And of all the forest birds the most valuable to me is the Indian Pitta bird. Pitta’s are almost impossible to find when my birding clients are around in the winter. But come summer and Pitta birds that have been keeping a low profile all through the rest of the year, start calling all over the place. I have one calling right behind my house.

Disgustingly many of the Pitta birds that you will find in Goa hang around in bushes where people without toilets go to defecate. The Pitta birds don’t feed on human feces directly. But they do love the flies that come for the excrement. Yuck!

I should have remembered that when I was busy photographing a Pitta bird on the way to Socorro Plateau this morning. I had taken Diesel my Rottweiler along and it wasn’t long before he had discovered some fresh human excrement and joyously and unabashedly rolled all over it. Yuck yuck yuck!!!

Diving into the water!

2^nd April 2012 11.00 p.m.

I’m in the car with Ray (my client), zeeve (my snake tracker) and Deepak (a forest guide) looking for animals in Cotigao again. The forest is frighteningly beautiful. At least to me, since  I’m easily frightened in the night! I hear the unmistakable call of the Jerdon’s nightjar. I shine my torch and catche eyeshine in the distance. The eyeshine is close to the ground so at first we assume it might be a mammal of some sort. Turns out it is the Nightjar! We park and quietly creep towards the bird. Every five steps I take two shots. As we get closer to the bird caught in the torchlight my shots go from being unrecognizable to very usable! The nightjar remains frozen all the while. Eventually we get to less than three and a half meters of the bird. I can tell cause my 400 mm lens won’t focus at less than that distance! ‘Go back to the car and bring your macro lens’ says Deepak. I find this hilarious. Never in my life have I been too close to a bird! I come back with the macro and the night jar is unmoved. But as my shutter drops from only two meters away it finches. I take one more shot and the bird explodes and flies off into the night.

Pics taken below were all in the day. The bird below was found in the laundry room at Ayesha and Jamshed Madon’s house!

The flight shot I am particularly pleased with. Dropped the shutter at the right time on that one.

Still trying to sneak up a little closer on them orioles…so it’s work in progress!

Snakes are probably the easiest animals to keep as pets. When compared to dogs, cats, birds and other warm-blooded animals, they are extremely low maintainance creatures. For instance, they need to be fed once in three weeks, they poop once in three weeks, they don’t need to be taken out for walks everyday, they don’t need a lot of space to run or fly around, they don’t leave fur on your cushions, they hardly ever get ticks, and they don’t need to be given baths at all!

Don’t get me wrong—I love dogs and cats. I have a three year old Rottweiler named Diesel, who is a lot of fun. But he does need a lot of food and attention.

There is, however, one aspect in which Diesel scores majorly over a snake: he’s willing to eat dal and rice if I’ve forgotten to buy mince! Good luck convincing a snake to do the same! It is one of the fussiest eaters on the planet.

First of all, a snake will only eat what it has killed. Secondly, it must be the right kind of animal (if a snake wants a rat it won’t eat a frog, and if it wants a lizard it won’t eat a mouse). Thirdly, the food must be the right size (if the prey is a bit too big it is immediately rejected). Fourthly, it must smell right (albino lab rats apparently aren’t as appetizing as regular wild brown rats). Fifth, the snake must not be close to shedding its skin, or else it won’t eat, even if it is starving. Sixth, its prey must be presented to it in the right environment (the ambience accompanying the meal must be top notch—don’t get the humidity right and you’ll have one snake who won’t be giving your restaurant any business). Thank God snakes are deaf, or one would have to worry about background music as well!

The ‘fussy eating’ part is one of the main reasons why I don’t keep snakes as pets, the other being that it is against Indian laws to keep indigenous snake species as pets.

My collegue Marc Jaeger in Switzerland, though, has solved both these problems. He has over six hundred snakes from all over the world—mambas from Africa, cobras and kraits from India, rattlesnakes from the US and anacondas from South America. All of them have been legally acquired over many years and Marc now organises exhibitions with them all over Europe.

How does he manage to feed so many finicky eaters? Well, he buys his food in packets. Frozen rats and mice in packets! When it’s feeding time, Marc thaws out some mice and warms them up in warm water. He then picks one up with a grab stick and shakes it in front of the hungry snake’s face. The snake, sensing the warm body of the mouse, grabs it without realizing that it is actually already dead!

The baby Boa constrictors (american) in the pictures grabbed new-born mice and instinctively coiled around them, as they usually would to suffocate their prey. From birth they instinctively know how to do this and won’t have it any other way.

My observations were that the little snakes squeezed the mice for about 3-4 minutes. If the prey had been live they would have continued squeezing it until it stopped struggling completely. Apparently some constrictors can even sense their prey’s heart beat and will not stop squeezing until it has stopped as well.

After releasing their prey the boas quickly started sniffing about (or rather tasting the air) with their tongues. Prey can only be swallwed head-first and like all snakes these boas have a sense of smell so sensitive that they can actually locate the head of their prey only by its smell!

The mice being only a little bigger than the boas’ heads the boas had no difficulty in swallowing them. After all these snakes are capable of swallowing prey more than five times the size of their own heads!

As the six boas (only a foot long) engulf their prey only two feet away from me. I clicked pictures and watched with wonder. Eventually they would grow into the infamous Boa constrictor which supposedly gobbles up humans – the truth is that adult Boa constrictors average only about 8 feet which makes such a feat impossible!

Infact Boa constrictors are among the most popular snake pets. While wild ones can give you a nasty bite captive specimens that are regular handled make for very calm and gentle animals. The first Boa constrictor I handled when I was fifteen was one such specimen. This Boa constrictor affectionately named ‘Charlie’ lived at the Madras crocodile bank and was eight feet long.

Boa constrictors are found in North, Central, and South America as well as some islands in the Carribean. Ten subspecies are recognized. The ones in the picture belong to the subspecies Boa constrictor constrictor also known as the red-tailed boa.

Boas are very similar to pythons and people are often not sure of the difference between the two. After all they are both constrictors, non-venomous and generally large and thick bodied. The biggest difference between the two is that pythons all over the world lay eggs. Whereas boas all give birth to live young. A female Boa constrictor can give birth to between 10 and 60 babies at a time!

Pictured also is another south american species of boa called the Emerald tree boa (pic also taken at Marc’s snake park in Switzerland). Notice the heat sensitive pits along its upper lips. The pits though not as sensitive as the heat sensitive pits on pitvipers are nevertheless a big asset to these boas when hunting. And they are especially effective when hunting warm blooded animals in the dark.

P.S.: Marc has the most amazing snake park I’ve ever seen and I highly recommend you see it in case you visit Zurich in Switzerland. His web address is http://reptilexpo.ch

They are reasonably skittish but occasionally let you get quite close. Which is great when you want to get a shot of the bird sitting down. If you wanna get a shot of it flying (like the one below!) then you’d better be some distance away from it or it’s next to impossible to lock focus on it once it takes off!

I have so many pictures of osprey that choosing from them was really difficult. Hence the copious quantities of pics in this post!

These shots were all taken on my birding trip in Goa.

Pied kingfishers are probably the only kingfishers that can hover. I’m pretty satisfied with the hovering pics below, but am still hoping that one these days they’ll fish just a little bit closer to me!

I’ve just got off my flight at Port Blair and am squinting at the sky.

The sun is already pretty high up and it looks like it’s at least nine o’clock in the morning. But my watch tells me its six-forty-five! On second thoughts this isn’t strange. Port Blair is the capital of the Andamans and even though I’m technically still within India, I’m actually closer to Thailand!

Fortunately, people here speak Hindi so I quickly manage to organize a rickshaw to where I’m going to stay while in the islands. Richard D’Souza (the ex-Conservator of the Andaman Forests) has organized my staying with the Bishop of the Andamans. I’m nervous about being a house guest here considering it’s been quite a while since I’ve seen the inside of a church. I’m certain I’ve forgotten all the rules and protocols but I play it cool when I’m introduced to all the different ‘Fathers’ and ‘Sisters’.

They are a happy laughing bunch of clergy though – constantly poking fun at each other –and they quickly put me at ease. They’ve thankfully even ignored the semi-clad picture of a young woman printed on my T-shirt that I’ve stupidly forgotten to change before I got here.

‘So you must be tired, are you planning to sleep now?’ asks Bishop Alex.

I am tired. I’ve been changing flights and catching small bouts of sleep at different airports for the last fourteen hours to get here. But I’m also highly wired. I’m finally here! In the Andamans! Mention you’re here to anyone and no matter who they are they are instantly jealous. How can I possibly think of wasting time sleeping in a place like this!

‘No, Father, I’d rather go and check out a few places while I can.’

Father Alex decides it will be a good idea if I go visit Ross Island. It’s just a twenty minute ferry ride from Port Blair. A motorcycle is quickly arranged for me to take me to the ferry. ‘Jolly will be waiting to pick you up at one so you can have lunch with us, ok?’

Jolly is the motorcyle rider.

At the jetty I get my first hit of the Andamans. Blue water. From a light azure in shallow places to a deep turquoise in the deeper areas. And, in between, every other shade of blue you could possibly think of. I can’t believe it. I’ve seen places like this in magazines and always thought those photographs had to be doctored. Photoshopped. How can water be so mesmerizingly coloured that you just want to fall into it! And then taste the different colours.

But no one is falling into it, or tasting it at the moment. Apparently I’m the only one not colour blind. But then I’m also the only one single here. There are a few families around but over ninety percent of the visitors have paired into honeymooning couples. They are too busy falling into each other’s eyes to be falling into the water. I sympathize with them and thank my lucky stars that my mother isn’t here. I would never hear the end of it until I had stolen someone else’s bride.

Ross Island was the administrative headquarters of the British in the Andamans. Now there are nothing but ruins. The old buildings are already half engulfed by massive strangler figs. The island is beautiful to walk around no doubt. But there are hundreds of tourists, and besides, there’s not much for me to do here anyway. No wildlife (besides the tame peafowl and spotted deer). And even if there were any birds I’ve arrived a bit too late in the day to sight them.

In the evening I visit the Cellular Jail to see the ‘Sound and Light’ show. The show, however, is in Hindi and I’m bored after a while. So I walk out quietly midway. Of the two hundred odd spectators, I’m the only one to do so. My exhaustion finally catches up with me when I hit the bed.

Next morning I’m picked up by a taxi and dropped at the jetty where I find the famous catamaran. For once the hype is true! The big boat is slick. Very cool. It floats on two blade like fins with a huge arch in between. Floating this way it obviously defies some of the laws of physics, though I can’t tell which. The boat has huge glass windows and is fully airconditioned. I love it. I settle down in my seat. Once the boat starts moving though I realize I’ve nothing much to do really. The view is the same…water, water and more water. The idiot I am, I’ve left my novel in my luggage. I resort to oogling the newly married brides instead.

The boat, thankfully, is fast and in an hour and a half we’ve reached Havelock Island. My plans are to spend the next three days here, doing my open water diving course. Richard has arranged for me to stay at the forest guest house and I take a rickshaw from the jetty straight to it. I have a massive airconditioned room to myself. The bathroom is big enough for ten plus me.

Most of all I love the view in front of the guest house. I’m right across one of the most gorgeous beaches I’ve ever seen: white sand and the same amazing blue water that follows me anywhere I travel in the Andamans. Only this beach is even better since there aren’t any other people on it. There’s also a lovely sit-out made out of cane right on the beach. Every night I’ll sit here all alone enjoying the cool sea breeze and the water – now black – shimmering in front of me.

My diving theory session starts in the evening so I spend the afternoon swimming. The water is warm; it’s not as clear as that surrounding the Lakshadweep islands but it still has some interesting reef fish. A pale-coloured goby peeking out of a burrow catches my attention. I’ve seen a fish just like this in one of David Attenborough’s shows.

The goby, he explained there, will always be in partnership with a shrimp. The virtually blind shrimp builds the burrow and is a tireless housekeeper constantly excavating and cleaning its home. The goby lives with the shrimp and does not work but is tolerated since it serves as the shrimp’s eyes. The shrimp keeps in touch with the goby with its long feelers. As long as the goby is half out the burrow, the shrimp will pop out every now and then to dump its trash outside the entrance. But if the goby retreats suddenly, the shrimp will dash back as well. I’d seen all of this on TV.

Could this be the same goby and shrimp partnership? I held my breath and watched through my swimming goggles. The goby remained outside and then, lo and behold, there was the shrimp! He dashed out from behind the goby and tossed a few cloudy objects outside the burrow. To test the partnership, I moved towards the goby. The goby retreated and the shrimp promptly dashed inside as well!

I’m doing my diving course with ‘Dive India’ and I meet other trainees at my first theory session: Daniella from Chile and Karolina from Germany. Karolina reminds me of actress Anne Hathaway except that she’s very tall. Over six feet, she towers over even me! Our instructor is Vijay. He’s the kind of person who grows on you. Always calm, friendly and very funny. He makes the theory sessions that I was dreading surprisingly enjoyable! I learn all my equipment that evening. Regulators, buoyancy suits, pressure gauges, shoes, fins, wetsuits, masks, etc.

Next morning I’m back. I get on the motor boat and we head out from Havelock beach. Vijay explains a few things on the boat over the sound of the outboard motor and I distractedly listen to him. I already like what I see. The endless flat blue water is bordered on one side by land chock-a-block with trees. I’m reminded of the movie, ‘The Lost World.’ It could certainly have been shot here. I greedily absorb the gorgeous scenery and resist the urge to snap away with my camera. There’ll be time for that later. Right now I have to listen to Vijay’s instructions.

The boat eventually comes to rest in a shallow spot very close to the forest. ‘Come on guys, into the water,’ orders Vijay. I’m excited. Nervous excited. I’ve got two women in my group though, so surely I’ll do well I think to myself. Daniella is extremely worried. On the other hand, I am a good swimmer. I have to do better than her at least. Turns out I’m wrong. As Vijay instructs us one at a time I find I’m the last to get things correct! Besides this isn’t like swimming at all. It’s more like dancing with two left feet on a boat rocking out at sea.

‘Lie on your back, Rahul…on your back. Don’t move away from the boat. The current is pulling you away. Inflate your BC. The button on your left. No no…the weight belt clip has to go from left to right.’ Vijay is calmly dishing out his instructions to me.  I’m on the verge of snapping ‘Goddamit Vijay, can we go a little slower please? This stupid cylinder keeps pushing me forward!’ Then I notice the two girls have already sorted themselves out. Damn you, you lying Daniella!

I’ve barely get the hang of things and Vijay wants us to do exercises underwater! I take off my regulator underwater as instructed, then reposition it and push it back into my mouth as I continue blowing bubbles. My mind is a complete jumble.

Remember the instructions, Rahul. Never hold your breath! Now take off your mask and put it back on. Remember you might have to do this if Karolina kicks it off your face with her long legs when you’re fourteen meters underwater. Oh no, I’ve got a cramp in my leg from kneeling on the floor. Straighten that leg. Breathe normally. But how the hell am I supposed to breathe normally underwater? The compressed air is extremely dry. What happens if I start coughing fourteen meters underwater? I obviously can’t rush to the surface. Even if I make it to the surface, at best I’ll still have painful nitrogen bubbles in my blood. At worst, my lungs will simply blow up. Do I really want to do this? Dammit, that Vijay’s signalling to me again. Follow him. Dive deeper. Now my ears are making squeezing noises.

Surprisingly, just fifteen minutes into the water and I’ve got the hang of almost everything. I continue diving deeper and blowing into my nose every now and then to clear my ears. Vijay alternates between reminding us to clear our ears, making the ‘Ok’ sign to check that we are not drowning as yet, and pointing out fish that we’re now beginning to see. Daniella has nearly killed herself by almost putting her hand on a small sting ray. Not her fault, the ray was the same colour as the sand it was hiding in. The sea bed slopes gently and we follow it, diving deeper as we go. Soon we’re at a small coral reef. The coral are all dead but their skeletons still serve as homes and hiding places for a vast number of fish. And the fish are gorgeous, of all shapes, sizes, and with the most gaudy colours. I’m now insane with pleasure and excitement, so distracted with happiness that I’ve forgotten that I’m ‘breathing normally’ underwater!

I can’t identify any of the fish as yet so I try to memorize them. But it’s hard. There’s dozens and dozens of different species here and their colours, patterns, shapes and sizes are all merging into kaleidoscopic images in my brain. Later, Vijay will help us identify the fish we can remember by going through his reef guides. So those striking cream yellow and black-striped disc shaped fish with extremely long dorsal fins were Bannerfish. Yes, yes, that massive half open shell was a giant clam.

And what about that lone fish that kept coming back to take a small bite out of Karolina’s calf? That’s a Damselfish and he was trying to drive us away from his patch since he harvests his algae there. A large light brown seacucumber slowly creeps along the sea floor eating mud through one end and excreting it continuously from the other. Brilliantly blue, black and yellow cleaner wrasse zip around among the dead corals. They are about the size and shape of my little finger and they’re looking for customers – large fish that they will service by picking the lice and ticks off them.  Shoals of goatfish nose around on the bottom of the sea bed. Their chin feelers certainly make them look very goatish.

‘So, how long do you think we were underwater,’ asks Vijay when we surface and float on our inflated BCs. ‘About forty-five minutes,’ he answers himself, knowing none of us has kept time. Forty five minutes! I can’t believe I was breathing air underwater that long!

We get back on the boat and unzip our wetsuits. The water wasn’t cold actually. 28 degrees centigrade. On land that would be uncomfortably warm. But water sucks heat out of your body 25 times faster than air. As our boat moves to a new spot we shiver and try to warm ourselves in the sun. Karolina, Daniella and I have huge smiles on our faces.

‘The learning curve in diving is very steep,’ Vijay explains in response to my telling him how I almost thought I wouldn’t manage when I first got into the water. We’ve dropped anchor again very close to the forest.  It’s a splendid location where trees are growing on cream colored soil. Vijay lets us warm up for an hour. The real reason for the break though is to give us time to clear as much nitrogen out of our system as possible.

This time we enter the water falling back off the boat. Then we swim quickly to the front of the boat and grab the anchor line. ‘Relax. Most divers use a huge amount of air right at the start of the dive. So take your time catching your breath,’ instructs Vijay.

‘And if we’ve got to pee?’ asks Karolina.

‘Pee in the water…it will have the added advantage of keeping your warm!’ Vijay replies.

There’s a slight current here so we dive down using the anchor line. Daniella hangs back and holds on to Vijay’s hand. She’s having trouble equalizing her ears. Karolina and I reach the bottom. This time we’ve dived to a depth of fourteen meters. Six more than our last dive. The coral here is completely bleached. Much of it lies in pieces strewn all over. It looks like a place hit by a tornado less than three days ago.

But there’s still plenty of fish and they are all alive and kicking. I see Nemo! Yes the clown anemonefish from the movie Finding Nemo. Actually there’re several of them. And they’re all bathing in their own personal mass of writhing tentacles. The famous sea anemone and anemonefish partnership! I’d read many times before about how the anemonefish remains safe from predators so long as it sticks close to the venomous stings of the sea anemones. The anemonefish itself is immune to the sting of the sea anemone since it secretes a protective slime all over its body.

But this was the first time I was actually getting to see this! The anemones looked very striking with their bold brown and white curvy bands cutting across their body. I would learn later that these were false clown anemonefish.  I admire one as I hang in the water only a foot away. Unlike most other small fish, it seems uncannily confident about itself as it swishes its body from side to side well within the protective tentacles of the sea anemone.

I stretch out a finger towards it. The fish remains least concerned. The expression on its face can only be read as a direct challenge to me: ‘Come on here you big bubble blowing thing and I’ll teach you a lesson or two!’

I decide not to take Nemo up on his challenge and swim away. Vijay is pointing out a dead parrotfish lying on its side. He points again at the hard parrot like mouth, then picks up a piece of dead coral and makes a biting action with his fingers. ‘Yes, it eats coral, I understand Vijay.’ We swim ahead. Now Karolina and I keep pointing out stuff to each other and then giving each other the ‘Ok’ signal to say, ‘Wow, yes I saw it too!’ Sea urchins are in plenty. They’re all hiding in the coral now that it’s daytime and only the few black spikes (like the quills of a porcupine) sticking out of crevices give them away.

A giant pufferfish – the same pale colour as the sand – is lying very still on the sea bottom. But unlike the parrotfish it is very much alive. We swim to within three feet of it.  The pufferfish swivels one eye to fix on me. I know that this club-shaped fish can suck water or air to blow itself up into a balloon when threatened by predators. I’d never seen one this big though. Blown up, this one would probably be the size of a small swiss ball!

Vijay points at a wispy translucent fan-shaped object on the sea floor. He stretches his hand to within three inches of it and then snaps his fingers. The wispy fan vanishes. It’s a tubeworm and it reminds me of something I saw in the movie, ‘Avatar.’

More anemonefish. But these are a different species. They are brilliant red and black and aptly named Tomato clown anemonefish. And Clarks clown anemonefish. And then I find another one of Nemo’s friends. A Moorish idol. And there’re plenty of them zipping around among the coral. I sneak up on one to study it closely. My God, it’s an exact replica of the animated movie fish! It’s very similar to a bannerfish in shape and colours but its face is an unreal caricature!

That night I’m lying in bed but it’s impossible to sleep. My head is buzzing with all the excitement of my first two dives underwater. It’s ten thirty and I know I must fall asleep right now if I want to wake up early enough to go birding before my diving tomorrow.

I fall asleep eventually and am suddenly wide awake five minutes before my alarm, which is set for 4.30., can go off. I raid the fridge for my breakfast. Frozen fried fish and a few cold chappaties.

The fried fish is symbolic. It represents the final victory of my cook. She is a small dark lady who under my demand has been frying fish for me every single meal. At the first meal I had finished off all the fish. She had retaliated by making more fish for the next. Which I devoured just as easily. She hit back harder with yet more fish. And I had polished off that as well, though now she was beginning to get the upper hand. Last night was the final battle: almost twenty pieces of fried fish. She smirked when I told her to keep the three remaining pieces for breakfast the next morning. She had finally won the war!

Cold fish in my stomach, I get onto my hired cycle and pedal away along the road to Kalapathar. The sun is already peeking out from the horizon. This is ridiculous. A sunrise at 4.45 am and that too in winter! Yes the Andamans are on Indian time since they belong to India. But being closer to Thailand they should rightfully should be in a different time zone.

Three kilometers into my cycling the food shacks, thatch lodges, and betulnut plantations have all but disappeared. Replacing them now is a beautiful evergreen forest liberally sprinkled with tall trees. Many of these gigantic trees have huge buttress roots, testimony to the fact that the monsoons hit pretty hard here.

I try to identify the bird calls I’m hearing, but some of them aren’t like anything I’ve heard before. There’s the metallic sophisticated call which I correctly identify as that of the Racket tailed Drongo. There are plenty of them here. But there’s also a screechy squeak that I assume belongs to a hornbill. It doesn’t. I find the perpetrator of the call eventually. A pair of Long tailed parakeets. They are green like all other Indian parakeets. But they have striking pink cheeks that make them look like they put on a bit too much makeup. I also spot some kind of a green pigeon in a tall tree. I struggle to identify it and then realize suddenly that the same tree holds at least another thirty of them, all very well camouflaged among the green leaves!

By six the sun is already shining reasonably high above the horizon, so I head back. The cycle ride is fabulous. Barely any traffic on this road and I’ve got the forest on one side and the amazing beach on the other. My last bird sighting is that of a big eagle sitting on the top of a tree. It has its back to me but its head is creepily twisted a hundred and eighty degrees to fix its suspicious eyes on me. I know it’s a Crested serpent eagle, but which one? It seems darker. The Andaman crested serpent eagle perhaps? The eagle flies off irritated.

Day two and it’s going to be my third underwater dive. The dive site is named Parr Ridge. We descend as usual along the anchor line to prevent us getting swept away by a reasonably strong current. When we reach the bottom at eighteen meters, the current has almost disappeared.  The bottom is full of small but very beautiful fish. Among them is a large rectangular Bluering angelfish. Vijay motions us to move along the ridge so we don’t get lost. Up ahead a black coloured Featherstar is waving out a few of its many arms. It’s an echinoderm closely related to the starfish and Vijay explains later that it was waiting to hitch a ride on us!

As we swim further we reach an area with large coral. Some of the coral here are still alive and among them are some very big fish. Square tailed groupers and  Baramundi groupers eye us suspiciously. They are over two feet in length and they swim away when we get too close. Vijay points out to a large object fixed to the seabed. It’s the size and shape of a large cauldron: a Barrel Sponge. Karolina spots two large Lionfish hiding among the coral. I find Lionfish very interesting and I stay back a bit to observe them closely. Like the clownfish they have a cocky air of confidence about them and with good reason. Lionfish are covered in long venomous spines. And it’s not just the long spines that make them look strange. They have a potato-shaped body, hardly a tail to speak of, very thick lips, and large eyes that make them look evil.

Identifying reef fish is in many ways very similar to identifying birds in a forest. The best way to go about both is to identify first what group the animal in question belongs to. For this you have to first separate the specimen’s distinguishing characteristics from the ones that are highly variable. Colors are generally unreliable in group identification. Beak shapes, fin shapes, and body shapes to some extent, are much more helpful in this regard. For example, utter the word ‘bee-eater’ to a birdwatcher and the image of a bird with a long pointed bill and an equally pointed thin tail will pop into his mind (never mind what colour it may be!).

Once you know what group an animal belongs to, then you use its colors and body patterns to find out what species it is. As I look around I’m pleasantly surprised that I can at least classify many of the reef fish into their correct groups. The Sweetlips have elongated bodies that are rounded on the dorsal side and flat on the ventral side. They also have prominent lips. I’ve identified Brown sweetlips and Spotted sweetlips.

Triggerfish are more typically fish-shaped. They have formidable heads with a strong looking beak for a mouth. My favorite among them is the Clown trigger. It is most gaudily painted with black, yellow and white colors. Surgeonfish are flattened laterally so much they appear two-dimensional! My favorite among these is the Powder-blue Surgeonfish. It’s again an exact replica of that very forgetful fish from Finding Nemo!

Of course every once in a while we find something that spells itself out loud and clear. Like when Vijay suddenly gesticulates wildly at the sea bottom and we notice a very venomous banded sea krait nosing around among the coral!

Our fourth dive is at a place called The Wall and with good reason. The edge of this reef is not a gentle slope but a sheer drop into the pitch black of an abyss. Thanks to movies like ‘Jaws’ and ‘Deep Blue Sea’ I’m still uneasy in places like this. At one point Vijay swims off the reef and gestures to us to follow him. I do and then suddenly realize when I look back that the reef is gone. I’m now in featureless waterscape!

At this depth I can barely tell the difference between up and down. I could quickly get lost here so I keep a close watch on Vijay. He’s doing back somersaults! I try the same. At first it feels a little strange but then as I get used to it I realize that it’s effortless. We’re in water I tell myself. The rules that work on land don’t apply here. I could be standing on my head watching fish! Diving isn’t like swimming either. Don’t forget the whole idea is to sink if you want to see something! Actually the whole idea is to be neutrally buoyant so you float at any given depth effortlessly – in essence be like a fish!

Most divers have a problem being too buoyant so they use weight belts. I am the only one not using one. Vijay tells me it’s because I have hardly any fat on my body. Muscle is heavy and sinks. I’m flattered! But it’s not all good news for me. Muscle tissue is an oxygen guzzler. The end result, I’m the first one to surface as I’ve exhausted all the air in my cylinder at least ten minutes before Karolina and Daniella have finished theirs. Back on the boat they’ll torture me with descriptions of fish that only they got to see in the fifteen extra minutes they were underwater.

Vijay scans the rock face of The Wall for a while until he seems to have found what he was looking for. It’s an electric clam. It’s only a couple of inches across but astonishingly it has a kind of a blue neon light that continuously dashes across its body.  A few minutes later I see my first moray eel. It’s well hidden in a crevice and only its head is visible, resembling that of some unreal monster. The eel continuously moves its lower jaw as it oxygenates its gills. Sharp teeth line the jaws. But surprise! Moving fearlessly in between those lethal jaws is a small dainty cleaner shrimp. The eel’s personal hygienist!

Just before I begin to surface, a huge shoal of Yellowback fusilier surround me. They are typically fish shaped and the size of mackerel, except that like every other reef fish they are strikingly coloured. The shoal forms a semicircle three feet away from me. They swim synchronously. I can swear that I am in one of David Attenborough’s wildlife films!

The next morning is my last day at Havelock. My second last dive is going to be to a depth of 25 meters. Eighteen meters is actually the limit level of my course so I’m a bit apprehensive but also extremely excited about diving so deep. At 25 meters we absorb nitrogen so fast that we have only minutes at that depth. As I strap on my gear, Vijay runs through a few instructions. ‘When we hit 25 meters some of you might suffer from nitrogen narcosis. I’m going to use sign language to ask you to solve simple arithmetic problems. If you find yourself unable to answer, ascend a couple of meters. Got it?’

I’m not sure I’ve got it but I dive anyway. It’s slow going with the ear squeeze and as I descend down the anchor line I face backwards looking up at the shimmering surface of the water. The underside of our boat now gets smaller and smaller as I dive deeper into what looks like a massive light blue cathedral. The bubbles coming out of my mouth rush to the surface expanding all the way to the top. It is a most beautiful sight and by the time we’ve got to the sea bottom I’ve totally forgotten Vijay’s instructions. He looks visible annoyed as I respond to his sign language with a look of utter surprise and total incomprehension on my face!

As we swim ahead we notice a huge dark coloured grouper fish slowly swimming to maintain his position above a large rock. He looks bigger and heavier than me but before we get to within ten metres of him, he grumpily swims off.  Massive mounds of rock dot the sea bottom and hanging around the rocks (obviously sheltering from the current) are shoals of snappers – hundreds of them. They all look jobless. Above the rocks are Giant trevally. Each one of these formidable silver fish is over two feet in length and they number almost a hundred as well. They are swimming directly into the current. They look jobless too! I’m spell-bound by the scale of all this life surrounding me. In this vast immense body of blue water with its shoals of giant fish, I am nothing but an insect buzzing around in a football stadium.

Before my last dive I’m treated to a sight of dolphins diving out of water. Our boat man follows them and at one point we have one swimming right in front of our boat. I’ve seen dolphins before but never so close and never in such clear water. ‘Look at that baby dolphin…he’s playing with us, he’s playing with us!’ shouts Vijay with glee on his face as the baby dolphin leaps clear out of the water. Karolina and I are ready to dive in with our snorkels but the dolphins are zipping around at the speed of light. ‘Don’t jump. You won’t see anything. They have to be swimming slowly for you to see them,’ Vijay explains.

My last dive is going to be what Vijay calls a ‘Drift Dive.’ We descend using the anchor line as usual, but this time we aren’t going to come up at the same spot. Instead, we will drift with the current and admire the fish along the way! By the time we surface we will have drifted over a kilometer away from the boat.

The coral here is all dead as well, but the place is still buzzing with fish life. There are tons of the usual different species of surgeonfish, angelfish, and triggerfish. I’ve learnt by now that most fish will let you get very close to them as long as you move very slowly. I relax my body and my breathing and am rewarded with getting my face within inches of many them.

I’ve also begun to notice that fish have characters that you can almost immediately relate to. These aren’t the lifeless fish you see in the fish market or the jaded ones you’ll find in a small aquarium. These have active social lives. And each one reacts in a different way to your intrusion on them. You have fish that are very curious about you, fish that couldn’t care less about you, and fish that are just plain irritated to see you! A memorable new spotting for me is that of a Batfish. It’s a dorsoventrally flattened disc shaped fish that looks taller than it is long. It must be over a foot across.

When I surface fifty minutes later I take one last look at the sea bottom before I climb into the boat. A huge shoal of Yellowback fusilier is swimming in the light blue water five meters below me. I feel a pang of sadness in my stomach. I can’t believe I won’t be doing this for a while again.

By the same evening I’m in busy Port Blair again. I’ve decided to spend a few days exploring some interesting places around the port town. On the first morning I take a bus to Wandoor to visit ANET. ANET was setup over fifteen years ago by Romulus Whitaker to study reptiles and other wildlife found in the Andamans. It’s a quiet charming place like Rom’s research station in Agumbe that I visited eight months ago. Definitely a place to stay at when I come back to the Andamans!

The next morning I’m birding in a beautiful forest right next to the gorgeous beach of Chiriya Tapu. I’ve pestered Ajay Saxena (the Chief Conservator of Forests in the Andamans) to take me there. Ajay is one of those rare government employed forest guardians who actually loves being with nature. He has also gone out of his way to drive me the thirty odd kilometers to Chiriya Tapu. He wears white sneakers, light blue jeans and a backpack in which he carries the different lenses of his camera.

The forest I’m admiring is actually part of a biological park where Ajay has been building massive enclosures for shifting animals from their very frugal quarters at the zoo in Port Blair. He calls the monitor lizards, saltwater crocodiles and a wildboar by their names. In the two hours we spend in the forest we discuss his new ideas for the biological park, argue over parakeet species and woodpecker species, and analyze why I’m not married as yet!

The next morning is my last day in the Andamans. I leave early for the Chatham jetty and take a ferry across to Bamboo Flat from where I negotiate with a rickshaw to take me to the top of Mount Harriet. Birding on this trip involves sticking my upper torso out of the rickshaw and frantically slapping my driver’s neck for a halt when we see something interesting! The forest lining the winding road is incredible and awesome. I spot wood pigeons, yellow bulbuls, plenty of Asian Fairy Bluebirds and Racket tailed Drongos, and a pair of bizarre looking black woodpeckers. The jet black woodpeckers look like brilliant crimson Mohawks.

As my flight takes off the next morning I have my last view of the Andamans. I’ve spent eight days here and it was not enough. If I had more time, I would surely have travelled up the Andaman trunk road all the way to Diglipur. The drive would take me through untouched rainforest where the Jarawa (one of the Andaman’s most feared tribes) still survive. Or perhaps I could have even visited the remote island of Little Andaman.

But I’m not too bothered about it. Even before I had landed I had written this off as a recce trip, just like I’d done with the nine odd other trips I made last year travelling to different wildlife sanctuaries across India.  What’s different about this trip though is that it is the only place I feel a strong longing to return. I will. Soon. Yes, for once, all the hype is true!

I have goose bumps on my skin as I peer out the window of my sleeper coach. But it isn’t the cold. It’s the sight of a large hoarding which says ‘Welcome to Gir, the last home of the Asiatic Lion’. I’m here at last. Like every other person in India, I’ve learnt about lions living in Gir since school days. It was their last refuge, I’d been told.

The word ‘refuge’ painted images of lions fighting tooth and nail to hold the borders of their shrinking territory.  Lions holding out against the pressing enemy, literally like refugees. I could never picture the enemy though. Who or what was the enemy? The tiger? The expanding human population?

I crunched into my last cream cracker and took a sip of water to soften it in my mouth. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have been caught dead eating something as tasteless as this. But the biscuits were given to me by a friend and moreover I’d been starving for several hours. Right now they were a lifesaver!

To get to Gir from Goa, I had undertaken an 18 hour train journey, followed by another 12 hour bus journey. Friends from Baroda had helped me book a cheap room at a  ‘Hotel Umang’. Umang, together with a few shops and eateries, were part of a characterless street right outside the sanctuary. But that was OK. I was here to see lions, not appreciate culture and architecture.

As usual, I’m travelling alone, so I need to see if I can find some people to share the cost of the jeep safari with me. Travelling in a group has its merits. You split room rates, share safaris, share taxies. But all my friends are too busy meeting deadlines or making babies.

On the first evening I walk to the safari reception centre and hang around. I make some polite conversation with a few tourists and put the word around with the guides that I’m a ‘sharer’. No luck. But if I put myself in their shoes I would not surprised. If I was with my newly wed wife and in-laws, I wouldn’t be thinking of saving a measly 300 rupees, especially if that meant sharing the jeep with some rakish looking guy in a sleeveless vest!

I tell myself that I’ll try again tomorrow. If not, I’ll pay the entire 1500 rupees and do a jeep ride in style. For now I decide  I’ll take a Kutchee and head to Devalia, the Gir interpretation centre. The Kutchee is a basically a diesel Royal Enfield with a cart in place of its rear wheel. In the mornings it is used to transport milk and gas cylinders. Right now it’s transporting me. The sound of the diesel engine is awesome and I’m enjoying the ride. But by the time I’m back I’m going to need a knee and hip replacement. Yes, the Kutchee doesn’t seem to have heard of shock absorbers! On the way, my driver pulls over at a bridge to show me a crocodile basking in the distance. I’ve also spotted some black ibis. They look gorgeous with their scarlet heads.

At Deonar I buy a ticket and get into a bus full of twenty people. The bus safari is organized by the forest department and there’s one leaving every hour or so. It’s a nice and cheap option for people who can’t afford the regular jeep safari. Besides they are going to take us to a place where we a lion sighting is almost guaranteed.

How? Well, they’re taking us through a ten square kilometre patch of fenced off forest. In this bonsai sanctuary are about ten lions. Most are trouble makers. The ones that got out of the main sanctuary and attacked livestock in the villages nearby. They’ll be holidaying here for around six months before being relocated back into the original sanctuary. To make them feel at home they’ve also got a whole bunch of Axis deer along with a few of their other prey.

We enter the sanctuary through large intimidating double gates. They make you feel like you’re about to meet some of the most deadly convicts on the planet! In about twenty minutes we’ve found our lions. There’s three of them. A sudden hushed silence comes over the bus. Everyone plasters to one side of the bus. There’s a lot of neck craning going on. Most people are also filming or photographing the lions with their cameras and mobile phones.

I shove my camera in between the throng of heads and click some shots.

The lions seem least bothered with all the fuss and are simply lazing in the shade of a zizipus tree. All three are males. And all are impressively built. Two of them, judging by their sparse manes, seem to be sub-adults. They are licking each other. One of them then turns and shoves his rump in the other’s face as though to say ‘go on, give me a pat my friend, give me a pat.’

But the only patting that is done is by a lady sitting behind me. She’s thumping the side of the bus to get the lions attention. I’m thinking that if it does work maybe the lion will charge towards her. In the bargain I might get a few shots of the lion slapping her silly for disturbing them. No such luck. I remind myself that this could only happen in a Daffy Duck cartoon.

The next morning I’m up at 4:30. I walk in the dark to the safari reception centre and manage to strike up a deal with a middle-aged Bengali couple. They have a son who is also called Rahul. The safari is now going to cost them about 400 rupees less. But they aren’t satisfied and they still go scouting around to find more loners like me. Bring the cost down still further. My kinda people!

Eventually we are still four of us and we’ve been allotted route 4 and route 7. A handsome young guide with a husky voice like Bryan Adams’ accompanies us.  The forest is still dark at 5.30. I’m excited. I’ve finally made it into Gir! We drive around for a bit and the guide points out spotted deer, a large owl, a ghost tree and a mud turtle that scurries into a stream as we near it. Eventually we reach a huge lake. Our four wheel drive handles one edge of the lake confidently.  When we get across we are treated to a beautiful sunrise. But still no sign of any lions. My Bengali companions are getting anxious.

They keep coaxing and cajoling the guide as though he holds the key to the secret place where a bunch of lions are stashed away, ‘You must be knowing where the lions are, come on, bhaiyya, please shows us some lions. We’ve come all the way from Bengal to see the lions.’.

I mention Devalia and the fenced off lions. But the Bengalis are not interested. They want to do a jeep safari and they want to be guaranteed a lion sighting. Truly tough people to please. The guide is patient and he sympathizes with them, even laughing at the jokes they throw at him. If I were him I would have gone out of my way to find my lions just so I could feed the Bengalis to them! We don’t see lions that morning. I’m not disappointed, though. I wanted to see the Gir Forest and I’ve seen it. The Bengali lady, however, is close to tears as she comforts me and tells me ‘in the end it is your luck, no?’

In the late morning, I’m at one of the eateries snacking on a paratha. There’s no non-vegetarian food served here. I can’t believe it. Inside the sanctuary lions are feasting on prime game meat and here I can’t even get myself an egg! Joining me is Hanif. He’s a forest guard and he’s the one responsible for getting me the cheap accommodation. In the evening he’ll be responsible for me sharing another trip with one of his contacts. Hanif is a well built chap with an amiable smile. He’s surprisingly helpful and he goes out of his way to make sure I’m having a good time. He even says he’ll look into getting some eggs for me.

In the evening I’m back on the safari. This time we’ve got a smallish perky guide with a big smile studded with a two gold teeth. A lot of them have this ghetto gangster gold-toothed smile, and I’m beginning to think that in a world of volatile stock markets it might actually be a sensible investment.

The guide rattles off a few facts about Gir at the  start of the journey. The sanctuary is 1,412 square kilometres in size, and about 40,000 chital live here. In addition, the sanctuary is home to Nilgai, Sambar, wild boar and Chinkara. Also living in the sanctuary for a very long time are the Maldharis (a tribe that herds cattle in the jungle).

The continued survival of the Asiatic lions in the Gir forest is one of the most well known wildlife protection success stories of our planet. At the turn of this century the Nawab of Junagadh invited the viceroy of India Lord Curzon to join him on a lion hunt. As luck would have it, on that very day, Lord Curzon had received a message alerting him to the fact that the Asiatic lion was on the verge of extinction. Apparently, only about 12 individuals survived. He therefore urged the Nawab to protect this species, and from this originally feeble number of 12 the lion population would steadily climb until it reached 411 at the last census! The African lion numbers between 20,000 to 50,000.

Inbreeding is a serious concern for the Asiatic lion. Considering they’ve built up from a number of 12 they genetic diversity in their gene pool is almost zilch. Put simply, the Asiatic lions are not a long shot from being clones of each other. A single disease could still wipe out the entire population. What about genetic diseases? Well so far they seem to be doing fine. One of the reasons might be that the Asiatic lion has been chronically inbred which has its own advantages unlike acute inbreeding. Chronic inbreeding is a very effective evolutionary tool for cleaning out deleterious genes from the gene pool.

Apparently, the Asiatic lion can mate with the African lion. They differ at the level of the subspecies though. David Quammen in his book, ‘Monster of God’ mentions that laboratory measurements of genetic divergence suggest a divergence as much as 200,000 years back. The Gir interpretation centre suggests a much more conservative figure at 6000 B.C.

So, what’s the real difference between the Asiatic and the African lions? Wikipedia mentions that ‘the Asiatic lions have less swollen tympanic bullae, shorter postorbital constriction, and usually have divided infraorbital foramen’. Yeah, jargon to me, too!

But there more tangible differences between the two too. For one thing, the Asiatic male lions have a sparser mane that almost never covers the ears. In addition, both sexes of the Asians have a thick fold of skin running along their bellies. The Asians live in a much smaller pride (possibly due to the smaller size of their prey) and are almost purely predatory. African lions can afford to be scavengers and waltz in on someone else’s kill. But if you’re a lion in Gir then you’d better learn how to kill!

And that’s exactly what we found, a lion with a kill! Right next to the entrance of route 6. Actually, it was a lioness who’d make the kill, and the prey was a cow that had strayed away from a Maldhari’s herd. The kill was only about 30 meters from the jeep track so we could still catch a glimpse of the lioness’ head over the tan-coloured body of the cow. I clicked a few shots but the lighting was lousy and when I check them later they were no good.

As we drove away, I asked the guide what would happen to the Maldhari who owned the cow. He said that the government would compensate him as this was a fairly regular feature in Gir. The Maldharis are a tough people and should a lion attack one of their cows or buffaloes they will fend off the big cat using just a short wooden stick.

I also want to know if there are any conflicts between leopards and lions. I know that tigers kill leopards when they get a chance. I am told that for the most part, lions  don’t, although it isn’t unheard of to find a leopard calmly sitting with a kill up in a tree while the lioness he’s stolen it from prances fuming down below. A few days later when I’m travelling back home by bus the sneakiness of the leopard will be brought up again. A chatty guy sitting next to me will tell me ‘Lion—he is very nice. Not doing anything. But Leopard….BASTARD he is!’

The Gir jungle is a dry jungle, and even though I had arrived just after the monsoons it was not half as green as the jungles of Goa and Karnataka. Even with the handicap of a botanically untrained eye, I recognized teak trees and several zizipus species. I also noticed the exotic and invasive lantana plants with their pretty yellow and red flowers. For the most part, I was happy with the forest. Happy, but not in awe of it as I was of the Kanha forest in Madhya Pradesh. I couldn’t help wishing that the Asiatic lion had chosen Kanha as their last hold-out instead of this scrubby forest. Kanha would have been a truly fitting place for this king of the jungle.

But enough of my whims and fancies. I would learn later on that the Madhya Pradesh government had actually offered to relocate some of the Gujarat Lions into the MP forests. This to me sounded like a sound idea. After all, the lions in Gir are in so much of a surplus that they are literally pouring out of Gir. Why not introduce some into MP? This would give the extras a much better chance of survival, in addition to achieving the effect of spreading the proverbial eggs into different baskets.

The Gujarat government wasn’t going to fall for this, though. After all, they are the sole owners of  ‘the last home of the Asiatic lion’. Two homes could cut the profits in half. You can almost hear the Gujaratis as they smile smugly at the MP government, saying ‘Thanks, but no thanks. We’ll handle our lions by ourselves!’

Two hours after we had seen the lioness at the kill we were upon our second and last sighting for the day. Three lionesses were lying on their bellies, right besides the jeep track. I had been comfortably day dreaming now for the last several dozen minutes but being alerted to the lions I snapped right out of it as if someone had just chucked a bucket of cold water over me.

‘Lions, Rahul…LIONS right in front of you’ I shouted inside my head. The jeep stopped less than four metres away from them. One of the lionesses stood up, stretched, and then walked into the jungle. She was soon followed by another who also stood up but dug her dinner plate sized paws into the earth before sitting down to contact her belly with the ground. When she got up for the second time, she purred, stretched and walked away. The third lioness now flipped over onto her back with all four paws in the air as she wriggled from side to side. Just like my Rottweiler, Diesel does back home!

She was visibly enjoying her back rub. I switched between naked eyes, camera viewfinder and my binoculars as I greedily lapped up every sight of her. I couldn’t help notice how much in contact with the earth both she and the other two lionesses had been. As humans we wage a constant battle against dirt, dusting it away, sweeping our houses and wearing shoes. And yet here were three big cats who somehow seemed to benefit immensely from marinating themselves in it! As our jeep moved away I was still hogging the sight of the lioness.

The next morning, I’m waiting for my bus back to Baroda. Hanif sits with me. He’s shaken my hand for the 12^th time this morning and for the 47^th time since I’ve first met him. ‘I told you Rahul to take route 6 na. And now you’ve seen so many lions. And then tell me are you happy now?’

‘Yes Hanif,  I’m very happy’ I tell him. I’m thinking that if this continues I might just have to get a tattoo on my arm that says the same. Hanif wants me to come back in the dry season when the lions match the colour of the dry landscape. It’s an amazing time to find lions he tells me.

As I board my bus I think about the 36-hour long journey back home. The money spent on the trip. The protein devoid diet for the last one week.  I weigh them mentally against the 7 minutes in total that I saw the lions. Was it worth it? Totally. ‘Yes Hanif’,  I say to myself, ‘I’m very happy’.

‘Wow! That’s quite a boat you’ve arranged for us, Arjan!’ I exclaim. Arjan smiles weakly. He’s not sure if I really like it. But I really do! And what’s not to like? It’s got a spacious, airy upper deck on which a small table and a few plastic chairs are laid out. This deck is also fully covered from above with a shade that will make sure the sun doesn’t bother us at all. The lower deck has eight beds where we can sleep whenever we want to, in addition to a toilet and sink.

Behind the room with the beds is the engine and the kitchen. And behind that, right at the edge of the stern is another Indian toilet. It empties straight into the water.

The wooden boat is an eight-seater and is like a sardine compared to the metal whale I travelled on to get to Lakshadweep. Being clever Indians, though, we’ve packed it with thirteen people (sixteen including the crew!).

So we’re going to be a little slower but far more economical. This suits me fine. In any case, the eight seater rule only holds true if you’re planning on spending the night in it. We’re not. We’re going to be spending our nights on the Sunderban islands.

I landed in Kolkata the night before the previous night and so far I’ve been enjoying myself. I’ve been invited (or rather, got myself invited!) by Bikram. He’s small, but over the next several days I notice that he has a very regal walk. He’s also got soft, flawless and impeccably combed hair. The kind that could land him a shampoo commercial any day. The regal walk and silky hair coupled with a wispy French beard makes him look like a Mughal emperor. A small Mughal emperor.

But emperor or no emperor, he’s made all the arrangements for my stay so far. He’s also nodded with concern when I’ve told him of my urgent need to visit a shopping mall.

On the first night I’m put up at his new house along with Gauri and his friend Jagdish. I met Gauri about eight years ago when I visited the croc bank in Madras. Since then he’s been working with Romulus Whitaker on King Cobras and has rescued 132 Kings from human habitations till date. He’s also one of the main people responsible for setting up and running Rom’s ARRS (Agumbe Rainforest Research Station) in Karnataka.

For a person who has featured on the National Geographic and Discovery channels, he has not the slightest air about himself. Both he and Jagdesh (Jag) have a sly sense of humour, and by the end of the trip I’m thick as thieves with them.

On my first morning in Kolkata I meet Sajol who takes Gauri, Jag and me for a walk on the outskirts of Kolkata. He’s a minefield of information on butterflies and birds. He doesn’t speak English though. He’s likeable except for his chain-smoking habit. He also eats just about anything and everything!

Then there’s Arjan who treated Gauri, Jag and me at the most amazing Bengali restaurant. I finally eat Hilsa ( Bengal’s most famous fish). I also eat …

‘If only I learnt zoology this way, I’m sure I would have remembered a lot more if I could also taste the animals I was studying!’ I tell Arjan. He laughs uneasily not knowing if I’m serious or joking. He doesn’t know I’m pretty serious!

To get to this boat docked at the mangroves, we’ve had to travel by train for an hour and then an overloaded tempo cum rickshaw for another. I meet the others there. Two of them, Richa and Nilanjan (Neil), will become my constant companions for the rest of the trip. Richa is a frizzy-haired vivacious entrepreneur and Neil is a bespectacled twenty-year-old reptile lover who reminds me of myself when I was his age. Except that he’s a lot smarter and has had far more girlfriends than I ever had!

And then finally there’re the three large roosters we pick up on the way to the boat. They travel in the engine room with us, and everyday the cook will sacrifice one for a lip-smacking meal!

Our boat leaves at around eleven in the morning and chugs slowly along at the average speed of a bicycle. The boat is fitted with a diesel engine, which is fairly noisy but not unbearable. It does rattle your head a bit when you try to sleep on the beds in the lower deck though. The water, I notice, changes in colour from a muddy light brown in shallow areas to a blue grey in deeper areas. Being full of silt it’s never clear.

‘Can we swim in the Sunderbans?’ I ask Neil.

‘Not a good idea…unless you’re willing to get a chunk of your leg bitten off by a bull shark,’ answers Neil.

I scan the banks with my binoculars. Everywhere I look there are mangroves. Some as thick as a rain forest, others sparsely populated like cacti spread out in a desert.

At three in the afternoon we find a small black fishing boat out in the middle of the ocean (actually, we’re not in the ocean—it just seems that way!). They are sorting out fish as they empty their fishing net. Sajol and Arjan jump over and into their boat like pirates and immediately start sifting through the fish booty. Soon they’ve filled up a half a bucket of fish.

‘Fish for you Rahul! Now, are you happy?’ he shouts.

‘How much did it cost?’ I ask Bikram.

‘Oh, he charged us 200 rupees for that fish.’ says Bikram pointing to a silvery fish in the bucket. ‘The bombay duck,’ he said, pointing to a pinkish fish in the same bucket, ‘he gave us for free’. I couldn’t believe it! It was over ten kilos of fresh fish!

By five in the evening, we were nearing our destination. We were now going even slower. It was a good time to spot birds. Loads of waders were pecking around in the exposed mud banks. A forest officer who accompanied us was especially good at identifying them. I struggled with the way he pronounced the names though. Still I knew I was looking at curlews, wimbrels, widgeons, gulls, godwits, adjutant storks, cormorants and plovers. I didn’t write down the names so don’t ask me which species!

I remember the black capped kingfisher in detail though. There were quite a few of them there. The sun goes down much earlier in Kolkata compared to Goa in the month of November, when I made the trip. By six, it was completely dark. Fortunately, we had finally reached our destination.

It was a mangrove island, which would have been great to explore by night, were it not for the fact that only a fraction of it was open to exploring. The reason for this was that tigers prowl this island and readily prey on unsuspecting humans. A few acres have therefore been fenced off with a thick mesh about two meters high. The forest department base with the watch tower stands within the cordoned-off area. This formula of caging humans and keeping the tigers free is used on many of the other Sunderban islands.

Within the same enclosure are two large tents with attached bathrooms. Each has at least about ten beds inside and it was in the tents that we stayed for the next two nights.

I hit the bed early the first night. Like everyone else, I had woken up at four in the morning to catch the train. And like everyone else, I was going to have to get up at four again the next morning. Our destination the next day would be an island on the southern edge of the Sunderbans called Lothian island.

In terms of kilometres, Lothian island isn’t that far away, possibly not more than sixty kilometres from where we had stayed the first night. But on the slow boat it took us more than eight hours to get there.

When you look at a map of the Bay of Bengal you can see that the Sunderbans are a collection of islands. The Ganga, Brahmaputra, and Meghna rivers empty into this vast delta, mixing fresh water and silt with the salt water of the ocean.

What the map doesn’t tell you is that the islands all look the same from the boat. How our boatman managed to find his way around them, I don’t know. What the map also won’t tell you is that many of the channels we were navigating through are not set in stone. Thanks to the phenomenal difference of several metres between the high and low tide levels, vast sandbanks can suddenly disappear and reappear in the space of only a few hours. As a result, a channel deep enough to negotiate through one way might not allow us to pass through on the return journey later that same day. Then, one has to either find an alternate route or wait till the tide fills the place again.

The word Sunderbans literally means ‘Beautiful Forest’. Bikram though tells me that the name Sunderban comes from the Sunderi tree which is a kind of mangrove that grows on this island. But whatever the name may mean, I’ll be honest and say that the Sunderbans isn’t my cup of tea.

Here’s the thing. I come from Goa and have seen mangroves and explored them many times. I can tell you that mangroves are not impressive plants to look at. But they are truly impressive in their capacity to survive in a constantly changing ecosystem—where surviving means anchoring, growing, and reproducing in lands both flooded and sun-baked twice a day. Where silt constantly deposited by the rivers packs the ground so tight that the only way to breath is to send breathing roots bursting out of the ground.  Yes, very impressive indeed, when you understand how these extraordinary plants survive. But like I’ve already mentioned, as a Goon, I’ve ‘been there and done that.’

What I haven’t seen though are tigers living in mangroves. Tigers as a species are extremely adaptable, but no where else do they live as much on the edge as in the Sunderbans. The Sunderbans tiger is notorious for being an extremely clever and wily creature, who will not hesitate to prey on a tribal collecting firewood or honey in the forest. When the locals figured out that tigers always grab their prey behind the neck they started wearing masks at the back of their heads. It wasn’t long before the tiger figured out the dummy heads and rendered that trick obsolete. Clever indeed!

The Sunderbans tiger is also extremely catholic in its diet, taking anything from a crab to a deer. One was recently documented having fed on a King Cobra!

In the three days I’m there I never see the wily animal, though. From what I gather most people see one after it’s already chewing on their neck!

I could definitely do without a spotting like that! But when I step onto Lothian island I not only see no traces of the tiger, I don’t see any saltwater crocodiles or monitor lizards either. I remember seeing quite a few salties and monitor lizards when I travelled to Bhitarkonica over ten years ago.

This does not surprise me as much as it disappoints me. The mangrove is thick and I’m sure there are animals hidden all around me. Besides I am able to explore only a small section of it by walking along a man-made ridge running through the forest. On either side of the ridge is mangrove muck. Even if you are a most serious scientist you won’t get more than eleven steps through this knee-deep sinking bog before you decide you’re better off  switching to exploring some other ecosystem!

I walk for about a kilometre along the ridge and then turn back. The others, including my faithful companions Richa and Neil continue. I go back to photographing mudskippers and the brilliantly coloured Fiddler crabs that are ten to a square meter on this island. Fiddler crabs are comical. The males have only one huge pincer (I noticed most were right handed) which they wave around trying to intimidate other males and apparently sometimes to impress females. The much smaller second pincer works continuously on the ground finding morsels of food in the sediment.

When the others come back, I find that they’ve not fared much better. They’ve found a few shed skins and seen one checkered keelback.

It’s the second day of the trip and by now everyone considers me the laziest person of the group. So they’re not at all surprised to find me napping on the boat. Only Richa tries to provoke me into getting up. She’s unsuccessful.

That night, as our boatman navigates the channels in the darkness with only the stars to guide him, I sit with Gauri and discuss my Sunderbans trip. He tells me that it isn’t his cup of tea either.

So we both know we aren’t coming back. But I’m still glad I came. I’ve wanted to visit Sunderbans since I was a kid. Ever since I heard about the man eating tigers that lived there. And after all those years, I finally made it. And in style—on a boat cruising the night through shark and crocodile-infested waters. Some great company on board and a belly fully of fried fish. Contentment indeed!

Lakshadweep

‘This feels just like the Titanic’, I’m thinking. Fine, the ship I’m on is probably only a fifth in size. And I’m not as reckless as Leonardo di Caprio to be standing right on the edge with Kate Winslet. But I’m on the tip of the bow anyway, and I’m mesmerised by the sea rushing incessantly towards  me only to dive six meters below and disappear below the hull of the metal monster I’m standing on. I’m thinking that if I fall, there’ll be no escape. Three flying fish interrupt my morbid thoughts. More than escaping from the ship they seem to be taunting it as they breeze across the surface for 50 meters before diving back in.

I scan the horizon and it’s just water all around. If Noah were to release a dove here he might as well have kissed it goodbye. I’d be surprised if the poor creature found anything out here, let alone a living twig to bring back to the captain. A sparrow on board seems to share my realistic attitude about being out here in the middle of nowhere. He’s moving around with tiny hops, taking care not to get blown away. He probably doesn’t know where we are going though, and is just along for the ride. I, on the other hand, am very excited, as I know that in less than twelve hours I will be in Lakshadweep!

The trip has been organized by the Lakshadweep ‘Sports’ tourism department. It’s a government run venture and it has its drawbacks. For one thing, the AC in the cabin, where I’ve been assigned a pushback seat, is too cold. To compound my discomfort, they’ve given us no blankets. I take some pride in the fact that I’ve come prepared with a leather jacket, thermals, gloves and a woollen cap. Even so, I have icicles in my beard. I’ve also not brought my shoes as I couldn’t imagine why I’d need them while swimming in Lakshadweep. Consequently I’ve no socks, so my feet freeze. I therefore keep going out to the upper deck where the sea breeze is a lot warmer and I can check on my sparrow buddy.

The toilets have a faint smell of ammonia, and the movies are mostly in Malayalam. One of them is a rip-off of The Exorcist. But as it turns, out it’s very hard to be frightened by a demon with a thick South Indian accent!

But really I’m just being a nag. At 5000 rupees all inclusive of food, snorkelling and sightseeing this trip, which leaves on Saturday and drops me back on Monday, is still a steal. It is not wonder that a lot of other Indian couples young and old have signed up for the same trip.

I’ve left from Mangalore, and the journey to Lakshadweep will take 14 hours. We land at three in the morning, but the ship hangs around a certain distance from the coast. We’re not allowed to land until six in the morning. To get to the island, I’m transferred into a small boat ferrying me across water that is to shallow for the ship.

I compare the colour of the water here to the muddy green water I saw back at the Mangalore jetty. This water is pitch black—like shiny crude oil. But I realize that it’s actually crystal clear. It’s actually allowing light to go all the way to the bottom of the sea, but because the water is too deep, none of it gets reflected back. That’s why the sea looks black. As we near the shore, though, the colour of the water changes from black to violet, then to dark blue, and finally to the most amazing light blue right at the docks. Now I know where Bacardi bottles its Blue Breezer!

Even here, the water must be several metres deep. But the visibility is crystal clear all the way to the white sands at the bottom. And swimming right here are some of the most stunning fish. Somebody push me overboard, please—I wanna start snorkelling right here!

But not one pushes me over. I’m whisked away into a small rickshaw and dropped off two kilometres away, at a small beach. After a quick breakfast I’m whisked off again, this time in a glass-bottomed boat to a smaller island only half a kilometre away. This island has white sands and some small trees on it. But it’s the water surrounding it that’s maddeningly tempting. The others have started kayaking around. Screw that, I wanna go snorkelling. I’m handed a snorkel and I get into the water. ‘Where’s the best place for seeing fish?’ I ask one of the guides.

‘Just put your head in the water’, he smiles. I sink in and enter a new world beneath the surface. Hundreds of fish are swimming around me. Most of them have congregated near a rocky outcrop and there’s a frenzy of activity there. There are fish of all shapes and sizes, and in the most stunning colours. I’m so delirious with joy, I almost scream into  my snorkel! I feel like I’ve landed right inside one of David Attenborough’s coral reef series.

I’m short sighted though and realize that I’m still seeing blurred images through the snorkel mask. So I return it and dive with my prescription goggles that an ophthalmologist friend of mine has been kind enough to make for me.  Now I’m back in business. Except for one thing: the goggles don’t come with a breathing apparatus so I’m forced to hold my breath underwater.

I realize I’m not that bad at holding my breath though and easily manage a minute at a time. Scanning all around me I greedily soak in the stunningly beautiful sea life all around me. I recognize the blue and black cleaning wrasse, trigger fish, butterfly fish, pipe fish, a grumpy puffer fish the size of football hiding underneath the rocks, and a red and white lion fish that swims away from me like a showy but angry ostrich.

But, for the most part, I realize that I’m an underwater illiterate. As far as identifying marine life is concerned I’m lost at sea, a fish outta water… OK, I’ll stop! There must have been more than 30 species of fish just here and all I could really identify was blue fish, red fish, yellow fish and striped fish. I need to get a good book on identifying fish and I need to get a camera I can take underwater like I need to get a ticket to come back here tomorrow.

One of the guides, on noticing that I was a decent swimmer, decided to take me swimming to another spot. We swam away from the shore now and about half a kilometre away we were among the most bizarrely shaped corals. Some round like footballs, others delicately branched, like Christmas trees. And just like the fish, they came in some of the most exquisite colours. I stretched my hand out at the corals and about ten brown fish came out of it to inspect it. Not knowing if they might have a nasty bite I withdrew my hand away quickly!

Up ahead, my guide has found a large tan coloured sea cucumber. He taps it a few times and the cucumber ejects a silky and very sticky bundle of strings at my feet. My guide gestures to me not to worry. ‘Gum ball model’, he says, as if that would comfort me. I’m not worried, just surprised at how effective this sticky thing is at sticking to me. Some of it still remains stuck to my sandal!

The snorkelling session comes to an end at lunch time. After that, it’s pretty much downhill for me. Folk dances, visits to the local T-shirt factory, and sightseeing. I would much rather go snorkelling again. Though I do like the visit to the 30-metre tall lighthouse. I climb 250 stairs to get the most amazing view of the island. Picture an island choc-a-bloc with coconut trees and azure waters surrounding it, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what Lakshadweep looks like.

I’m winded running all the way to the top of the lighthouse. As I look out at the ocean, I realize I’ve been penny wise and pound foolish by not paying the measly camera charges. This would make for a great shot for my article. So I dash back down to get my camera. And then back up a second time. My calf muscles will hurt for a week after that!

But right now I’m just pleasantly spent. This was a lovely weekend. And it comes with a takeaway too. Lakshadweep is an archipelago of 45 different islands and I’ve only visited one of them called Kalpeni. Most of the other islands are not even inhabited, and there are four more islands that I could definitely explore for some amazing sea life. And I will. Soon. Right after I learn diving in the Andamans!

‘Hey look it’s a snake eating another snake!’ exclaimed Glen a client of mine. It was about eight in the morning and Glen was sitting on one side of a veranda wall sipping his coffee while his wife tried to coax his two children to finish their breakfast. The kids immediately dashed off to look over the wall and started squealing with excitement.

I however gave the comment the benefit of doubt and remained reclined in my chair. This obviously could not be true. Granted we were at Amboli (an excellent spot to find snakes) , but we were in the veranda outside our room and this was broad daylight. It would be difficult to find a snake here let alone a snake eating another snake.

But the kids kept shouting so I got out of my chair and reluctantly walked the five steps to peer over the wall. The sight that met my eyes slapped me wide awake like a bucket of ice cold water emptied over someone fast asleep. In an instant I had my camera ready and I dashed around to the otherside of the wall to start snapping pictures.

Glen had been wrong just as I’d guessed. This was not a snake eating another snake but infact something even more exciting. It was a shieldtail gobbling up an earthworm!

The small yellow and black snake seemed totally oblivious to me and my flashing camera only two feet away. Shieldtails mostly remain hidden in loose soil or leaf litter and as a consquence probably have lousy vision. It was little wonder that the snake remained engrossed in swallowing the earthworm. The large worm which was probably more than half the length of the shieldtail was engulfed quickly. With the worm gone the shield tail immediately started routing around for a hole to crawl into.

So long as the snake was feeding I had restrained myself from handling it. But now that it was done I gently picked it up and brought it out into the sunlight. The little snake tried to wriggle free but it seemed more bothered by the sunlight than by me handling it.

Holding the wriggling reptile in one hand and snapping away with my camera using the other I tried to get a few closeups of the snake’s face and tail. But the snake’s non-cooperation coupled with a totally unsuitable camera lens rendered all the closeup photographs useless. After a few minutes I gave up. I let the children touch it and then released it into some moist leaf litter.

I looked at Glen and shook my head with mild embarrasement. It was not the first time I’d been reminded of the fact that nature doesn’t differentiate between the expert and the rank beginner when it comes to revealing its most interesting and intimate secrets.

Interesting facts about the Large-scaled Shieldtail (collected from Whitaker and Captain’s Snakes of India)

1.Head narrower than neck. Tail very short, appears to be cut at a slant.

2.Eats mainly earthworms.

3. Is in turn eaten by other snakes and wild boar.

4. Found in the Western Ghats. Most widely distributed in Maharashtra.

After a night spent shivering inside my tent the strong morning sun was just what I needed. I spread out on the grass and greedily soaked in with my eyes the beautiful landscape of Uttarakhand. This was a road trip and we were thirteen men traveling in four cars. All excepting me had spent the night comfortably sleeping inside cozy warm rooms. I had been the only one willing to rough it out with a flimsy tent (which I’ll admit was a decision solely guided by the fact that I would save on room rent rather than any romantic ideas of enjoying the thrill of camping in the wild!)

Now I was basking in my glory of being the only true ‘survivor’. My companions were reasonably impressed. And why shouldn’t they be? I had even survived a decent drizzle in the middle of the night. The flimsy tent though seemed especially adept at keeping water in rather than out with the result that by morning my tent held several litres of rainwater!

What no one knew however was that after my tent had flooded I had very nearly abandoned it deciding that I was better off paying and being in a cosy room instead! But of course I couldn’t let them know of this. That would take away all the respect and bravery I had been accoladed with and I would have none of that!

But the fact of the matter was that I was not the only one who had survived out here in the cold rainy night. All the birds chirping around me and the dainty butterflies flitting from one flower to another had done the same. And they’d all managed without a tent or a sleeping bag!

A few feet away in the bushes I noticed a movement. Undoubtedly it was some sort of lizard almost certainly out to steal my thunder. I picked up my camera and followed it. At first I wrote it off as a regular Garden Lizard. But then I noticed that it looked quite different. Possibly bigger? I wasn’t sure. Fascinated I followed it with my camera. My only lens fixed at 50mm forced me to get within five feet of the lizard .

But the lizard was extremely alert and maintained a frustrating ten feet between us. It first climbed a bush then lept onto a shed skilfully acended onto the roof and disappeared. At the time I had no idea what I had photographed. All I could tell was that it was some sort of Agamid. Back home my collegue Aaron Lobo identified it as Laudakia tuberculata (Kashmir Agama).

J. C. Daniel’s book Reptiles and Amphibians mentions it as the commonest species in the western Himalayas.

Here are some other interesting facts about it;

1. Feeds on ants, butterflies and other insects and is destructive to garden plants as it nips off flower petals.
2. Males territorial and pugnacious in the breeding season (the one I saw was definitely eyeballing me!)
3. Hibernates in the cold weather but may be seen basking on sunny days

The snake in the picture is dead. It was dead when I found it. Probably not long gone though, considering it wasn’t cold and rigid when I felt it. I had found it on my regular afternoon walk along the road from the Forest guest house to my dive centre in Havelock (Andamans).

The green snake on the edge of the dull black road was obvious even from a distance. Still I was apparently the first one to notice it. Autos and motorbikes zipped by totally oblivious of the strikingly colored reptile. I was excited. This was a new snake for me. I had never seen anything like it before. I picked it up and began my inspection. The snake was dead no doubt. But why? Surely not of disease or old age.

It was more likely that something had run over it. My inspection couldn’t find any damage done to it though. This was surprising as this was a very delicate looking snake. Even a bicycle tyre going over such a frail creature would snap its spine as easily as a heavy foot would crush a small dry twig. And if that did indeed happen then there should be a very conspicious and sizeable imprint somewhere along its spine. But there was none.

I gave up my post mortem and decided to get a few pictures of it at least. It would help with the identification of the snake. I realized that if I ignored the striking green colour of the snake it was a carbon copy of the common bronzeback I find in Goa. The green colour made the snake look very unusual though (picture a human being normal in every way except for his skin which is a bright blue and you’ll understand what I mean!).

Meanwhile a young couple passing by on a scooter had noticed the snake in my hands. They stopped the bike a resonable distance away and cautiously approached me. I had by now placed the snake on a green bush at the side of the road and was busy snapping away with my camera.

‘That’s a snake isnt’ it…what? Is it alive?’ babbled the woman who seemed to be the more braver of the two.

‘Its dead’ I answered flatly. ‘I found it on the road like this.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Oh yes’ I replied wagging the snake’s head to convince her.

‘But then why are you putting it on the tree?’ she asked suspiciously

‘Well this is a fast moving tree snake that rarely stays still on the ground. No one will believe that the snake was alive if I have a picture of it coiled at the side of the road.’ I explained

‘Infact’, I continued ‘could you please hold this branch for me while I take some pictures? The wind shakes the branch and this snake keeps slipping off.’

The woman shot a glance at her partner still not convinced that the snake was dead or that I was not a mental patient! Eventually she obliged and apart from a few sporadic shrieks on her part when the snake suddenly slipped off, the shoot when quite well.

By the time I was done with the snake the woman had mustered enough courage to hold it. ‘What do I do with it?’ she shouted at me as I was walking away.

‘well…put it on the tree.’ I shouted without looking back and breaking into a jog. I was already late for my diving class.

Common facts collected from Whitaker’s Snakes of India

1. Diurnal, Arboreal
2. Feeds on frogs, garden lizards, geckos, and small birds.
3. If cornered, expands forebody to show light blue interscale skin.
4. Found in the Northeast from West Bengal to Arunachal pradesh and the Andaman Islands. Also Myanmar, Thailand.

Most people are surprised to know that I don’t go looking for snakes. Almost all the snakes I handle and photograph are infact rescued animals. People from in and around my village in Goa call me whenever they have a snake in their house and I go pick it up. After bagging it I bring it back home, photograph it if it looks interesting, and then release it into the wild. Snake calls come at any odd hour (sometimes in the middle of the night!) and include reptiles of all shapes and sizes pulled out from all kinds of places. I’ve once pulled out a wolfsnake from the chain guard of a motorcyle!

Considering each call is quite different I do tend to get a variety of snakes. Even so the places I rescue them from have one thing in common: they are all human habitats. So almost all the snakes I rescue are from a list of about twelve species. The remaining thirty odd species you could also find in Goa I never get. These snakes are either restricted to specific areas, or specific habitats, or may just be so secretive that they never come into conflict with humans.

Recently though I decided to make an excursions into the Ambolim forest in Maharastra. I had heard that it was an excellent place to find reptiles and I was exploring the prospects of taking my regular birding clients ‘snake watching’ for a change!

I’d been recommended a hotel called Whistling Woods and told that the owner Hemant Ogle was quite knowledgeble on the wildlife in Ambolim. Hemant and his wife took me for a walk that night on a road that cut through the forest behind their hotel. We carried torches and umbrellas. The monsoons are the best time to spot snakes there. It was now September and already a little late to be finding snakes there.

But the rains last year were late too so by the time we got back to the hotel ninety minutes later I still had managed to see five snakes. And I was soaking wet!

I liked Ambolim so much I went back soon after with a few clients. On my third trip I was lucky to find this gorgoeous Travancore wolfsnake. In the fifteen years I’ve been rescuing snakes I’ve never found this species. I clicked away as delightedly as my clients! Hemant had shown me how to use my flash for photographing snakes in the dark on one of the previous trips. So I ended up with some pictures that I was quite proud of!

From experience I know the common wolf snake to be a real biter. Handle a freshly caught common wolfsnake and you’ll almost certainly get bitten atleast a couple of times. I imagined it might be the same with the Travancore wolfsnake and therefore decided not to handle it. Later when I got back home and consulted Whitaker and Captain’s book I learnt that  the Travancore wolfsnake rarely bites when handled.

While the common wolf snake is found throughout India (including Lakshadweep but not the Andamn and Nicobar Islands), the Travancore wolfsnake is mostly restricted to the Western Ghats and parts of Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. This little reptile is usually found in the hills and infact was once called the Hill wolf snake for the same reason. It lays 2-6 eggs in April – May.

I’ve never really liked frogs and for years I always avoided them. Unlike snakes which are very dry to the touch most frogs are extremely slimy. Some tend to urinate when handled (a trick of theirs that I find especially revolting!) so I rarely if ever handled them. Infact the few times I actually handled one was when I had to feed some of the snakes that I had rescued!

Recently however I’ve started watching a lot of David Attenborough’s nature documentaries and even though I still can’t say I like frogs atleast I’m beginning to take an interest in learning somethings about them.

My recent trip to the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station turned out to be the perfect place to kickstart my frog study. It was the peak of the monsoon and there were lots of frogs and lots of students studying them there!

My first nightwalk found me five species of frogs! I was immediately hooked for life!

One of the very beautiful species I found that night was the Malabar Gliding Frog. Actually I saw a mating pair! The smaller male sat on the back of the female and held her under the armpits. That position is apparently called Axillary Amplexus.

Strangely though they were sitting in a puddle of water. This species of frog does not usually like to sit in water but they do build foam nests which are attached to vegetation some meters above a pool. It was quite possible that the pair had slipped and fallen into the pool below.

The Malabar Gliding Frog is endemic to the Western Ghats.When jumping the frog extends the webs of all four limbs and can glide slantingly from a tree over a distance of ten meters.

J.C. Daniel’s book mentions that in captivity during the day the frogs usually rested on the leaves with their legs gathered together and body flattened, with the forefeet folded underneath their body, and the pupils contracted to tiny slits. This posture and their leaf green colour render them almost invisible among the leaves.

Semi-venomous

As a snake rescuer the list of species I pick up from human habitation is limited to around ten odd species. Cobras, Kraits, Russell’s Vipers, Ratsnakes, Pythons, Whitaker Boa’s, Striped Keelbacks, Checkered Keelbacks, Wolfsnakes and Bronzeback tree snakes make up ninety nine percent of the snakes I find in people’s houses. Ocassionally I might even find a Vine snake or a Banded Racer but even those snakes are few and far inbetween.

To find the other species one has to go looking in the forests or special areas. My collegues Aaron Lobo, Nirmal Kulkarni and the others regularly make trips into the forest to search for snakes. I routinely suffer a little jealousy when they narrate their expriences to me!

Recently however I made a trip to the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station. I had chosen the peak of the monsoon to be there (the best time to spot herps) and during my two day stay there I came up close with three very rare species of snakes among many species of frogs and other rainforest creatures.

One of the snakes I was lucky to find was a cat snake which fortunately for me decided to coil around a wooded rack just outside the research station. The volunteers there were under strict instruction not to allow anyone to handle the snakes there so I was forced to photograph it in the night itself.

I wasn’t at all happy photographing the snake in the night since the inbuilt flash of my camera tends to ruin most of the photographs. But I tried anyways.

Since we didn’t handle the snake we couldn’t perform a scale count and I therefore cannot be sure about what species of catsnake it might be. I’ve narrowed it down to two species. One being the Ceylon Catsnake and the other being the Beddome’s Catsnake. But even Whitaker’s book says that Beddome’s Catsnake is visually indistinguishable from the Ceylon Cat. However, the former has more belly scales.Another important difference between the two is the number of teeth in the upper jaw, but this is hard to examine in a live snake.

Both these species are nocturnal and arboreal. They usually feed on geckos, lizards, and sometimes small birds which they paralyze with a mildly venomous bite from rear fangs. Both species are oviparous.

Non-venomous

‘Arrrrgh’ came the guttural sound from my guide Vagu as he came to a sudden halt in front of a small snake lying on our path. I was in Agumbe, it was the middle of the monsoon and we were heading back from a four kilometer leech infested trek to the summit of a gorgeous waterfall.

Vagu and me had mostly walked in silence as we didn’t have a common language between us. He was a small man but a fast walker. But my ego woudn’t admit that he had superior stamina so I had to constantly come up with subtle excuses to slow him down. I’d grunt just like him and then pretent ot tie a shoe lace, pick leeches off my trousers, or try to photograph a giant squirell already too far away. I’m pretty sure he bought most of them!

Now it was the end of the trip and my legs had turned to jelly. The snake on the road was a pleasant surprise not just because it gave me time to breathe normally again but because it was something I had never seen before. But I already knew what it was from pictures in snake books. It was a Shieldtail. I was estatic!

I sat down on the ground and clicked away with my camera. I was trying my new 50mm prime lens and though it proved a great lens for regular photographs it struggled with the closeups I needed of this tiny reptile. After all I was trying to get pictures of its head which must have been only a couple of milimeters wide!

But even though I knew it was a shieldtail I hadn’t a clue which species it was. So I carried it back with me to the ARRS where I was staying. But even the students there were pretty much in the dark as to what snake it might be. We tried to do a scale count but the snake was too small and kept moving. Even with a magnifying glass it was impossible to identify.

I had to leave immediately after that so I left the snake there. The students told me that Gerry Martin was due to arrive soon after and they were sure he would be able to identify it.

I called up Gerry a couple of days later. ‘I’ve narrowed it down to the genus Rhinophis. But I can’t tell you which species because for that I’d have to euthanize it before I can carry out an accurate scale count’ he said.

Rhinophis was good enough for me. I’ve gone through Whitaker’s book and I see three species listen under the genus Rhinophis: Red-bellied Shieldtail, Cardamom Shieldtail, and Travancore Shieldtail. That’s probably as close as I’ll ever get to knowing what it was!

Shieldtails are very secretive snakes and not much is known about them. They mostly live under moist leaf litter. They get their name from a small armour like scale they have at the tip of their tail. Most probably feed on earthworms and termite larvae.

The beginning of the monsoons are an excellent time for baby animals of all kinds. I’ve realized over the years that most animals time their young ones to be born exactly when there will be plenty of food around to eat. And what better time than the start of the monsoons when there is plenty of greenery and fresh water. As a result, all baby animals have almost the same zodiac sign!

Frogs, insects and fish lay eggs in fresh water and the hatched babies in turn serve as food for bigger animals like baby reptiles and baby birds.

Sometimes though it might appear as though some events in nature are badly timed. For instance, in India, baby monkeys are born somewhat during the middle of the summer. It seems really strange that the baby monkeys should be born into the harshest season when there is almost nothing to eat, until you realize that for the first few weeks the little monkeys are feeding on nothing but milk. By the time they are ready to eat adult food the rains come in with a bang. Which means they don’t miss a day of the monsoon bonanza!

This year I rescued a Whitaker Boa at the end of summer. I kept the snake for a couple of days during which time I tried to feed it a freshly killed mouse. It refused.  When I inspected the snake I noticed it had quite a fat belly. I decided to keep the snake a few more days but the belly never went down. I began to worry that it might have some intestinal infection.

Then one day when I went to check on the snake I found the culprit behind the fat belly. Actually there were ten baby culprits responsible!

Boas don’t lay eggs. The babies are born live. I’ve hatched eggs of a number of snake species but never had the chance to experience live birth in reptiles. I was over the moon with excitement!

Most people are surprised to know that some species of snakes don’t lay eggs but instead directly give birth to live babies. They’ve been told that giving birth to live  young is something only mammals can do.

Actully live birth is a characteristic shared by many animals including scorpions, lizards, and even some species of fish. The only difference is that even though a snake might give birth to live young, unlike a mammal the mother snake does not nourish her young via a placenta or umbilical cord. The embryos inside her body are nourished only by the  individual yolks attached to them. So essentially the mother holds her eggs inside her body and releases the babies when they hatch.

New born human babies are usually quite wrinkly, disproportionate, and most significantly, absolutely helpless. These baby boas however were replicas of their mother. And even though they were just a few hours old they already knew how to defend themselves by mock striking like their mother did when I first rescued her.

The mother provides no care to her new born babies. So I seperated the babies from her immediately and placed them in a vivarium. Twenty minutes later when I went back to check on them they had all disappeared. I began to panic, until I realized that they had instintively buried into the gravel in the vivarium. I photographed them the next day and released them behind my house. A day later the monsoons hit Goa!

I was supposed to drive with a group of friends from Delhi to Leh. We changed plans and decided to drive to Gangotri instead. Unfortunately as we neared Gangotri we found the route blocked by a landslide. We changed route and tried Yamunotri. Guess what…landslide again. Our last option, Chakrata…landslide yet again. I won’t say more.

Still we did pass some beautiful places on route. Here’s a small collection taken mostly from our moving car!

Max weight 5.2 kg.

Length females upto 35 cm.

Males 10 cm less

One of the benefits of having a notoriety as a snake handler is that people bring you all sorts of interesting wild animals to inspect! I’ve acquired scorpions, baby civet cats, many different kinds of reptile eggs, snakes, and even a brahminy kite. The kite had fallen in a well and I fed it meat during the week it recuperated its strength with me. During that time it plastered our bathroom with bird droppings and I can tell you my mother wasn’t pleased at all!

Monsoons are a time when I’m ‘gifted’ with reptiles and almost every year I get atleast one or two turtles. Sometimes it’s the common Indian Pond Terrapin (which I don’t care much for since it always defecates a foul smelling liquidy substance when picked up!). Equally common though is the Indian Mud Turtle, which I much prefer to the terrapin.

The Mud Turtle is a comical looking creature with a very long neck and large yellow rimmed black eyes. When threated it usually withdrawls its neck and all four legs back into its shell. Skin flaps on the plastron (the underside of the turtle) neatly cover the hindlimbs and the tail. The skin flaps distinguish it from other species of Indian freshwater turtles. Unlike terrapins Mud Turtles have fully webbed digits. They also have a rubbery shell: which I cannot imagine being of much help to the turtle in the event of a strong jawed animal chewing on it. Terrapins on the other hand, have a shell like a rock.

While Mud Turtles are strong swimmers they still burrow a lot. During the drier seasons they burrow into dried river beds and can go enormous periods without food     (A captive specimen on record survived two years without a morsel!). Mud Turtles are foodies taking almost everything from water plants to frogs, fish, crustaceans and snails.

I’ve had mud turtles with me on a number of occasions. Some were given to me very small (the size of a small biscuit). Others were bigger than a dinner plate. And while I learnt quite a few things just by keeping them I got to know a few more things when I consulted J.C. Daniels book (Amphibians and Reptiles of India) to write this article.

For one thing there are two races of Mud turtle. The Indo-Gangetic Mud turtle has yellow spots on its head. The one I have photographed is the Peninsular Mud Turtle (with black streaks on its head).

Mud turtles will lay clutches of several eggs. The eggs hatch in the rainy season. Like most animals the mother turtle times her eggs to hatch in the monsoons when there is plenty of food to go around!

Scorpions sting when people accidently step on them. As long as you don’t touch one on its back or face you’re usually ok. Interestingly if you pick up one by its sting (with a forceps) and place it on your palm it does not bother at all! That is because the scorpion views your palms as any other surface and just crawls all over it. Having a scorpion crawl on your arm can be a little scary though considering its four pairs of legs are quite prickly. And there’s always the fear that you might just frighten the creature and end up getting stung by it.

Though I’ve never been stung by a scorpion, I’ve heard that the sting of the scorpion in the photograph isn’t lethal. Though like all scorpion stings it is still very painful.

Scorpions are usually easily fed with a cockroach every couple of weeks. The prey is caught with the pincers, stung a couple of times and then consumed. Almost the entire body of its victim is eaten. With a cockroach you’ll be lucky if you see half a leg once the scorpion has finished with it!

Every once in a while they shed their exoskeleton which they do with such mind boggling dexterity. The entire scorpion will crawl out through only a small slit made on the underbelly leaving a perfect replica of the scorpion in the form of a complete unbroken exoskeleton!

The species I  kept also seemed to be quite territorial. I once found two adults locked pincer to pincer and came back the next day to find one of them killed and eaten by the other. I’ve never kept two in the same enclosure since then!

One of the scorpions I kept also gave birth to a whole bunch of babies (scorpions give birth to live young). She carried the entire litter on her back for a whole two weeks. When they were first born they were pearly white. Eventually they started to turn yellowish. I presume they did not eat the entire time their mother carried them around. After two weeks when they began climbing off their mothers back I released them. Most of them were put in my own garden!

Pythons usually disappear from the face of the earth in Goa during the summer season. For many years I could never quite figure out what happened to them during the months of March, April and May. Then one day I got a call to rescue a python on a hot summer afternoon in the middle of April. The eight foot long snake was hiding in a large mound of mud right next to a busy road!

I imagine the mound must have been pretty cool inside and I was not all that happy being the chosen one to rudely disturb the snake from its summer slumber. That’s when I figured out that pythons probably hide in holes underground to escape the summer heat.

Then when the first rains hit Goa suddenly I would be getting calls for not just adult pythons but babies also almost every other day!

This April I rescued another eight foot python from someone’s house. I placed the snake in a large enclosure back home for a day (as I usually do before handing it over to the Forest Department for relocation). But when I went to remove the snake the next day she was sitting coiled around a clutch of eggs!

At first I thought of seperating the mother from the eggs and handling over her to the Forest Department. (After all most snakes hardly play any role in hatching their own eggs) But the big snake struck at me with a renewed vigour everytime I got close to her. Realising that my interferring might damage the eggs I called up Aaron Lobo (a collegue of mine who’s had some experience with hatching  pythons)

‘Don’t even think about touching the eggs’ warned Aaron. ‘let her sit around them, she’ll protect them from fungus and keep them at the right temperature.’

I checked a few books and found this to be true. Even though pythons like all snakes change temperature with their surroundings, mother pythons are sometimes noticed shivering around their clutch of eggs. The shivering is actually muscular contractions voluntarily produced by the snake which can generate enough heat to raise the temperature of the eggs by upto 7 degrees above the ambient temperature!

So I let the mother keep her eggs.  But since she wasn’t sitting in a place of her chosing ( I figured she might have chosen a more damp spot) I sprinkled a little water on her every now and then.

For two months the devoted python sat curled night and day around her eggs. She was forced to fast the entire time.In the end only three out of the twelve eggs hatched. I imagine that had something to do with the humidity not being right for them.

The baby pythons only peered out of their cozy secure eggs for  the first four days. Then on the fourth day they finally crawled out and hid underneath the empty egg shells! Not unlike their mother they were the most aggressive newborns I’ve ever handled!

Venomous

I should make it a rule to carry two things wherever I go: my binoculars and my camera. More than once I have bumped into something really interesting and then regretted not having my equipment at hand. Sometimes it’s a pretty butterfly close enough for a beautiful photograph and at other times it might be a tree full of colorful birds which would have been so much easier to identify had I been carrying my binoculars.

But I should count my lucky stars I at least had my camera when I met this lovely reptile. I was driving back from Pune to Goa and was carrying the camera expecting only to take some pictures of friends there. It was the beginning of the monsoons this year and by the time I had reached Ambolim it was pouring rain. In addition there was tons of mist and coupled with the fact that it was now almost night, visibility was reduced to only a few meters in front of me. I decided to spent the night at a friend’s place. I had barely been ushered into a cozy room when my friend Katya called to show me a snake sitting quietly on the wall in the balconey.

‘We get a lot of these in the monsoons’ she said nonchalantly. Katya’s parents also seemed surprisingly casual about the snake. I was the only one really excited!

I asked for a container and standing on a stool and wielding a foot long stick I easily managed to lift the snake off its perch and bring it to the ground. But now thoroughly woken up the snake was suddenly quite a handful to handle. It was a good ten minutes before I managed to push the little scoundrel into the bag.

Katya’s parents wanted to know what I was going to do with it so I told them I planned to photograph it the next morning when the light was better. ‘Just make sure you leave it back in our garden and don’t take it back with you to Goa’ said Katya’s mom.

I was mildly amused. This was the first time someone seemed more concerned for the snake than themselves. Usually once I’ve caught a snake people beg me to release it at the other end of the world!

Next morning it was still raining and I only managed to get a few shots of the snake. I wish I had better lighting but then I should consider myself lucky to get at least one decent photo of the snake. I even managed to get a shot of the heat sensitive pit located between the nostril and eye of the snake (see pic)

Back home I compared the pictures I had taken, to Whitaker and Captain’s Snakes of India. The snake seemed surprisingly difficult to identify. Finally I had it narrowed down to a Malabar Pit Viper. The book mentions that this snake is Typically green olive or brown back with prominent brown /black spots that may join to form a faint zigzag pattern. There may also be scattered yellow spots along its sides. Some specimens may have a dark streak behind the eye. The underside is usually pale green, yellow or grayish-white with scattered brown and yellow markings. Variations include black and yellow mosaic pattern and a reddish-brown (sometimes almost maroon) form. No wonder it took me so long to identify!

Malabar Pit vipers are usually nocturnal, but also seen by day in the monsoons.  They are usually found on low bushes and trees, often near stream edges.

The venom of the Malabar Pit Viper seems to be mild in effect causing moderate pain and swelling which subsides in a day or two.

This beautiful reptile is endemic to the Western Ghats.

Non-venomous

The Common Indian Bronzeback is one of the slimmest snakes in India. Its upper body is bronze-brown in color which matches well with the color of twigs and therefore gives it excellent camouflage.

This is also one of the few snakes with excellent vision. Its large round eyes are very sensitive to movement. When threatened it inflates its throat and neck area exposing brilliant blue markings which otherwise lie hidden in between the regular brown scales. The tongue of this snake is dark blue which is helpful in distinguishing it from the bright red one of the Painted Bronzeback.

The thinnest part of this tree snake is its tail which is wire like and may measure almost one third its total length.  Being slender it is extremely fast and the best way to catch one is to lash out wildly and grab whatever you can of the reptile! If you miss, you can be sure there won’t be a second chance.

Once captured, Bronzebacks will thrash around as though electrified. Still, they are generally mild-mannered snakes and almost never bite. In fact, the only Bronzeback bite I’ve ever suffered came from one of thirteen newborns that I got from a clutch of eggs at home.

This slender snake is a frequent visitor to trees, rooftops and other lofty areas that most other snakes would have much difficulty reaching. In addition it has the ability to spring from one branch to another and its notched belly scales are well designed to give it good grip.

Sometimes these diurnal snakes will congregate in a group which will almost always comprise one big female and two to three smaller males. I once rescued three specimens together and put them in the same bag. One of them was much bigger than the other two and I figured that it might be a female. The next day when I went to release the snakes there were only two left. I believe the bigger female ate one of the males. Apparently Bronzebacks will also eat other snakes and nestlings of birds, but they usually subsist on frogs and lizards.

Being so slim they sometimes enter window frames, occasionally climbing to the second floor of building apartments. The strangest place I’ve pulled out four of these trouble makers was from an air-conditioning system on the first floor of a bungalow in Parra village.

J.C. Daniel’s book mentions that in south India there is a general misconception that this snake is fatally venomous. In addition ‘it is believed that the snake, having bitten a person, climbs a tree near the pyre to watch the cremation and only descends after seeing the smoke rising from the funeral pyre. A mock funeral is arranged to save the victim, for it is believed that as the duped snake descends to the ground, the venom leaves the body of the victim!’

Non-venomous

The Striped keelback is a beautiful snake. The anterior region of its body is a spectacular mix of brilliant red, pink and yellow colours. It gets its name from two buff colored stripes that run from its mid-body to its tail. The colors in the neck area are especially noticeable when the snake its alarmed: at which time it inflates its forebody.

Most striped keelback’s are very inoffensive snakes. Even when first handled they thrash around and even defecate trying to break free, but will rarely bite. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever been bitten by one! In any case their large round eyes don’t allow for them to be taken seriously since they always have a kind of ‘lost’ expression on their face.

Though mostly solitary, Striped keelbacks will often congregate in groups numbering upto eight individuals (which again comprise almost always a single attractive female surrounded by an excess of prospective suitors!)

This tendency of the Striped keelback to congregate in groups earns the snake a certain notoriety: locals believe that should you kill one, seven more will arrive in its place seeking revenge!

Since this snake is adult at quite a small body length many people also assume they’ve chanced upon a nest of baby snakes when they encounter striped keelbacks in a group.

The Striped keelback is a diurnal snake and usually found anywhere there is a lot of vegetation. Many frequent gardens and some are quite at ease even in ponds. I’ve actually once found a pair courting on floating vegetation in an artificial fountain at a resort in Goa.

The young of striped keelbacks feed on insects, tadpoles, small toads and frogs. Adults prefer frogs but also eat toads, snails, small lizards and rodents. Rom Whitaker’s snake book mentions that they are known to estivate in the hot seasons (especially in dry regions),  and hibernate in the colder areas.

The average clutch of a striped keelback varies from 5-15 eggs. A female I once rescued laid eight. The mother may stay with the eggs.

Non-venomous

‘If you’re gonna get rid of your fear of snakes you’re gonna have to get bitten someday.’ I explained to Shippo. He was an eighteen year old lanky lad from my own village in Parra, and he wanted to learn how to rescue snakes.

I had agreed to teach him how to handle non-venomous snakes, and the snake he was supposed to handle was a young Banded Racer. The snake might have been only about ten to twelve inches long but it was a plucky little thing and I could tell Shippo was pretty nervous about holding it. Right now I was holding the snake’s tail in one hand, while I balanced my camera in the other.

After years of working with an ‘idiot proof’ cyber shot I had finally decided to switch to a professional Canon Digital SLR. My lens was a regular 18-55, which suited me fine, considering my reptilian subjects were never more than a few feet away from me!

‘Now hold it, and no matter what happens don’t let go, or we’ll never catch it again.’ I ordered Shippo. He was nervous but he still held the snake which was jumping and thrashing about like a live wire. ‘Support the body, with both hands.’ I shouted as I clicked away with my DSLR. The wonders of digital technology allowed me to click photographs non-stop for free. I didn’t need to be a great photographer to get great photographs. I just needed to click enough. Some of them would turn out excellent by default!

Satisfied that I had enough pictures of the complete snake I decided to try for a few close-ups. Now I didn’t have a macro lens for that but I was prepared with four macro filters (basically a magnifying glass). I unscrewed the UV filter from the main lens and screwed on one of the macro filters, feeling very professional as I did so!

At that point Shippo uttered a sudden yelp. The little snake, possibly a little agitated at not being able to break free from Shippo’s grasp, had decided that there were other ways of persuading him to let it go! The snake was chewing his finger with rigor. I wasted no time. But instead of helping him I clicked away gleefully with my camera! A bite from a non-venomous snake that small is not unlike the few pinpricks you might get from the thorns handling a rose plant. When the snake eased off Shippo’s finger tiny beads of blood materialized out of the bite area. The wound would heal fast. In four days Shippo wouldn’t even remember which hand it was that he got bitten.

Here are a few interesting facts about this beautiful snake

1. The black and white crossbars that are so conspicuous on baby Banded Racers, fade away as the snake grows into an adult. As an adult the Racer is a glossy brown. Alarmed, this snake erects the forebody and flattens the body behind the neck mistaking it very often for a cobra.
2. Banded Racers are supposed to be diurnal (active in the day). I imagine they are not so common though since I’ve only rescued two in Goa so far. One was an adult I rescued several years ago. The other is the baby you see in the photograph.
3. Young Racers will feed on insects and frogs. Adults eat field mice, rats and amphibians.
4. Banded racers are oviparous (egg layers) with small clutches of eggs (2-6 eggs laid at a time)

Non-venomous

The Checkered keelback is definitely the most aggressive snake I’ve known. I hold scars from bites of this snake I suffered over twelve years ago!

Newly caught Checkered keelbacks are so aggressive they will lunge and bite into the air even before the hapless snake rescuer is standing within striking range! When annoyed or frightened most will flatten their fore body and raise it into the air creating a shoddy version of the cobra’s hood (which is why many are mistaken for cobras). Chasing away an antagonist the snake ‘sidewinds’ like the desert sidewinders and may sometimes leap clear off the ground in its efforts to bite.

The bite, though relatively painful, is totally harmless. Sometimes though the teeth of the snake remain lodged in the wound: I remember scratching a Checkered Keelback bite that I had received while training at the Pune Snake Park and finding a tiny white tooth twenty two days after the snake had bitten me!

This robust snake has relatively large eyes and is easily identified by its five rows of black spots which form a ‘checkered’ appearance all over the body. Also conspicuous are two black streaks on its face, one below and the other behind the eye. Most Checkered keelbacks are olivaceous or yellowish, though a few are even pinkish in color.

Checkered keelbacks are extremely good swimmers and spend much of their time in or close to water. They can hold their breath for at least ten to fifteen minutes underwater: which is why if I’m ever called to pull out one from a well I give up as soon as the snake has dived underwater! (Even when the snake does come up for a breath it needs only a few seconds to ‘recharge’ with fresh air before it can dive back underwater.)

They are also expert at catching fish. I’ve seen one at a five star resort even display a tad bit intelligence: when a tourist from the resort threw bread for the fish in the resort’s lagoon, the snake would creep out of the thick foliage along the lagoon banks and swim towards the congregated fish. Then, as the fish were preoccupied thrashing for the bread, the sprightly reptile would pounce on one of them and much to the surprise of the tourists, swim back into the foliage with the live fish in its mouth!

Checkered keelbacks are prolific breeders and it has often happened that even if I’ve not managed to capture the adult one inside someone’s well, I’ve managed to save a clutch of eggs at least! Caring for the eggs is easy: they only need to be sprayed with water every alternate day. The babies pop out two months later.

Though Checkered keelbacks are fairly common throughout the year, they are most active in the monsoons. Many get killed by cars when crossing the roads during the heavy rains.

Ever since I watched one of Rom Whitaker’s documentaries on the King cobra I’ve wanted to go to Agumbe. Apparently Rom himself had caught his first King Cobra in Agumbe in 1971 and he maintains that Agumbe remains for him the best place for establishing a king cobra sanctuary.

Around 2005, Rom bought four acres in one of the forested patches and started the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station (ARRS). And on 29 June 2010, that’s where I was headed!

I was driving alone since all my friends had bailed out on me. Lucano had just had his second baby, Nitin had a meeting in Bombay, and so on. I got tired of waiting, so I packed my bag, picked up my binoculars, camera and a map of Karnataka and was on my way at 6:30 in the morning.

Over the years, I’ve gone on quite a few trips into the Western Ghats and I absolutely enjoy the drives in the rain. I drove non-stop since I don’t get tired easily driving during the day.

Karnataka has some very picturesque drives and after talking to Wrik (an aquaintance of mine who’s sort of a driving expert on Karnataka) I had decided on taking different routes each way. While going to Agumbe I drove from Parra, Goa along the NH 17 all the way up to Honavar and then turned inland to Shimoga. From Shimoga I turned towards the coast again, and after ten solid hours of driving, I was finally at the ARRS.

I had previously spoke to Chetana who organizes bookings at ARRS. Chetana turned out to be be a young student doing research at the Station and the first evening I landed there she showed me around the property. I absolutely loved the feel of the rainforest. It was cloudy and cool and the air resonated with the sounds of cicadas.

Ten minutes into the walk I was photographing a Malabar pitviper that Chetana had pointed out to me. ‘Oh look’ she exclaimed as I clicked away on my camera. ‘A vine snake on that bush!’ I was already sold on this place!

Malabar Pitviper

That night, I was introduced to the other young students and volunteers—Parveen, Sreekar, Damini and Neeti were all students, each doing their own project and helping out at the ARRS. Dhiraj and Ajay tracked the two King Cobras that were tagged with radio chips. They went out everyday and monitored the movements of the giant snakes, where they went, what snakes they ate, etc.

Prashant, a tough looking chap with a french beard and an amicable smile, handled the accounts and the general upkeep of the place. And of course I shouldn’t forget Brian from California who is a replica of the wrestler Steve Austin (only a little smaller!) and who helped me find one Malabar pitviper and a frog that I am yet to identify.

They were a lively, friendly bunch and over the two days I spent there, they opened up to me, not just entertaining me with nightly walks to spot herps but also sharing their chocolates, peanut butter and chicken kebabs with me!

I slept in the dormitory with the rest of them and over the next two days learnt how to eat vegetarian food again. I actually ate lady fingers for the first time in my life!

That night I went for a walk with them and saw five species of frogs—the Golden Frog, the Bronze Frog, the Bi-coloured Frog, the Blue Eyed Bushfrog, and the Malabar Gliding Frog.

Spider!

Malabar Gliding Frogs mating

Unfortunately I’m not used to night photography at all and in addition my 50 mm Canon lens struggled to focus on the tinier creatures that we saw all around. To make matters even more embarassing Parveen was getting the most mindblowing photographs with her regular tiny idiot-proof camera! I made a mental note to get myself a macro lens when I got back.

The next evening, Sreekar and Parveen accompanied me to a local waterfall where we were hoping to spot some amphibians. The base of the waterfall was accessed by quite a tricky climb downhill. Huge trees had collapsed with the heavy rains and they now blocked some of the path making climbing even more difficult at some spots. It was raining when we set out, and by the time we were at the base of the waterfall the water flowed in torrents. There would be no chance of seeing any amphibians that day.

Parveen gave me a tip on photographing the waterfall though, ‘Slow down the shutter speed to one second and then see the effect’ she said. I didn’t realize what she was talking about till I tried out what she told me. The effect was beautful. The usually sharp features of the water thrashing down the mountain were transformed into a lovely hazy milky flow!

The ARRS does not have an electricity connection. It was Rom’s idea that the Station should be sustainable, so the entire place is only powered by solar panels, which obviously work well as long as its not raining! Considering I was there in the rainiest period of the year, we spent most of the nights in darkness—which was a good thing, because it gave me more reason to take the torch and go outside, instead of just sitting and reading a book in the dorm.

At night, I could hear several species of frogs croaking, each at their own frequency and pitch so as not to summon the female of the wrong species! Neeti pointed out the whistle of the Slender Loris to me. It was a single loud high-pitched whiste. It was one of those things where once someone else identifies it for you, it’s impossible to miss it or confuse it for anything else.

In the day I could hear Hornbills, Pygmy Woodpeckers, possibly Scimitar Babblers and Malabar Giant Squirels. The cicadas continued to call both day and night. There were several Malabar Pitvipers within the property. I myself saw three. And they were all different colour morphs.

Malabar Giant Squirell

The good thing about Malabar Pitvipers is that they tend to sit in the same spot, sometimes for days on end. Which was why when Chetana said to me one morning ‘Rahul, there’s a bright yellow pitviper on the bush near the loos.’ I could say to her ‘Oh, wow! I’ll go and check it out after I have my lunch.’ After lunch it was raining, so I went there after my siesta, and the pitviper was still there. It had not moved an inch!

On my last day at ARRS, Prashant organized for a local tracker to take me on a trek to a waterfall called 1KB. The waterfall was a four kilometer-long trek through leech infested rainforest. Prashant figured that it would take me an hour and a half either way. I wasn’t bothered about the walking—t was the leeches I wasn’t too happy about! It’s not that I was afraid about them sucking my blood (I’ve been bitten by leeches several times before), its just that leech wounds take atleast two to three weeks to heal. And during those two weeks, I would be itching at every bite, which would keep reopening the wounds. Still, they couldn’t be as bad as the tick bites I’d received only a month ago while trekking in Sirsi (also in Karnataka)

The good thing was that while leeches are found in the monsoons, ticks are mostly found in the dry summer months. So this walk was thankfully going to be tick free at least!

I wore leech socks (basically bags of thick material which came all the way to my knees), and wore my shoes over them. The leech socks were Prashant’s idea and I must say I was totally skeptical about their effectiveness at the start. But I figured I’d try them anyways.

My guide Raghu walked barefoot. And even though he was half my size he walked fast. I on the other hand, after a heavy breakfast could only hope that I would not get a cramp matching his speed. Of course my ego wouldn’t allow me to ask Raghu  to walk slower, so I resorted to more deceptive tactics. Every once in a while I would grunt (Raghu and I didn’t have a common language) and pretend that I needed to stop to tie my shoelace, or click a photograph of a giant squirell already too far away, or simply pause take in the forest (which was more me trying to breathe deeply so I didn’t give the game away by gasping for air!).

The forest we walked through was dense and dark. There was thick mist in some areas and water dripped constantly from ferns which draped the biggest trees. For every giant tree with huge buttresses, there were hundreds of saplings all tall but extremely skinny. I figured that this might be due to the selective chopping of the giants. Then I realized however that the reason for the spacing out of the giants was because each one of them formed a huge canopy overhead. Obviously they had to be far apart from each other.

And the struggling skinny saplings weren’t unlike struggling gangly adolescent humans, all of them hoping they were in a spot that would allow them to grow into giants themselves one day.

Raghu carried salt for the leeches and he constantly stopped to rub his feet with a cloth packet filled with salt. There were leeches crawling all over his feet but they didn’t seem to bother him too much.The leeches covered my boots too. To my horror I could see a few of them crawl inbetween my laces to disappear into my shoes. But there was not much I could do. If I stopped to take off a shoe, I’d have tens of them crawling all over the rest of me. Raghu helped by rubbing salt on my shoes as well. But there were just too many leeches and in the end I gave up and prayed that my leech socks would keep out most of them.

Even though we walked along a path in the forest, it seemed as though it hadn’t been used atleast for a week if not more. Shrubs were already crowding the path and Vagu carried a chopper that he used to clear the path every now and then.

The trek ended at the summit of a waterfall overlooking an extensive valley filled with trees. It was a most spectacular place: one moment you could see nothing but trees for miles around, and only five seconds later clouds would block out the entire view.

I conveyed to Raghu in sign language that I loved the place, and he must have got the message since he replied with a visible shake of his head, a big toothy smile and and audible grunt!

We had walked under fallen trees, uphill, and downhill millions of steps to get there and my knees had now turned into jelly. On the way back Raghu sensed that I couldn’t walk so fast and he mercifuly slowed his pace. The leeches though remained merciless and attacked with renewed vigor!

Raghu’s legs were now bleeding conspiciously. My leech socks had surprisingly saved me. Though I had several leeches in my shoes not a single one of them had penetrated the socks!

On the way back Raghu suddenly came to half-stop, sounding one of his audible grunts. He pointed at a small snake on the ground. It was unlike anything I had seen before, but I knew it from pictures. It was a shieldtail snake and I was estatic! I took a number of pictues of it. But the snake was too small and I knew I needed a macro lens more than ever. Since we had spotted the snake right next to the ARRS I carried it with me hoping that the gang back there might be able to identify it.

Shieldtail

Like me they were pretty excited to see it but just as much in the dark and as far from identifying it! We tried to do a scale count but the snake was too small and kept moving about  so in the end we released it.

I left Agumbe  early in the morning on the 2 July. This time, I took the coastal road back home. I drove down the ghats to Udupi and from there on, turned north on to NH17. This road was reasonably crowded with traffic and in some areas filled with pot holes. But it turned out to be a good hundred kilometers shorter. I still prefered the route I took while going to Agumbe though. It was definitely much more scenic.

Wrik tells me that Agumbe is just one of many beautiful places to visit in Karnataka. I believe him and I’m raring to go driving back there again!

The ARRS team and Me!

My Trusty Pailo!

Non-venomous

Beaked Worm Snakes certainly look very comical. They’ve got a round face, no neck, tiny dot like scale covered eyes and a sharp beak-like nose. The beak is an efficient tool for burrowing in the soil and since I’ve never gone digging for snakes in the ground I’ve never managed to find a single one myself; the specimen in the photograph was a snake loaned to me by a young snake catcher Zeev.

Even though Beaked Worm Snakes are true snakes their behavior is definitely not snake-like. For one thing when they are handled they don’t try to bite; instead they constantly poke their hard beaks into the skin of one’s palm. This jabbing in itself is a completely harmless exercise and can cause no injury (it did cause me a bit of embarrassment though every time I jerked my hand away only to realize that the snake had done nothing!)

Another curious habit of this reptile is for it to vomit bits of its food when handled. The food vomited by the specimen I handled consisted of small white insect larvae.

This burrowing creature never stops moving in the light. It only stops moving if it is allowed to hide in the dark or under any object such as a leaf. This behavior of the snake made it for a real pain when trying to photograph it in sunlight.

The Beaked Worm Snake is believed to feed on worms, soft bodied insects, and their larvae.

Description; head same width as body; snout pointed with large, hooked beak-like scale. Nostrils below the ‘beak’. Tiny scale-covered eye visible as a black dot. Short tail ends in a spine. Glossy brown above, distinctly paler below. Only upper jaw has teeth.

Scalation; Scales in 28-34 rows around the body, smooth; 450-500 transverse rows of  scales. Rostral very large, beak- like; projects strongly. Total length of snake 40-60 times diameter of body. Belly scales not broader than adjacent body scales. Maximum length 60cm.

Behavior; A strong burrower that spends most of its life underground. Hooked snout and tail is used to lever the body backwards or forwards.

Distribution; Found south of the Ganges Basin and south of Rajasthan. Range extends west to Baroda and east to Calcutta. The largest South Asian worm snake.

Non-venomous

Rescuing snakes in people’s houses I rarely find rare snakes (you might say that’s why they are called rare!). Sometimes though, snakes which are listed as relatively common in snake books are pretty rare finds for me. So every time I find something uncommon I gleefully call up my ‘snake buddy’ Aaron Lobo to show off to him.

By the end of the conversation though my big balloon of enthusiasm has been deflated by him when he nonchalantly says something like ‘Oh I’ve caught loads of them at so and so place’, or ‘Five feet is not big at all. I’ve caught one that was eight feet long.’ Then I begin to wish that instead of just recuing snakes from people’s houses, I’d done some serious ‘snaking’ in the wild myself (I also wish that I’d never called Aaron to brag about my find!)   

The Russell’s Kukri is one such reptile that fits the profile of the ‘rare-for-me-unimpressive-for-my-snake-buddy’ snake. When I first caught the snake I was only sure that it was non-venomous. I didn’t have a clue as to what kind of snake it might be. Then I went through one of my field guides and identified it as a Variegated Kukri snake.

Not much is known about this small snake. Still I managed to glean a few interesting facts looking through both Snakes of India (Whitaker) and The book of Indian Reptiles (J.C. Daniels).

Kukri snakes are fond of basking in the sun on rocks or grass. They feed mainly on eggs of other reptiles and frog spawn. They slice the eggs with their sharp flattened, curved teeth.  Young Kukri snakes feed on insects, grubs and spiders.

.Kukri snakes are generally quite docile. When provoked though this small reptile my flatten its body and strike sideways. Its enlarged rostral (nose scale) suggests that it is a burrower and indeed captive specimens are known to burrow into cage soil.

Non-venomous

Average length: 7-14 feet

The Indian Rock python I’m called to rescue is usually guilty of entering chicken coups and swallowing our egg machines. Bigger ones will take larger animals – I was once called to capture one that had attempted swallowing a kid (baby goat really!)

Really huge pythons take still bigger animals – a friend of mine captured one that had tackled a fully grown goat, and another that had killed an adult monkey up in the trees. Analysis of stomach contents of these huge snakes reveal a bizarre diet; frogs, toads, monitor lizards, birds, rodents, fruit bats, jackals, civets, deer, wild boar, hare, porcupine and langur. Some have even been known to take leopards!

Yet they really pose no threat to humans. In fact, they rid us of a great deal of pests such as rats and bandicoots.

Pythons are not very fast movers and they must therefore get very close to their prey if they are to catch it. Heat sensitive pits located on upper lip scales help them locate warm blooded prey in pitch darkness.

They also have an unusual style of locomotion which helps them stalk prey without giving their own position away. This method of movement is called rectilinear movement and looks very similar to the movements of a millipede (except of course that pythons unlike millipedes are lacking in legs). The snake produces waves of contraction which pass along the length of its body helping it propel forward without needing anchorage at the sides of its body.

When stalking prey they can move very slowly. In fact you only notice that the snake has moved if you close your eyes or look away for a few seconds. The mottled design on the snake’s body breaks the body outline of the snake hiding it efficiently on the ground or in dry leaves. The camouflage of the snake is completed by two commando stripes drawn along the face (one of them runs right through the eye!)

Once this constrictor gets close enough to its prey it will strike with lightning speed.  The snake grabs it by biting it and in the same instant loops two to three coils around its victim’s struggling body. Once the coils are secure the snake may move its own vulnerable head away till the animal suffocates and dies. The entire process of biting the prey, anchoring the coils and moving the head away finishes in milliseconds leaving most people with the impression that pythons cannon bite and are only capable of coiling around their prey.

Prey such as chickens and rats take only a few minutes to suffocate. Once the snake is sure that the animal is dead, it releases its coils and starts sniffing around with its tongue to locate its victim’s head. Imagine being able to tell the head of an animal from its body just by its smell! Prey is always swallowed head first and while still warm (dead animals harden and become difficult for a snake to swallow when they go cold).

I have watched pythons stalk, capture, suffocate and then swallow massive bandicoots. What’s never fails to amaze me is how pythons can swallow animals at least three to four times the size of their own head.  Skin stretches, jaws separate and joints dislocate until halfway down swallowing the meal the snake’s head resembles more a vacuum cleaner bag than the reptile head it’s supposed to look like! Four to five days later the only trace of the bandicoot is a small clump of hair in the snake’s excreta!

Interesting facts about Indian Rock Pythons

1. Both males and females have a spur (claw) on each side of the anal scale. These are believed to be vestigial hind limbs. The spurs on the male snake though are much larger and are still used by it to simulate the female while mating.
2. Female pythons may lay up to a hundred eggs. They remain coiled around them for 60-80 days and are sometimes observed to shiver while doing so; these muscular body contractions raise temperature a little to help incubate the eggs.

Non-venomous

Average length: 5-7 feet.

Growing to lengths of over eight feet, Ratsnakes can make for truly impressive specimens. Most people are unaware though that ratsnakes are ‘scary cats’ themselves.

When first captured, ratsnakes will mock strike and thrash around with gusto. For all the show they make though, they rarely bite.

These large snakes come in a variety of colors ranging from light yellow to olive-brown, gray, and sometimes almost black. A healthy well fed ratsnake is robust in the centre of its body and tapering towards both ends. Other identifying characteristics are a netted pattern of black lines on the tail and black lines on the part of the snake’s face below its eyes.

Ratsnakes are diurnal snakes with large lustrous eyes. They are also excellent climbers and swimmers and will actively chase and hunt any small animal they can overpower. Their diet includes rats, lizards, skinks, frogs, toads, small birds, bats, and sometimes other snakes. Being unable to constrict or envenomate its prey the snake usually holds on to its victim and pressurizes it with its bite till it stops moving. Sometimes though it swallows its prey live.

I once rescued a ratsnake from someone’s house which I put in a cloth bag while transferring it to my home. When I reached home I was shocked to find three live toads that had materialized out of nowhere and were jumping around inside the snake bag! Turns out that my act of handling the snake had disturbed it into vomiting what it had only just finished gulping down greedily. I let the frogs go after that; they probably never thought that they would see the light of day again!

Ratsnakes are often confused for cobras. An easy way to tell them apart is to observe the thickness of the snake’s head. A cobra has a large head which is almost the same dimensions as its mid-body. On the other hand, a Ratsnake’s head is smaller and usually only half the girth of its mid-body.

Rat snakes are very common snakes in Goa and it is not unusual for people to sometimes come across two large specimens in a secluded area the front part of their long bodies coiled around each other and twisting into the air like a spiral staircase. Most people witnessing such a sight end up believing that the snakes involved are a mating pair. Actually what they are seeing is two males involved in a ‘combat dance’! The ‘combat dance’ is a test of strength. Each male is using sheer body strength to coil around his competitor and push him down into submission.

The common wolf snake is one of the few snakes that actually seems to profit by a man-made environment. Houses with tiled roofs are their favorite hideouts. They are expert climbers and slide in between wooden beams with dexterity. Catching them on a roof is tricky business indeed since they always have the upper hand on this one (well maybe I should say that they have all the advantage  since hands don’t apply to them!).

Sometimes though they might hide in the hollow created for the wooden beam that slides shut old Goan house doors. These hollows are more than a meter in length inside the wall and pulling out a foot long snake from the depths within isn’t a walk in the park either!

The strangest place I’ve pulled out a wolf snake from is inside the chain guard of a motorcycle. How and why the snake had got in there I can only guess. I had to dismantle half the guard before I could access the greasy snake. Snake rescuing calls for mechanical skills as well!

Wolf snakes are fairly aggressive reptiles and won’t hesitate to bite when first caught. When first touched the tendency of a wolf snake is to sit coiled and unmoving. If the touch stimulus continues though the wolf snake will uncoil and thrash and twist around madly.

Wolf snakes get their name from the long front teeth they possess. Presumably these help the snakes get a good grip on geckoes (their favorite prey).

The wolf snake’s dark color marked with white bands across the body confuses most people into falsely identifying it as a common krait. Adding to the confusion is the fact that the wolf snake and the common krait are both nocturnal snakes and therefore likely to be spotted during the same time.

An easy way to tell them apart is to notice the lines running across the snake’s body. The difference between the two is that the wolf snake has white bands markedly more prominent in the head region which disappear towards the tail end. The krait, on the other hand, has thin white lines mostly located in the posterior half of the snake’s body, but disappearing toward the head.

In Goa wolf snakes come in two different color morphs. One of the morphs is darkly colored with the characteristic bands across the body. The other is much lighter and lacks bands altogether.

Venomous

Average length: 4-5 feet.

India’s most famous snake is also one of the commonest species that is found in Goa. I have caught at least 300 cobras in the twelve years I’ve been working as a snake rescuer.

Of the Big Four venomous snakes, the Spectacled Cobra is the easiest to handle, one reason being its fairly predictable nature: sway any object some distance in front of a poised cobra and it will immediately start swaying its head to follow the motion. So engrossed will the snake be in the moving object that should you put your hand behind the snake’s head and touch it on the hood, the creature will not react at all. In fact, it will actually allow you to push its head all the way to the ground and pin it before it figures out what happened!

Now you know how snake show performers are able to kiss cobras on the top of their hoods and get away with impunity, leaving you completely awed.

Another reason why cobras make for easy snakes to handle is due to the innately non-aggressive nature of this species. The snake expert Irula tribe from Tamilnadu commonly refers to this species as “Nalla Pambu,” meaning “good snake”, since it always dishes out ample warnings to its would-be aggressors before actually making a strike.

In fact, the whole idea of the snake flaring its signature hood is to warn its enemies to stay away. The stretched skin of the hood is held open by the elongated ribs of the third and following 27 vertebrae and the action serves to make the snake appear larger than it is. When coupled with a few mock strikes and loud hissing noises, the demo will keep even the most ardent of predators (or trouble-making humans) at bay!

Funnily, almost the entire Indian population believes otherwise and remains mired in the belief that cobras open and sway their hoods in response to music!

The fact of the matter is that cobras (like all other snakes) are tone deaf.  When a snake charmer plays his bheen (or flute), the cobra is merely following his swaying movements, totally oblivious all the while of the music emanating from the instrument.

Being one of the most famous of snakes in the world, it is no surprise that the cobra should have a host of myths associated with it.

Most people, for example, are terrified of cobras as they believe these snakes seek revenge. Other myths would have you believe that if you kill a cobra, its dying eyes invariably capture an image of your face. The surviving mate arrives later, takes a look at the picture of the murderer and carries it with it till the opportunity arrives for payback.

I have no problems with people believing these myths since they make people think twice before they think of killing a cobra and saves, in the bargain, a decent number of other species that might also be mistaken for cobras.

Here are some more tall stories:

1.  Cobras carry a diamond on their heads.

2.  Old male cobras are supposed to have long whiskers, like cats.

3.  Cobras mate with ratsnakes and beware the person who witnesses the mating: he or she will go blind instantly!

Wish the real world of cobras would be as enchanting as that.

Of the ‘Big Four’ dangerous snakes found in India, the Common Krait is the most venomous. Its venom – a powerful neurotoxin – is supposed to be fifteen times more virulent than that of the Common Cobra, making it probably the most venomous snake in Asia and earning it a rank among the deadliest snakes of our planet!

Paradoxically, this deadly snake is also the most placid and gentle of the ‘Big Four’. I’ve seen some snake handlers lift wild Kraits by slipping their bare fingers under the snake’s mid-body. Even the Irulas with whom I trained, would handle this snake exercising half the caution and twice the gentleness they normally kept for a Cobra or a Russell’s viper.

The fact remains, of course, that the Krait is most active at night – definitely a far better time to judge this snake if you are awarding it points for manners!

On the other hand, all of the handlings I’ve seen of this snake took place in the day time when this snake appears especially shy and prefers hiding its head under its coils. Just look at the photographs I’ve shot of this snake in daylight.

However, all my own handlings of this snake – while attending snake calls – took place during the night: a time far more unsettling for handling this nocturnal reptile. Kraits come alive at night and move with unnerving speed in their attempts to elude capture. Even so they rarely hiss or strike and are far less aggressive than Russell’s vipers and Saw-scaled vipers.

This habit of the Krait – moving around only at night – may be the reason I receive so few calls for this species. (A jet black snake moving in pitch darkness is not the easiest thing to spot!) I myself have only caught six or seven of these snakes in the twelve odd years I’ve been attending snake calls.

I rescued the one shown in the photograph less than two months ago. The snake turned up under a cot in the bedroom of a person’s house. The occupants, an elderly couple, spent a sleepless night keeping a watch over the snake as it fritted in between coconuts and old metal trunks stashed under the bed. First thing next morning they sent someone to fetch me.

That particular Krait was one of the friskiest I’d ever seen. Even so I managed to bag it safely. Two days later when I made a routine check on the bag, I felt the snake lying stiff inside. I assumed it was dead.

Just to make sure though, I prodded the snake inside the bag with my snake stick a couple of times. The snake remained as hard and immobile as a piece of wood. I opened the bag and edged the snake out.

It was fortunate that I had remained a safe distance from the bag for the apparently dead snake suddenly shot its head in the air with lightning speed. It was the first time I was actually seeing a snake playing dead!

My heart picked up beats like a racing engine as I contemplated what would have happened had I been any less careful getting the snake out of that bag. The only penalty I received for my mistake this time was that I had to bag the frisky Krait all over again!

Interesting facts about the Common Krait:

1. Feeds mostly on other snakes, but occasionally takes mice, lizards and frogs.
2. Is oviparous (egg-laying) and lays 8-12 eggs per clutch.
3. Is confused with the Common Wolf Snake as both are dark coloured with white lines across their bodies. The difference between the two is that the Wolf Snake has white bands markedly more prominent in the head region which disappear towards the tail end. The Krait, on the other hand, has thin white lines mostly located in the posterior half of the snake’s body, but disappearing toward the head.

In my last column we got introduced to the first of the ‘Big Four’ venomous snakes: the Russell’s Viper. This time let’s get to know its close but much more diminutive relative, the Saw-scaled viper.

Saw-scaled vipers are relatively uncommon in Goa where I live and in my twelve years of snake rescuing I’ve probably caught only three or four. To get photographs of the one you’re seeing on this page I had to actually borrow one from a fellow snake handler.

I remember searching for Saw-scaled vipers with Rom Whitaker many years ago on the Porvorim plateau in North Goa. Saw-scaled vipers prefer dry rocky landscapes and, according to Rom, the plateau seemed a good place to find some of them.

It must have been about 7.30 in the morning and the sun’s rays were just warming up the cool surface of the plateau; a perfect time to find these little vipers since most of them would be basking and warming up for the day.

We carried sticks and used them to turn aside every stone that seemed promising enough to harbour one of these small creatures.

Forty-five minutes past our starting time we still hadn’t found anything.

‘It’s odd not to have found a single one so far,’ said Rom finally, chucking his stick aside with an amused look on his face. ‘In a place like Ratnagiri, we’d have found a dozen by now.’

It could be that Goa’s humid environment has something to do with the rarity of the Saw-scaled viper. Or it could also mean that Saw-scaled vipers are much more common than we believe them to be, only no one’s looked hard enough for them. This little viper is after all quite difficult to locate: picture searching for a ten-inch odd, drab brown snake, excellently camouflaged on brown ground, and you’ll know just what I’m talking about!

Saw-scaled vipers are named after the sawing sound they make by rubbing their rough body scales against each other when disturbed. To do this, a viper squeezes itself into a squashed S-shaped pattern, moving its coils in opposite directions to create a truly hypnotic visual. The head sits in the front groove of the coils, ready to strike if necessary. If, however, the viper decides to make a getaway, it can move quickly, and does so in the characteristic ‘sidewinding’ fashion of desert vipers.

These reptiles are among the most hot-tempered snakes on the planet and are quick to bite if provoked. They have good reason to be so aggressive; being small, they are in constant danger of being turned into a meal by hungry predators. Their aggressive nature must make predators think at least thrice before picking on the members of this belligerent little species.

Saw-scaled vipers themselves are no less formidable predators, adding venomous centipedes and even scorpions – along with geckos, mice, frogs and skinks – to their food menu.

They are so small that many of their distinctive features go unnoticed. For example, it was only until I’d photographed one of them with a macro lens that I discovered that they have large eyes with a beautiful golden iris and a vertical black pupil.

The one in the photograph has its iris constricted to a slit as a reaction to the strong sunlight in which it is being held (you must have noticed a similar thing happen to your pet cat’s eyes when they face strong sunlight)

Finally, one of the identifying characteristics of a Saw-scaled viper is the distinctive spear-shaped mark at the top of its head. It also shares the trademark features of vipers with others from the same viper family: an excruciatingly painful bite, long moveable front fangs, and ovo-viviparity.

Of the 275 odd species of snakes found in India only four are viewed as a real threat to humans. These four species of snakes – grouped under the title of the ‘Big Four’ –  bite and kill thousands of people in India every year.

When I trained to handle snakes with the Irula tribe at the Madras Crocodile Bank a few years ago, it was but natural that I should attempt learning to handle the ‘Big Four’ last. But even among the ‘Big Four’ there was a definite order in which I was allowed by the snake handlers to handle the snakes. All four species are very different from each other not just in type and toxicity of venom but in temperament and biting efficiency as well.

The most infamous and much feared Indian Common Cobra was considered by the Irulas to be the easiest to handle! It was therefore the first venomous snake that I was trained to get familiar with.

The next was the very placid but most venomous Common Krait. The Saw Scaled Viper figured at number three (though the snake is so small you can only handle it with a small snake hook).

Last in line was the Russell’s Viper, a snake which the Irulas always viewed with ominous foreboding – I would say with good reason – since many of the Irulas had suffered at least one bite by this creature. Viper bites are known to be extremely painful and I’ve been very fortunate in not falling victim to one so far. I’ve had some very close shaves though, handling Russell’s Vipers in the course of which I escaped by the skin of my teeth and I know I won’t forget those lessons ever!

What makes a Russell’s Viper more deadly to handle than a cobra is its speed, fang size, and extremely unpredictable nature. While I can sometimes pick up a cobra barehanded, lifting its tail directly off the ground, I will never do so with a Russell’s Viper.

I remember having tried this once so many years ago. I had only been rescuing snakes a year and half but I was already on to believing that I was quick enough to pull off this feat with a Russell’s Viper (in retrospect, this was decidedly an act of sheer lunacy!).

The Russell’s Viper I was trying to capture was moving slowly on open ground along a compound wall. It had spotted me and was probing its head around trying to find a hole in which to disappear. While the snake’s head faced away from me I stretched my arm towards its tail hoping to pick it up gently with my fingers.

In that very moment the viper had swung around so quickly that my grabbing hand now faced the head of the snake instead of its tail. Fortunately the snake was only trying to make a getaway. If it had really wanted to bite me I believe that it wouldn’t have missed. Ever since, I’ve always picked up Russell’s Vipers with my snake hook.

While the cobra’s defensive posture is a raised hood, a Russell’s Viper’s is a coiled up circle. The viper’s head sits in the centre of the circle, inhaling and exhaling forcefully, producing two distinct tones of sound for air rushing into and out of its large nostrils. The hissing viper can be almost as loud as a pressure cooker.

From this coiled position the snake can strike at a forty five degree angle upwards in any direction. The coiled-up viper gives no indication of either the direction or the distance it can strike.

Both cobras and vipers are front fanged with a fang attached to either side of the upper jaw (approximately the same area our own canine teeth are located).

The fangs of a viper, however, unlike those of a cobra, are hinged and movable. A sheath and muscles fold the fangs along the jaw and swing them into position when the snake wants to use them.

Were it not for this mechanism the viper’s extremely long fangs (16 mm) would force the snake to move around with its mouth open all the while. The long fangs of the viper render the holding of its head an extremely dangerous affair: were you to hold a viper’s head with a finger supporting its lower jaw, the reptile could still get you by biting through its own lower jaw!

Russell’s Vipers are often confused for young pythons since both are stocky snakes with distinctive markings all over their body. The markings on a Russell’s viper’s body however are relatively symmetrical (diamond or elliptical in shape) whereas those of a python are haphazard and asymmetrical.

Another difference between the two snakes is in the shape of their heads. Russell’s Vipers have a triangular head whereas pythons have one that is more rectangular in shape.

Russell’s Vipers are among the few Indian snakes that have a very rough sandpapery upper body. Pythons, like most other snakes, are smooth all over.

Like all vipers the world over, Russell’s vipers are ovo-viviparous; they give birth to live young. That doesn’t mean they are like us. The female merely carries the eggs within her body, providing an extremely safe place for them until they hatch!

In my last column we learnt about Sandman (or Whitaker’s boa). With Sandman still fresh in your mind, let me take the opportunity to introduce to you his close relative –

Earthman, the Earth boa!

Unlike Sandman who I rescued myself, Earthman was given to me by a colleague, who in turn had confiscated it from a snake charmer in Goa.

Though Earth boas are found even in Goa, I had never found one myself in eleven years of snake rescuing. I assume that the snake charmer had picked up Earthman from somewhere outside of Goa (possibly, Maharashtra).

When Earthman came to me I inspected him at once. I know snake charmers pull out the teeth of most of their show animals as a precaution. Earth boas though are not only non-venomous, they are the most gentle and docile snakes found in India. I figured that the snake charmer might not have felt the need to pull out Earthman’s teeth. I didn’t check inside his mouth. I wasn’t too keen on opening his jaws anyway!

Instead I ran my eyes from the tip of his head to the end of his tail. He looked reasonably healthy. It had been many years since I had seen an Earth boa up so close and I noticed immediately how different he was from Sandman.

While Sandman’s body color was a blotched chocolate, Earthman’s was a freckled brick red (no wonder Earth boas are also called Red Sand boas). The brick red dots were especially conspicuous in sunlight and looked beautiful when the sun’s rays struck the snake’s smooth and glossy body.

Earthman was also much bigger than Sandman. Sandman measured about a foot and a half, Earthman measured twice that! His spherical bead-like eyes though were tinier than Sandman’s which were oval shaped.

While Sandman had a distinct head and neck, Earthman seemed to have none. His head just merged with the rest of his body (like one of those sleek, speedy Japanese Bullet trains). His similarity with the Japanese Bullet train ended right there though; I never once saw him move any faster than very, very slow!

The strangest part about Earthman was his mouth. The upper jaw was an inverted shovel and dominated the lower jaw. This resulted in his mouth opening below and behind his shovel snout.

While both species of snakes have tails that resemble their heads, Earth boas are far superior at this form of mimicry. The tail of Earthman looked almost like an exact replica of its head. I believe this ‘dummy head’ might bear the brunt of a predator’s attack while the real head of the snake hides beneath its coils or finds a burrow to escape.

I don’t know if it actually fools that many animals, but it definitely seems to fool much of the Indian population who also believe that Earth boas move six months east using one head and six months west using the other!

People in Goa have a stranger story to tell. According to them, boas grow the other head only on Wednesday!

I discount both stories. My boas always chose to pursue in the direction of a mouse or a lizard rather than follow a compass needle. As far as the second myth is concerned I can only say that I have yet to find a boa in Goa hiding with a calendar nailed to the inside of his burrow!

Some months ago, at around ten o’clock in the night, an old woman called me up to say there was a snake in her house.

‘Could you give me your address?’ I asked her, quite aware of the fact that there wouldn’t be many people around to ask for directions at that time of the night.

‘You’ve already been to my house before,’ she fired back testily.

I knew there was no arguing with that. I racked my brains for the word ‘Bastora’ (the only clue she’d given me of her village), and then suddenly remembered a cobra I’d picked up many months ago.

‘You will pay me my transport, right?’ I quizzed her tentatively.

‘ARE YOU COMING OR NOT!’

Her voice volume had increased by a good 60 decibels and I could see her angry eyes widen through the receiver of the phone.

Twelve minutes later I found myself sifting through a few old sacks in the old lady’s garage. She was a little smaller that I’d expected her to be but no less intimidating.

The snake, when I finally found it, tried slipping away languidly along the wall of the garage. I recognized it immediately as a boa, lifted it by its tail, and dropped it into my open gym bag.

‘Is it poisonous?’ the old lady asked me with the look of a school teacher conducting an oral examination.

‘No, it isn’t,’ I dutifully replied.

‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t have called you. I’d have killed it myself.’ She was visibly unimpressed. Still, to her credit, she slipped a hundred rupee note into my hands before I left.

I looked at the snake the next morning and figured that it was probably a sand boa. So I named him Sandman. Not that he would respond if I called out to him (I suppose the fact that all snakes are deaf had a big part to play in his indifference to his new name).

But if Sandman was unconcerned, he was also unobtrusive, cool (figuratively and sometimes literally), and one of the calmest of snakes I’d ever handled. I remember only one nip that a friend received. (In Sandman’s defense, I must say that he did mock-strike at my friend at least once as a warning when he tried to pick him out of my bag. The second time my friend tried his luck, Sandman’s snapped at him with his tiny needle like teeth. My friend jerked his hand away in a flash, but he still wasn’t quick enough – along the length of his middle finger a small row of red dots appeared and steadily got bigger.

Sandman remained with me a couple of months and I fed him geckoes. Sometimes, when I attended to a snake call on a roof, I would bring him home a few baby mice – a special treat! I could never tell which he liked better: the gecko or the baby mouse. He struck out and coiled around both with equal enthusiasm.

During the time he remained with me I also acquired a copy of The Snakes of India (Whitaker and Captain) and was pleasantly surprised to discover that Sandman was not a Common Sand Boa, but a Whitaker’s Boa. He appeared indifferent to my revelation though and the name Sandman therefore stuck.

Here are a few fun facts about Whitaker’s Boas:

1. They differ from Common Sand Boas in having a smooth overall appearance and a blunt rounded smooth-scaled tail. Common Sand Boas on the other hand have a very rough, abruptly pointed tail.

2. They are also good climbers – the larger one in the photographs was in fact caught on a roof!

3. These snakes are found along the Western Ghats in Karnataka, Kerala, Goa and Maharashtra.

4. True to their family type, they are live bearers.

3. Most people believe them to have two heads probably because the tail of the boa looks very similar to its head.

I have a fun job. I rescue snakes for a living! Most of the snakes I rescue are from people’s houses around my home-town. A cobra on a roof, a rat snake in a cupboard, or a python in a chicken coup are the kinds of distress calls I attend to.

Nowadays I also work as a ‘wildlife’ consultant with some of the five star hotels in Goa. My job requires that I be ‘on call’ any time of the day (or night!) in case a snake is spotted in any of the hotel rooms or lush gardens and golf courses.

But since I’m very often quite busy and unable to attend to some of these snake calls, I decided to train some of the hotel staff to rescue at least a few of the non-venomous snakes in emergencies. My trainees are usually gardeners and security guards since they are the ones that encounter snakes most often.

You may think that it would be tough convincing people to learn to handle snakes. It isn’t! Even though most people are scared of snakes, many are actually quite willing to learn simple snake handling techniques if it means they can save a part of nature.

Below are photographs of a baby Common Kukri snake that was caught by the security guards of Hotel Radissons shortly after a training camp I conducted for them last year.

Since the guards weren’t sure if the little snake was venomous, they hadn’t touched it. Instead they had tipped it into a bottle and kept it for me.

The baby kukri was one of the tiniest snakes I’ve ever seen. Barely longer than my middle finger, it made no attempt at aggression when I placed it on my hand to inspect back home.

Common Kukri snakes are generally shy snakes. This one had the typical dark eyes and round pupils of the species which on this particular baby snake gave it the astonished and comical look of a kid who has just walked into the wrong classroom at school.

I rarely find Kukri snakes on snake calls and therefore didn’t know much about them. So before releasing the snake I looked up ‘Common Kukri’ in Snakes of India (Romulus Whitaker and Ashok Captain) and found the following interesting fun facts:

1. Kukri snakes get their name from their sharp, flattened, curved teeth which they use for slicing reptile eggs (their main food).

2. Young Common Kukri snakes feed on insects and their larvae, spiders and gecko eggs. Adults eat reptile eggs, geckos, skinks and small mice.

3. Common Kukri snakes are often mistaken for the Banded Krait which has a ‘toblerone’ type of shape for its body and a distinctly rounded tail tip.

The Vine Snake

With a body like a creeper, a tail as slim and delicate as a tendril, and a parrot green color finish, the Vine snake secures a place as one of the prettiest of Indian snakes. My first encounter with one was when I was about seven years old. It was the monsoon season and my brother and I were accompanying a young man named Stanley who was busy with casting a fishing net along the length of a muddy stream running in between the lush green fields of our village.

Every time the net was pulled up, Stanley would gather all the big fish and then allow us to scamper after the little ones that he didn’t want. So thrilled and engrossed was I that had it not been for Stanley suddenly hissing ‘stop’ and yanking me roughly away, I would have bumped right into it.

‘Look there!’ he hissed and I followed his finger to a green bush. I squinted and tried to focus but it was a good minute before a slender green creeper moved ever so slightly betraying the image of a perfectly camouflaged vine snake.

‘That snake would have made a hole in your head had I not pulled you away in time,’ whispered Stanley. I gulped and turned my eyes now to Stanley who had picked up a large coconut palm and was creeping stealthily towards the snake. The next second he had lifted the palm high above his head and then brought it crashing down on the green bush. When he lifted the palm for a second blow the snake was already writhing on its back displaying a beautiful fluorescent green underbelly. I was allowed to pick up the dead snake and inspect it. My feelings were mixed. Much as I feared the snake, I couldn’t help feeling very sad that it had been killed. Despite what Stanley had told me I figured that the snake had no intention of attacking me and, that we had therefore no right to kill it.

Eight years later when I would handle a Vine snake for the first time at the Pune Snake Park, I would realize that the stories of Vine snakes pecking out people’s eyeballs and making holes in their heads were completely false. Though they sometimes open their mouths to reveal a startlingly pink inside, they seldom bite.

Vine snakes are very unusual snakes. For a start, they have extremely slender bodies and live mostly in trees where they hunt lizards and little birds. They are back fanged snakes and possess a very mild venom which helps in subduing the little animals they feed on. A bite inflicted on humans though is practically harmless. Their heads are long and pointed to look like a leaf and therefore serve as camouflage (definitely not meant to bore holes in human heads!)

They have a horizontal, elliptical iris and binocular vision which is very useful for them while judging the distance when hunting quarry, or jumping from one branch to another. They don’t lay eggs but give birth to live young.

The specimen in the photograph was a snake I picked up returning from a bird watching trip in Porvorim, Goa. A fellow birdwatcher Nitin Naik and I had our heads craning out of the windows of a moving taxi while we scanned for birds to show to two elderly tourists who were accompanying us on the trip.

‘Look, look, on the road, there’s a snake,’ shouted the taxi driver, bringing the car to a sudden, screeching halt. I jumped out and thrashed behind a bright green creeper that looked like it was dancing its way hurriedly across the road. The snake was fast and it would have escaped had I not dived after it like a kid trying to grab a rolling coin before it falls into a drain. The end result was a highly agitated and ‘wired’ vine snake mock attacking my hand in between bouts of trying to escape. The tourists had by now followed me out of the car and were looking at me like I had gone crazy!

Two days later, after I had taken a good many pictures of the snake, I released it back into the forest.

On the 13th of May my neighbors phoned me – quite like the pizza delivery boy –  shouting through the receiver that I needed to come rightaway and catch a snake from their house.

The snake turned out to be the biggest bronze back tree snake I’d ever seen and although it was not more than a meter long, it still scared me a little. Yeah I’ve caught snakes over three meters in length. But there’s something uncanny about a specimen that exceeds by very much its average size. Wouldn’t you feel anxious if you saw a mosquito the size of your thumb?

The giant bronze back behaved very well though and so I managed catching the snake quite easily. While I guided the snake into the bag, however, I noticed lumps at regular intervals on its underbelly. I guessed that it was a female about to lay eggs, so I decided to hold onto the snake a couple of days. On the 15th of May the snake laid a clutch of fourteen cream colored rectangular eggs.

I released the mother immediately (they do not participate in the hatching of their eggs). The eggs I kept in a plastic cheese container in my room. I buried them half in sand and sprayed their exposed tops regularly with water.

By the beginning of July I’d almost given up on them hatching (bronze back eggs usually hatch in six weeks at the most). Still the eggs looked healthy, full, and they hadn’t been attacked by fungus. I decided to leave them a few days more.

On the 15th of July – exactly two months later – the first baby ripped its egg shell with its especial egg tooth and poked its head out. It spent the entire day absorbing the surroundings with its large bulging froggy eyes while its belly continued to absorb the last remaining part of its yolk sac (its only food during the two months it spent in the shell). On the 16th it was dashing around in the container, over the peering heads of three more eggs that had begun to hatch.

I picked up the little fellow (or was it a felly?) and took him out in the garden to photograph. While I was doing so, the little tyke bit me thrice! I’ve rescued dozens of bronze back tree snakes from people’s houses and never ever been bitten while doing so. Isn’t it a crying shame I should get bitten thrice by one that was barely learning how to open its mouth? After the photography session I dropped him in a lush patch of our garden. He disappeared in seconds.

By the 18th only three eggs remained to hatch. They never did. The photographs I’m including in this newsletter illustrate my wonderful experience with eleven baby bronze backs that bit the hand that fed.

Name – Residence – Area of operation – NGO – Contact numbers (some may have changed)

Saligao:

Griselda Nobay, Donvaddo – GCR – 9823802842 / 2278567

Tarika & Suhail, Donvaddo – GCR – 2409999 / 2278276

Bardez:

Suneel Korajjkar, Mapusa, Bardez – GCR – 9822123042/ 2253715

Alfred D’Mello, Nagoa, Bardez – GCR – 9823053474 / 2278903

Sagar Kambli, Mapusa, Bardez – GCR – 9823937930

Sahil Warang, Camurlim, Bardez – GCR – 9823508765

Prasad Shirodkar, Mapusa – GCR – 9765451302

Aaron Fernandes, Mapusa, Bardez – GCR – 9850560560

Mario Fernandes, Calangute – Bardez/Tiswadi – GCR – 9923667665

Rahul Alvares, Parra, Bardez – (Creepy Times) – 2278740 / 6510871 / 9881961071

Nitin Sawant, Porvorim, Bardez – WWF – 9822483535 /2414278

Oldrin Pereira, Aldona – Bardez – NNC – 9850450120

Arnold Noronha, Bardez – VEAB – 9420685641

Ramesh Zamekar, Bardez – VEAB – 9923306455

Sharad Chari, Aldona – Bardez -  NNC – 2293193

Mario Cavallari, Bardez – ARS – 9822166175

Sainath Shirodkar, Mapusa – Bardez/Tiswadi – GFD – 9422062880 / 2265772

Xavier 9822987274/ 9420430534 (Forest D.)

Forest Dept, Campal, Panjim – North Goa – GFD – 2228772 / 2229701

All Goa:

Sanket Naik, Pernem – VEA – 9421239791

Prasad Kassikar, Bambolim -  GCR – 2459322

Amrut Singh, Bicholim – ARS – 9422062503 / 2363803

Anand Dalvi, Bicholim – ARS – 9923528080

Vivek Parodkar, Sattari, Bicholim – VEA – 9423600333 / 2369387

Deepak Gawas, Sattari, Bicholim – VEA – 9421248643

Kedar Kanekar, Satteri – Bicholim – ARS – 9324857453

Chandrakant Shinde – Sattari, Bicholim -VEA – 9420159497

Anand Melekar, Satteri – ARS – 9764681913

Rama Bagi, Valpoi – GCR – 2382163

Forest Dept., Margao – South Goa – GFD – 2750246

Venkatesh Sansgiri, Margao – 2550922 / 9822150355 – GCR

Julio Quadros – South Goa – 9822152010

Amol Naik – South Goa – GCR – 2605672 / 9822158715

Sudan Naik, Mormugao – Salcete – ARS – 9822387347/ 2550898

Pankaj Lad – Salcete -VEA – 9372109987/ 2751308

Neelam Khomarpant, Margao – Salcete – GCR – 9822123868/ 9822123042

Philip Fernandes – Margao, Salcete – 9822986505

Clinton Vaz, Salcete – WLG – 9890936828 / 2736828

Forest Dept., Mollem – Sanguem GFD – 2612211

Satish Poinguinkar, Canacona – ARS – 9421244555/ 9823134465 / 2641510

Paresh Porob, Canacona – GFD – 9822157139

Forest Dept., Bondla – Ponda – GFD – 2610022

Surel Tilve, Ponda – ARS – 9422058590 / 2335078

Dilip Naik, Ponda – 9823229378 / 2316492

Kamlakant Parab, Ponda – PFA – 9822130598/ 3207920

Dilesh Hazare, Ponda – ARS – 9422453437 / 2340609

Girish Kelakar, Ponda – 2343826 (res), 2314435(off) 9822581861

GFD = Goa Forest Department; VEAB = Vivekananda Environmental Awareness Brigade; ARS = Animal Rescue Squad; GCR = Green Cross; PFA= People for Animals; WWF = World Wildlife Fund; NNC = Nisarga Nature Club: WLG = Wild Goa