrow escape the other day. He heard a roar, turned back... and saw that it was a tiger. He jumped... jumped 16 ft... right to the top of a tree! That saved him. Tigers can't climb trees. If it had been a leopard, he would have been gone... leopards are very skillful, they can scale trees, of any height. Anyway, the woodcutter was on top of the tree and the tiger at the bottom! He called from his cell... sitting there. Soon, the villagers came with their drums and the tiger ran away! That's how it is!"

Soon, we are at the parking lot. Karim wants a ride in our car to Ooty. We readily agree. It's not easy to find such an engaging conversationalist.

Karim is a manager of a property on Lake Avalanche. Earlier in the day, he took us on a tour through the property. He showed us the cow sheds, the sheep and the horses. "The sheep are native, we have only two of them now, two others died. Each one has enough wool to make two full suits! But they are not as well endowed as the European sheep.
But these horses are not from here. They are all from Rajasthan. This is "Destiny", this one is "Jhansi"...this one is so big, but he is only 6 months old! Look at this one- he's actually 7 years old, but so tiny- it's a different breed."

We went  right up to the lake front. The water extended as far as we could see, rimmed by the mountains. "The lake is fed by these two streams from the mountains. We've never seen so much water, at least, not for the last seven years! You see those cows on the other side of the lake, on those hill slopes? Can you believe that earlier, they could actually walk across, over a bridge? You don't see it, but the bridge is actually submerged in the lake. We had record rains this year."
We listened to the commentary, all wide-eyed. "If you think that this lake is beautiful, it is nothing compared to the Upper Bhavani Lake! The Lake is somewhere up there...over those mountains- 20 km from here. You need special permission to visit the lake. They found 20 carcasses there, by the temple....." Karim jolted us...and then continued...."of mountain deer. It rained so much that the deer could not get down. There was no food and the older ones perished." Karim mentioned, in a matter of fact manner.
The rest of the afternoon was spent on horse riding while the more ambitious ones amongst us topped it with adventure sports like "monkey crawling", "rock/wall climbing" and "zip-lining".

At the parking lot...... It is a tight fit, but Karim is also huddled in our car. By now, the sun is down and the sky is lit with the after-glow, streaks of orange soon fade away into the grey of the sky and the mountains. The car goes past Lake Emerald and the Emerald township.

Earlier in the day, we went past the same landscape, completely bowled over by its untouched beauty. Sweeping meadows greeted us on every side. Like a Van Gogh painting, the gentle slopes came alive in the dazzling sunshine, crisscrossed with fields- tiny squares in deep-green, light-green and some in a dull olive-green hue. We thought it was tea; we later learnt that most of them were potato, carrot and cabbage.

There's not much to see- by now, it is pitch dark. Through the trees, we catch the twinkling of distant towns on the hill slopes....
"The 'britishers' (as Karim calls them) came to Ooty in the 1840s. The first route was through Kothagiri, from Mettupalayam. There were no stone houses in those days, just the semi-circular, wooden structures of the natives- the "thodas". The British built the first stone house, which stands to this day, as part of the Arts College. Next, came the railway from Ooty to Coonoor. The tracks have a tooth in the middle. This is unique to Ooty, not even the train at Darjeeling has this feature. The roads came much later. We are wonder struck how they could construct so much, in so little time... that too, in those days! You can check the markings still left on some of the bridges- it says 1908! While we wonder about the British and their ability to construct, the British themselves wonder about the pyramids of Egypt! How could they construct so much....?." Karim drifts away and we leave him to his thoughts.

"But the Brtishers made one big mistake! In fact two- they brought the "sholas" to Ooty and the eucalyptus. These two have ruined Ooty's ecology! These were all just grasslands- they say grass can save a person from death, (we need to ask Karim how!) but the British planted these sholas. Sholas are trees which take over the entire landscape- they are completely useless, they can't even give shade! As far as the eucalyptus goes, 30% of the water table in Nilgiris is sucked by them. We are now trying to cut down both of them.. in a phased manner, to reverse the process. It is tough, but it has to be done!"

Surprisingly, on our way back from Ooty, we spotted a sign-board which said "Save wildlife and protect the sholas"!!! We need to let Karim know that there are forces which are working against him!

By now, we are close to Fern Hill Palace. "This palace is run as a hotel by the Maharaja of Mysore, just like the Lalita Mahal Palace at Mysore. The Britsh used to stay in these parts of the town. Except for the collectorate office, there was not much in Ooty proper. You saw the Ooty Lake, isn't it? It extended right up till here, in those days."

Karim has a pink face and blue eyes, dark brown hair, and walks with a swagger of Dev Anand, with a shawl casually thrown over his shoulder. He speaks to men at the stable in Tamil, switches to Hindi as he briefly talks to his family over the cell.... and maintains fluency in English, when it comes to us. It is difficult to pin him down to a particular geography. 

He is remarkably fluid on any topic. He knows the International Schools in the area, how they were built by one Thomas from Kerala in the 1970s, where the foreign students come from... right down to how many students sit in each class!!  He insists that Lovedale Lawrence is still the best international school. You don't contest someone with such breadth of information.

Another bend- Karim says he is home... and has to get down. We catch the twinkle of his eye.. as he waves his hand, thanks us briefly and melts into the darkness.

Lake Avalanche, Lake Emerald and Karim... they are all reduced to a memory... vignettes of which we pull out from time to time... to add colour to our monochrome world!