All Bets On Kurangumudi – Nilgiri Langurs

Valparai, Tamil Nadu

I was still in my race against the rain in Valparai and it wasn’t going too badly on my first morning as I wrote in “Meeting The Wanderoo”. Sure, there’d been a little bit of a drizzle during that session but it ended quick and without the loss of much light as the sun reappeared soon after. “2 out of 4 in my list”, I told myself, “So far so good.” I had yet to see the Nilgiri Langurs and the Grey Hornbills. I wasn’t even gonna try for the smaller birds in the middle of the monsoons. No point. The Hornbills would be difficult customers too in this weather and even if I did see some, the pictures would suck with a white background for sure. Maneka Garden (That’s where Hornbills are seen around as per my research) could wait. “Let’s try Kurangumudi”, I told Anees, my cabbie when I got back in the cab. He looked at me a little surprised at first but then nodded. He was starting to get that I’d prepared which was all for the better for me cause given our language barrier, the anxiety of not knowing anything while we drove around those hill roads would have been pure torture. You get used to having drivers who are into wildlife and do it full time. That wasn’t the case here and neither were we exchanging stories and laughs of our experiences in the wild which is the common glue that bonds all of us people who are into wild life. I didn’t know what he knew. We were not on a fixed forest trail and Valparai has many gardens and even more roads connecting them. It’s an awesome drive in those hills with almost no traffic in the inner lanes but I wasn’t doing the pleasurable driving here and added to that, the weather was continuously screaming Tick Tock, Tick Tock in my head.

All my bets were on the road to Kurangumudi which was like 30 mins away. I’d seen Puthuthottam and that was by the main road. It’d be slim pickings there except the daily Wanderoo crossings was my guess. Where I was headed was a long stretch and to the interior and If that location flopped, I’d be in trouble and would be hopelessly wandering these hills in the rain for 4 days unless Anees came up with something. Thing though, was that Anees wasn’t into wildlife.

But, it worked out ! These photos are only from the first day there and I went back for more of course. That mountain road has thick forest on both sides and as you go down it, you can catch Primates at different levels in the trees. That basically increases the chances of catching them at eye level as they stay high up on the tree that they’re on while you’re going up or down the road to the side. There’s a lot of vegetation and Primates move fast. I recently read a post where this dude was bragging about how he scored clear pictures of a jumping tiger on Aperture Priority on his cam. Sure, that huge tiger was jumping over a puddle on the road, Einstein. With smaller creatures of the trees, the leaps are humongous with branches and leaves all around. I actually timed it and it takes a Langur like 5 seconds or so to climb a tree. Yeah, that fast and going down, they free fall. You have very limited chance with Aperture mode with Primates and little Birds.

Animals usually amaze me when I first see them. Seeing the Nilgiri Langurs that morning was actually an uncomfortable experience though. Whenever I’d catch one clear of foliage, I’d always find myself doing a double take while the photographing was happening instinctively. I think I worked out what it was finally when we went back for lunch and I got a good look at my images. These Langurs resembled Humans so much in appearance that it’s a little unnerving at the start. Their single body colour in comparison to multiple colours on other Langurs along with their shape which unlike Macaques, Baboons and Gorillas makes them look very much like us and that, I think was probably what was making me uncomfortable.

It didn’t rain that day and so I was back at Kurangumudi in the afternoon and not feeling as uncomfortable as I had been in the morning. I knew that a lot of my pictures would head straight to the bin though. These guys are black like Drongos (the birds) and they weren’t unbothered about me like the Bonett Macaques. They kept their distance and had a tendency to scamper off when they realized that they were the point of interest. I knew I was gonna have the same clarity issues in backlight pictures as I’d had for so long with Drongos and cloudy sky just amplifies that by a lot as does distance. In addition to that, the vegetation around fast moving subjects wasn’t making for easy photography at all. Only thing to do in these situations for me is to keep at it till my arms hurt without review. Just keep trying and giving it what you got.

Well, that’s what I did and in the process also learnt that these Langurs were nothing like the Capped Langurs of my home state. They’re shy, stay away from human settlements and won’t even give you the time to lift your camera (if they notice it) before they bolt off usually. Like certain characters in most species, there are exceptions to the rule and interestingly, it’s these exceptions that I think are usually out in the open in the trees by the road. It’s the bolder ones who are the lookouts. Overall, I found them to be completely opposite in nature to the Bonett Macaques and Lion Tailed Macaques as well whom I’d also seen on this trip. I was correct in also guessing that the scrap list would be a lot longer than the list of pictures to be kept from Kurangumudi. That’s just how it is with far away, black subjects in dense forest. But, I’d seen a little of most of my targets for the trip on day one itself. I just had to see and learn a little more.

The rain caught up to me finally that night and along with it, it brought new challenges and rewards which, I’ll tell you about in my next post.