After the chase

Its been a good month and a half since I left the Garo Hills and I must say that I am missing it to some extent. What I did miss out on in the meanwhile was blogging about some of the field experiences. I have realised one important thing about field blogs; they are quite unlike the revenge of Beatrice Kiddo and are in fact 'a dish served piping hot and fresh'. There's nothing worse than trying to recreate a month old field experience with the help of our rapidly failing memories and a few hurriedly scribbled notes in the field note book.

Which is why after the initial inactivity, I've abandoned the plans of writing about the wonderful visits to the Balpakram plateau, a day long trek across the Siju WLS into the Balpakram National Park. But, I just had to post something from the Anacpatal elephant trail adventure with my former colleagues. I have on my hands a masterpiece of a video of the great Vincent a.k.a Bensen Sangma taking a free dive into a pool on the Rongai stream in Balkhal aking. Don’t miss this video of him first doing an impression of an ape/macaque on top of the rock and then going for it! The cameraman was Bappi Marak while I was in the water with a fish eye view of the proceedings.

You will be forgiven for thinking that these actions seem a bit strange and over-the-top, but after having a close shave with elephants (just an hour back) people can be driven to strange heights of euphoria! They of course have different ways of expressing it, and I would completely attest to the fact that jumping into the cold water from a high rock on a mountain stream is actually a fantastic stress relief activity!! Try it sometime, but don’t wait for wild elephants to chase you before you do it :)