A platform for and
from the Western Ghats
At the Ootacamund Club (formerly the Ooty Hunt Club), the old ways have been sublimated into a love for the landscape—and community
How can education evolve to meet the needs of the Palani Hills’ Pazhaiyars? An indigenous writer reflects.
On her first train journey ever, a young indigenous writer from the Pazhaiyar adivasi community is invited to join women’s self-help groups in eastern India on Women’s Day
The connection between queerness and fungi has often been made—what can it teach us about queer kinship, community and care today? A researcher takes stock in the rain-soaked Western Ghats
How did the original inhabitants of the Palani Hills live, and how have they adapted to modern life? One of their descendants writes, in this series, supported by a grant from Shared Ecologies
Ever heard the saying ‘A rolling stone gathers no moss’?
As someone who spent their childhood in crowded cities, I have found the mountains hold a sort of mysterious appeal. My earliest memory of the mountains is from a family trip to Chail in Himachal Pradesh, when I was 11 years old.
“We were driving on a road—little more than a dirt track with large pot holes—the car’s headlights eerily reflecting off the swaying silver oaks among the tea bushes and occasionally elephant or gaur dung making us wary of running into one of these great animals.
Meeting Dr Raees Muhammed on a cold winter morning at a friend’s office in Coonoor, I am struck by his open, smiling face as he ushers in Tamil Chelvan, a young lad of 20, his teammate at Clean Nilgiris.
‘I wouldn’t say the sky islands of the southern Western Ghats are shrinking or being destroyed. Rather, they are being transformed and changed,’