Gazing across Millenia

I asked myself the other day, 'How far does your gaze go?'. A fairly odd question, I thought, but nevertheless I found myself saying 'A few inches, most of the times'. A laptop or an iPhone screen is about as far as my gaze goes for a major part of the day. And then, a few hundred metres a couple of times a day, to scan for an incoming bus at the bus-stop.

Is that why it feels so different when my gaze soars over a valley from a mountain pass, or when I look at piling thunderclouds on the horizon on an evening? Perhaps. Perhaps that is also why I was so intrigued by my answer to how far is the farthest that I have glanced.

Stars are so far away that measuring their distance involves borrowing units from time. They are quite unlike anything else that we will rest our eyes upon. Here is something that is not a part of our man-made world, and -unlike much of our earth-a part of nature that we cannot even reach or touch, leave alone control. In fact, stars are not a part of our world - we are a part of theirs (and a very small one at that).

Star-studded skies are best watched on cold dark and cloudless nights, with company that is willing to shut-up talking about themselves. If there is someone who is interested in astronomy, knows the names of the stars and constellations, and their facts he is indispensable.

Even more interesting is the person who knows the mythology and the stories behind stars. Every culture has made its own attempts to relate to and identify with the mystical sparkling night sky through stories and beliefs. I think it is just our way of making these powerful unknown objects more human. Which is why people can see hunters, bulls, bears and scales in the skies.

The stories of Orion the Hunter, (Mruga, the Deer, in India), The Great Bear (Saptarshi, the Seven Sages, in India), and the Pole Star (Dhruva, the Steadfast, in India) are as interesting, if not more, than information about the distance in light years, the surface temperatures and the life-cycles of these stars. Told in the silence of the night, stretched out on the grass in an open glade, the stories can swirl up skywards, taking fantastic vivid shapes, as consciousness flirts with sleep.

Norwegian photographer Terje Sorgjerd's stunning time-lapse video of night sky and the Milky Way couldn't have captured the magic of star-gazing any better. Shot at El Teide, Spain's highest mountain, it follows the Milky Way, (or Aakash Ganga-Ganges of the Skies-at it is known in India) for a whole week.

The Mountain from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

The pursuit of astronomical or astrological knowledge aside, watching the stars with your own eyes is an experience that can silence even the most restless mouths and minds. It may have something to do with the atmosphere, the location far away from cities and crowds, and the unhurried silence. But I suspect it has more to do with the way they dwarf us in time and space, breaking right through our thoughts for once, and making us forget ourselves.

It is not for nothing that the starry night skies are called the Heavens, where we go after we shed our lives on Earth.

The Spine of the Peninsula

Layered Basalt, Mahabaleshwar

Road to Sinhagad
The Lion Fort

If you happen to be flying into Mumbai from a south-easterly direction during the day, you cannot miss them. Just as the descent into Mumbai is announced, the dusty plains suddenly break up into long rectangular and jagged hills. A dam here and there, a river snaking its way, a patch of unbroken forest, and bare step-like cliffs – the details are all the more visible as the aircraft loses altitude. They disappear as quickly as they appear, and soon the creeks, mangroves and slums of Mumbai replace the view, before you touch down.

The Western Ghats form a 1600km long wall against the western coast of India, starting near the southern border of the state of Gujarat, down to southern tip of India. Himalayas may be the more famous of the Indian mountain ranges, but the Western Ghats are far older. They are remnants of volcanic activity when the Indian landmass broke away from Madagascar, on its way to ram in Eurasia and push up the Himalayas. They are, in fact, the faulted western edge of the Deccan Plateau, created by layers of volcanic rock. Hence the steep cliff-like western slopes, and the gentle, at times barely discernible, eastern slopes.

The Scorpion's Sting, Lohagad, The Iron Fort

They’ve walled off a narrow strip of coastal plains to their west from the rest of India. Called the Konkan coast in the north, the Canara coast further down, and the Malabar coast near the southern end, this is the land that greeted the first western traders to come to India in search of trade, and later, colonies.

The Ghats are a couple of hours drive from two of the biggest cities in the state of Maharashtra, Mumbai and Pune. For guys like me who grew up here, it is almost impossible not to have visited the hill-stations and forts in the Ghats on picnics and treks. Most visits were revelations though - middle school history and geography made sure that we knew about these hills in as uninteresting and hopelessly pedagogic a way as possible.

Atop Lohagad

Monsoon Clouds 
Sinhagad 

Locally called the Sahyadri Mountains, the Ghats provided significant military advantage to those who held control over them. The flat topped hills made for perfect military outposts and watch towers over the few navigable passes from the plateau down to the coast. Numerous forts have been built at strategic locations, to control the valleys and trade routes they overlooked. Where the cliff-faces were not steep enough, they were blasted using explosives to create sheer rock walls hundreds of feet high. And where that was not enough, massive stone embankments were constructed, many of them strong enough to be still standing for over half a millenium.

In a period pre-dating the use of motorised vehicles and aircraft, it is easy to see why a few hundred people armed with canons and guns could hold the fort - and effectively hold the surrounding countryside. The roots of the Maratha Empire can be traced to here. In its early years, Marathas, the local warrior peoples, held their own in these hills against the Deccan Sultans and the mighty Mughal Empire for decades, with the help of guerrilla warfare. Now, are all that’s needed to visit these forts is a fit pair of legs, some endurance to the sun and thirst, and a love of the outdoors-they make for great weekend hikes.

Road through the Ghat forest, Mahabaleshwar

Fruit Crushes, Mahabaleshwar

The Western Ghats profoundly affect climate and life, in ways that are now taken for granted. India’s south-west monsoons hit the Ghats before they can cross over into the peninsula, causing heavy precipitation on their western slopes. The coastal plains and the Ghats are much wetter, greener and tropical than the dry grasslands further in. The climates of Mumbai and Pune are testimony to this fact-incidentally, Pune with its hot dry summers and cold winters is definitely more liveable than coastal Mumbai, which is always humid and warm, save for a few months of winter.

Further south, on the Malabar coast, the Ghats create the climate that allows the cultivation of spices. Spices were the reason why Vasco Da Gama set sail for India, and why Columbus, though he set out for the same destination, bumped into America. In the higher reaches, the Ghats create a  cool climate that European colonisers sought so much in the tropics, and created the many hill-stations that dot the range.

Monsoon Torrents
Magod Falls, North Karnataka 

Fresh Produce
 Mahabaleshwar

Moreover, dozens of rivers arise in the Ghats, and depending on whether they flow west or east, they either have a few dozen or upto a thousand five hundred kilometres to flow across. The ones that happen to flow down the eastern slopes of the Ghats become the life-line of millions across the peninsula. So in a way, though the Ghats block rainfall from the Deccan Plateau on the one hand, they also provide perennial water supply to these parched lands on the other.

Down south, the terrain and the climate in the Ghats have given rise to vast stretches of semi-evergreen and evergreen forests. Sholas, unique high-altitude mountain forests of dense short tree cover interspersed with grassland-occur nowhere else but here. The richness of the flora and fauna caused this area to be recognised as one of the world’s Biodiversity Hotspots-an area holding a great wealth of diverse plant and animal life, but under intense pressure from population. They are also being considered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Sunset, Lohagad

Monsoon Freshness, Sinhagad

All in all, the Western Ghats are special. They are home to some of the wildest and most pristine natural habitats in India, a huge huge attraction for me. The Shola forests around Kudremukh National Park, the rain forest around Agumbe, and the many national parks around the Niligiri and the Annamalai hills are very high on the to-visit list. With some luck, I shall write about them here.

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