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Lakshmi Sharath

A tree house tucked away in the branches of an 80-year-old jamun tree was the setting for some truly top-of-the-world moments with nature...

It was the darkness that first met my gaze. A thick blanket shrouded everything, including my mind... It took a moment for the ambience to sink in — about 40 ft above ground level, suspended between the branches of a jamun tree in 300 acres of wilderness and awakened by a montage of cries that you will probably never hear in the confines of your bedroom. And the only human to share this experience was my husband, sleeping.

We had wanted to get away... far from the madding crowd. We drove from Chennai via Bangalore and Mysore to reach Masinagudi, 30 km from Ooty. A 10-km drive through wild, tall grass and dusty mud roads, with the Nilgiris for company, took us to a property aptly called the Wild Canopy Reserve.

It was dusk when we approached the reserve, and we were greeted by the sight of a very excited group of people. Tigers and elephants punctuated their conversation and we stopped to listen. They animatedly described a herd of wild elephants spotted at a small pond nearby. Nothing unusual, we thought, until we were told that our tree house was beside the pond.

More information came in... not mentioned in the Web sites. That not many people inhabit the region! A couple of tree houses dot the reserve and, yes, it is so secluded that you cannot view one tree house from the other.

We were shown our wild retreat — a tree house, built with bamboo, tucked away in the branches of an 80-year-old jamun tree. Twilight came and went as we climbed the rope ladder; as night descended, we saw the first glimpse of our tree house aided by moonlight.

Small and quaint, it came with a petite balcony, a double cot with a comfortable mattress, and an awesome bathroom with hot water. And an open view of the jungle life, as seen from the top! This, we realised, was the height of exuberance. The view gradually blurred, and soon after, merged with the darkness. We sat in the balcony and took in the moment. A pregnant silence gave way to the murmurs of the forest as we meditated on the sounds.

A twig cracked and with it came light — not the dawn, but a solar lamp, which, we were told, would last precisely for four hours.

But it was not the dawn of the next day that woke me but the darkness... and the sounds. I lay silent, imagining the wildlife around me. And that's exactly when it happened. A violent jerk, a strong smell and an exuberant cry. We leapt out of our bed to see if we had visitors. The solar light had died and the moonlight was not sufficient to trace the whereabouts of our early morning visitor. We spent the remaining hours till dawn seated in the balcony, afraid to even check if our intruder had occupied the bed. We were told later that there were chimpanzees in the tree, above our house, exercising their limbs in full glee.

It did not end there, however. We realised that we had more visitors that night, except that they were courteous enough to leave us undisturbed. The pond was crowded with deer and elephants, peacocks and many other colourful birds that had come to quench their thirst. There were also a few wild elephants, which, we were told by the watchman, had created quite a rampage in the property and tried to cut through its electric fence.

Our appetite for a wild adventure was by now whetted enough to set us off on a safari. We followed a tusker along its destructive trail, but eventually the wild animal eluded us. Bamboo shoots, footprints and faeces were the clues on our `treasure hunt'. We limped our way back to the tree, climbed up to the tree houseand spent the last few moments of our trip with nature, in silence. We were there, on top of the world, at least for those precious moments, until reality brought us down to earth.

Akshar Media

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