Kanha’s crowning jewel – The Barasingha
You wake up in the morning at a time that you would generally consider an ungodly hour, first to the shrill-yet-soothing ’brain-fever’ call of common hawk-cuckoo, and then to your butler giving you a wake-up call with your morning coffee. As most of the nation is air-fried to a crisp in the scorching June heat, you find it quite pleasant as you step out of your room much before sunrise, thanks to the thick sal canopy over you, and the breeze coming from the Banjar river flowing not very far from you. Your final thought last night was that there was no way you would be up at 4.30 AM after merely 6-odd hours of sleep feeling fresh, but you had no idea what wonders an oxygen-saturated air with a single-digit AQI could do as you lay asleep. You head towards the assembly area where your safari vehicle is ready as your driver wipes clean the already clean Maruti Gypsy King. As you hop on the open backseats, your driver introduces himself, and the first thing that you say to him is ”Aaj kya kya dikhaiyega na Ramprasad ji?” (What all will you show us today Mr Ramprasad?), to which he chuckles and humbly replies ”Dekhte hai, sir.” (I’ll try my best, sir.)
As you head out for the drive, and cross the barricade to enter the perimeter of the massive Kanha National Park, you feel like you entered a wonderland. As your gipsy slowly rolls deeper and deeper into the forest, you are overtaken by a sense of calm looking at the sal forest around you, which suddenly opens into vast open grasslands with the stunning hills of the Maikal range or Satpura rolling in the background. Every time you cross one of these open patches of grasslands, your driver and guide get a little bit too excited and start looking around and scanning through the grass, and every time that happens, your excitement peaks. Could this be it? Could this be the spot of your first tiger sighting? You ask your guide, ”kuch hai kya bhaiya?” (Is there something here?), to which he informs you that these grasslands are the home to one of the rarer animals of India, the animal which is the pride and the crowning jewel of Kanha: the hard-ground barasingha. Barasingha? Rare? How can that be? You have seen barasingha roaming around in Delhi’s Deer Park, and on your last trip to Jim Corbett, you must’ve seen at least a thousand of them! Surely a barasingha isn’t THAT rare! Your guide chuckles, as if he has been through this conversation multiple times, and tells you that you are probably talking about a chital or a spotted deer. In his guidebook, your guide shows you a photo of a rather cute-looking deer with spots on its body and asks if this is the ’barasingha’ you’ve seen previously. Indeed it was.
For a long time now, the term ’barasingha’ has taken the form of a common noun, a generic term for any member of the deer family having branched antlers. For a vast majority of people, a chital (or spotted deer) is a barasingha, a sambar is a barasingha, a hangul is a barasingha and a sangai might as well be considered one. The barasingha (or the swamp deer) is indeed a species of its own, sprinkled across the subcontinent. These majestic animals that are recorded to tip the scales at well over 200 kilograms are found today in 3 pockets in India, and each of these populations has a slight variation in their physical traits (owing mostly to a vastly different habitat and diet they reside in). In effect, we have 3 subspecies of the mighty barasingha: the Western barasingha (found in the marshy grasslands of the Terai arc in India and Nepal); the Southern barasingha (found in the grasslands of Kanha National Park); the Eastern barasingha (found in Kaziranga and Manas National Parks of Assam).
While the three subspecies differ from one another, it is incredibly tough to tell them apart just by glancing at them from across a grassland. For example, the southern variety has harder hooves than the eastern and western varieties, as they are more adapted to traversing the sal forests of central India and its hard and rough soil and substratum, hence termed hard-ground barasingha. In contrast, the eastern and western varieties have splayed hooves, better adapted to their habitat’s marshy and slippery grasslands.
Standing close to 6 feet tall, this handsome and imposing cervid is unmistakable. The elegance with which it strolls in the grasslands is spellbinding. Of over 10 species of deer that we find in India, the barasingha could arguably be the most majestic one. The two sexes vary quite significantly in their appearance, with the males being significantly larger with darker fur and the famed antlers, while the females are more golden in colour and lack the world-famous headgear. Like most deer species, only the males have antlers, and they too shed and regrow their antlers annually. The best time to see them in all their glory would be in the winter, which is also the mating season for these animals. They have a very unique courtship ritual, which is one of the most spectacular shows of the wild. As they pursue their desired females, the males load up their fully grown antlers with grass and twigs and give out distinct and loud bugling rutting calls which echo in the grasslands. To see these beauties run around in the vast open meadows on a cold and foggy winter morning as they perform their trademark courtship ritual is nothing short of surreal.You wake up in the morning at a time that you would generally consider an ungodly hour, first to the shrill-yet-soothing ’brain-fever’ call of common hawk-cuckoo, and then to your butler giving you a wake-up call with your morning coffee. As most of the nation is air-fried to a crisp in the scorching June heat, you find it quite pleasant as you step out of your room much before sunrise, thanks to the thick sal canopy over you, and the breeze coming from the Banjar river flowing not very far from you. Your final thought last night was that there was no way you would be up at 4.30 AM after merely 6-odd hours of sleep feeling fresh, but you had no idea what wonders an oxygen-saturated air with a single-digit AQI could do as you lay asleep. You head towards the assembly area where your safari vehicle is ready as your driver wipes clean the already clean Maruti Gypsy King. As you hop on the open backseats, your driver introduces himself, and the first thing that you say to him is ”Aaj kya kya dikhaiyega na Ramprasad ji?” (What all will you show us today Mr Ramprasad?), to which he chuckles and humbly replies ”Dekhte hai, sir.” (I’ll try my best, sir.)
As you head out for the drive, and cross the barricade to enter the perimeter of the massive Kanha National Park, you feel like you entered a wonderland. As your gipsy slowly rolls deeper and deeper into the forest, you are overtaken by a sense of calm looking at the sal forest around you, which suddenly opens into vast open grasslands with the stunning hills of the Maikal range or Satpura rolling in the background. Every time you cross one of these open patches of grasslands, your driver and guide get a little bit too excited and start looking around and scanning through the grass, and every time that happens, your excitement peaks. Could this be it? Could this be the spot of your first tiger sighting? You ask your guide, ”kuch hai kya bhaiya?” (Is there something here?), to which he informs you that these grasslands are the home to one of the rarer animals of India, the animal which is the pride and the crowning jewel of Kanha: the hard-ground barasingha. Barasingha? Rare? How can that be? You have seen barasingha roaming around in Delhi’s Deer Park, and on your last trip to Jim Corbett, you must’ve seen at least a thousand of them! Surely a barasingha isn’t THAT rare! Your guide chuckles, as if he has been through this conversation multiple times, and tells you that you are probably talking about a chital or a spotted deer. In his guidebook, your guide shows you a photo of a rather cute-looking deer with spots on its body and asks if this is the ’barasingha’ you’ve seen previously. Indeed it was.
For a long time now, the term ’barasingha’ has taken the form of a common noun, a generic term for any member of the deer family having branched antlers. For a vast majority of people, a chital (or spotted deer) is a barasingha, a sambar is a barasingha, a hangul is a barasingha and a sangai might as well be considered one. The barasingha (or the swamp deer) is indeed a species of its own, sprinkled across the subcontinent. These majestic animals that are recorded to tip the scales at well over 200 kilograms are found today in 3 pockets in India, and each of these populations has a slight variation in their physical traits (owing mostly to a vastly different habitat and diet they reside in). In effect, we have 3 subspecies of the mighty barasingha: the Western barasingha (found in the marshy grasslands of the Terai arc in India and Nepal); the Southern barasingha (found in the grasslands of Kanha National Park); the Eastern barasingha (found in Kaziranga and Manas National Parks of Assam).
While the three subspecies differ from one another, it is incredibly tough to tell them apart just by glancing at them from across a grassland. For example, the southern variety has harder hooves than the eastern and western varieties, as they are more adapted to traversing the sal forests of central India and its hard and rough soil and substratum, hence termed hard-ground barasingha. In contrast, the eastern and western varieties have splayed hooves, better adapted to their habitat’s marshy and slippery grasslands.
Standing close to 6 feet tall, this handsome and imposing cervid is unmistakable. The elegance with which it strolls in the grasslands is spellbinding. Of over 10 species of deer that we find in India, the barasingha could arguably be the most majestic one. The two sexes vary quite significantly in their appearance, with the males being significantly larger with darker fur and the famed antlers, while the females are more golden in colour and lack the world-famous headgear. Like most deer species, only the males have antlers, and they too shed and regrow their antlers annually. The best time to see them in all their glory would be in the winter, which is also the mating season for these animals. They have a very unique courtship ritual, which is one of the most spectacular shows of the wild. As they pursue their desired females, the males load up their fully grown antlers with grass and twigs and give out distinct and loud bugling rutting calls which echo in the grasslands. To see these beauties run around in the vast open meadows on a cold and foggy winter morning as they perform their trademark courtship ritual is nothing short of surreal.You wake up in the morning at a time that you would generally consider an ungodly hour, first to the shrill-yet-soothing ’brain-fever’ call of common hawk-cuckoo, and then to your butler giving you a wake-up call with your morning coffee. As most of the nation is air-fried to a crisp in the scorching June heat, you find it quite pleasant as you step out of your room much before sunrise, thanks to the thick sal canopy over you, and the breeze coming from the Banjar river flowing not very far from you. Your final thought last night was that there was no way you would be up at 4.30 AM after merely 6-odd hours of sleep feeling fresh, but you had no idea what wonders an oxygen-saturated air with a single-digit AQI could do as you lay asleep. You head towards the assembly area where your safari vehicle is ready as your driver wipes clean the already clean Maruti Gypsy King. As you hop on the open backseats, your driver introduces himself, and the first thing that you say to him is ”Aaj kya kya dikhaiyega na Ramprasad ji?” (What all will you show us today Mr Ramprasad?), to which he chuckles and humbly replies ”Dekhte hai, sir.” (I’ll try my best, sir.)
As you head out for the drive, and cross the barricade to enter the perimeter of the massive Kanha National Park, you feel like you entered a wonderland. As your gipsy slowly rolls deeper and deeper into the forest, you are overtaken by a sense of calm looking at the sal forest around you, which suddenly opens into vast open grasslands with the stunning hills of the Maikal range or Satpura rolling in the background. Every time you cross one of these open patches of grasslands, your driver and guide get a little bit too excited and start looking around and scanning through the grass, and every time that happens, your excitement peaks. Could this be it? Could this be the spot of your first tiger sighting? You ask your guide, ”kuch hai kya bhaiya?” (Is there something here?), to which he informs you that these grasslands are the home to one of the rarer animals of India, the animal which is the pride and the crowning jewel of Kanha: the hard-ground barasingha. Barasingha? Rare? How can that be? You have seen barasingha roaming around in Delhi’s Deer Park, and on your last trip to Jim Corbett, you must’ve seen at least a thousand of them! Surely a barasingha isn’t THAT rare! Your guide chuckles, as if he has been through this conversation multiple times, and tells you that you are probably talking about a chital or a spotted deer. In his guidebook, your guide shows you a photo of a rather cute-looking deer with spots on its body and asks if this is the ’barasingha’ you’ve seen previously. Indeed it was.
For a long time now, the term ’barasingha’ has taken the form of a common noun, a generic term for any member of the deer family having branched antlers. For a vast majority of people, a chital (or spotted deer) is a barasingha, a sambar is a barasingha, a hangul is a barasingha and a sangai might as well be considered one. The barasingha (or the swamp deer) is indeed a species of its own, sprinkled across the subcontinent. These majestic animals that are recorded to tip the scales at well over 200 kilograms are found today in 3 pockets in India, and each of these populations has a slight variation in their physical traits (owing mostly to a vastly different habitat and diet they reside in). In effect, we have 3 subspecies of the mighty barasingha: the Western barasingha (found in the marshy grasslands of the Terai arc in India and Nepal); the Southern barasingha (found in the grasslands of Kanha National Park); the Eastern barasingha (found in Kaziranga and Manas National Parks of Assam).
While the three subspecies differ from one another, it is incredibly tough to tell them apart just by glancing at them from across a grassland. For example, the southern variety has harder hooves than the eastern and western varieties, as they are more adapted to traversing the sal forests of central India and its hard and rough soil and substratum, hence termed hard-ground barasingha. In contrast, the eastern and western varieties have splayed hooves, better adapted to their habitat’s marshy and slippery grasslands.
Standing close to 6 feet tall, this handsome and imposing cervid is unmistakable. The elegance with which it strolls in the grasslands is spellbinding. Of over 10 species of deer that we find in India, the barasingha could arguably be the most majestic one. The two sexes vary quite significantly in their appearance, with the males being significantly larger with darker fur and the famed antlers, while the females are more golden in colour and lack the world-famous headgear. Like most deer species, only the males have antlers, and they too shed and regrow their antlers annually. The best time to see them in all their glory would be in the winter, which is also the mating season for these animals. They have a very unique courtship ritual, which is one of the most spectacular shows of the wild. As they pursue their desired females, the males load up their fully grown antlers with grass and twigs and give out distinct and loud bugling rutting calls which echo in the grasslands. To see these beauties run around in the vast open meadows on a cold and foggy winter morning as they perform their trademark courtship ritual is nothing short of surreal.