When the Forest Department lists what is in these hills it names elephants first, then wild dogs, deer and wild boar, and then rare birds and butterflies. The elephants are the reason a guide is not optional. But they are not what most walkers come out having seen, because the Kottancheri forest is closed, dark and wet, and what it is really full of is small.
The snake that does not move
The Malabar pit viper is venomous, is patterned exactly like wet bark and lichen, and hunts by lying motionless along a branch or a fallen trunk — very often at about the height at which a person steadies themselves going downhill. It is photographed doing precisely that in these woods. It does not flee and it gives no warning, so the rule here is to look before putting a hand anywhere.
The other snake worth knowing is harmless and far stranger: the two-lined black shieldtail, a burrowing species that surfaces after rain, iridescent blue-black with a yellow line down each side. It lives in the Western Ghats and nowhere else on earth.
The forest floor is the exhibit
Giant ferns with fronds taller than a person. Brackets stepping down a rotting log in a neat orange row. Balsams in flower on the cut banks after the rains, and Strobilanthes — the genus that gives the Ghats their once-in-twelve-years blue — flowering here too. Anaphyllum wightii, an aroid that lifts a single dark maroon hood out of the leaf litter and grows in the Western Ghats and nowhere else.
And a grove
Somewhere in the middle of it there is a kaavu — a sacred grove, the old religion of north Malabar. A buttressed tree with a ring of laterite stones set round its foot, an iron trident planted in front, and a mossed platform cut into the slope beside it. Nothing is published about which deity it belongs to, and that is normal for a small kaavu. The trees standing in one are often the oldest for miles, because nobody has been allowed to cut them.
- Elephants use these slopes — this is why the department wants a guide with your party.
- The Malabar pit viper is venomous, still, and very hard to see against wet bark.
- Leeches are constant in and after the rains, roughly June to November.
- Nothing here is signposted, including the grove.
Frequently asked questions
Are there elephants at Kottancheri?
Yes. The Forest Department names elephants first among the animals of these hills, and it is the main reason permission and a guide are asked for rather than suggested.
Are there dangerous snakes?
The Malabar pit viper is venomous and common in this kind of forest. It lies motionless along branches and fallen trunks and does not move away, so watch where you place your hands and feet.
What is a kaavu?
A sacred grove — a patch of forest in north Malabar left uncut because a deity is held to live in it. There is one in the Kottancheri hills, marked by laterite stones and a trident at the foot of a large tree, with nothing published about it.