Into the Hills: Gap Year Week 5

In 2015 I flew to Coimbatore, and from there drove four hours and 40 hairpin bends into the hills.

Morning in the Ghats

Mornings in the Ghats are an exercise in pastel.

maybe my heart is full of sky

so maybe the only thing separating loving and living is an oh of amazement – the breathless sound the sky makes when falling the final gradient from dusk to twilight and back again, the way your eyes keep searching for stars only an evenmist away, how your fingertips keep feeling for worlds closeted within atoms,…

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Gaur Among Tea

An Indian gaur, the largest bovine in the world, stands among tea fields.

Tales of Shieldtails

Shieldtails are perhaps one of the strangest - and most important - creatures of the Ghats.

Journal Journeys: Solitude of the Ghats

I want to say to it, come back. Let me see you.

Portrait of a Gaur

The curious charm of the Indian gaur.

Hawk-Eagle of the Hills

A Legge's Hawk-Eagle looks over the hills of the Western Ghats. Formerly a subspecies of the Mountain Hawk-Eagle, its split allowed birders worldwide to add one more species to their lists.

The Prinia Poses

A juvenile Jungle Prinia poses for the camera in Valparai, Tamil Nadu.

Oh, Shrikes! (pt. 2)

The long-tailed shrike is known alternatively as the rufous-backed shrike - for reasons that highlight the confused world of bird taxonomy better than anything. The problem is that there's this thing called subspecies - which means that, for example, to take collared kingfishers, you can get two birds that are technically the same species but…