Living naturally

The couple Ritish and Minakshi live in the jungle and run a low-impact, zero-electricity wildlife camp, Camp Forktail Creek, bordering Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand. Since 2000, their home has changed from tent on stilts to mud hut with thatched roof with a million little experiments in between. The camp is on the north eastern periphery of Corbett Tiger Reserve, surrounded by swathes of moist deciduous Sal forest. After a mini climb on a four-wheel track, you get deeper into a jungle patch which borders a pretty classic pahari village, Bhakrakot. And it is here that the plan was hatched - of taking long 'birding' trips in and around the rich terai landscape of Corbett National Park, resulting in a real home base that was eventually thatched. Ritish would spend his college vacation time in and around the Corbett Tiger Reserve in the 1990s and soon enough became a serious bird watcher. The camp too is christened after the Forktails, which visit the nearby creek in the winter months, making the area a favourite birding ground in northern India.

In 2000, it was a natural clearing on which up came tents and trips - the days of lazing in hammocks near the Banyan tree, hiring of jeeps, adopting of Bhutia dogs and trudging on foot and pedal to get to know the heart and tone of Corbett National Park.

Ritish had trained himself in the art of wildlife tracking, with a natural love for birds. The terai is the dramatic middle between the mountain and plains where the birds on their migratory route break journey often, before going lower. So from early sightings, to learning to identify birds mid motion by call and colour, to their shifting palette with the seasons, nature offered a home school and two eager students lapped it all up. In the natural course of field trips, local boys became friends, giving them a lowdown on not just the mountains and the wilderness, but also the friendliness, the contradictions, the hardiness and the vulnerability of hill folk, open and conservative at once.

In all these vacillating interactions, three chief ones remain rejuvenating: Their four dogs, the fulfilling experiment of regenerating the land they live on and the hospitality they offer to those who visit. As for those seeking luxuries and loud conversation, the couple tells me, "Usually the lack of electricity or tarred road keeps that lot out." As do 4 am wake up calls to head out to the jungle with dawn to dusk safari rides.

From growing papaya in male female pairs and making a rain water harvesting pit to simply putting a big food cooler half way underground, it's been a lived journey of trial and error. For instance, the much mocked lantana weed which just digs its heels into the soil has been accepted as part of the land as good bird cover. How much better to have a meal by a thatch with birds milling about, than remain unsurprised by the homogenous landscaping one finds in resorts!

Working in nature on a daily basis has an upbeat feel about it that the daily drive to an office does not quite catch. No two days out in the jungle are with, let's say, the same species. The reverb of the jungle pulses with a subtle liveliness that city ears have to open up to.

The air has a Frostian lovely depth, the sheer quantum of O2 that having a home by the jungle so singularly promises.

Visiting the Capital recently for some odd jobs, Minakshi was heading back on a train from Old Delhi railway station to Ramnagar - the nearest railhead for Corbett - when I asked her, "How was it, being in the city now?"

Minakshi, more instinctive than reactive said, "I've gotten used to the silences. It's too noisy here. But makes me appreciate my life back home."