Though I can’t really hand pick the “best” moment from my trip, there are parts which stand out. And meeting Stan Thakaekara was surely one of them. We had written about him earlier here
We went to his office and just sat there while he went on and on, hopping from one issue to another. I didn’t blink once.

When you look at Tribals, the first things that come to your mind are that they are uncivilised, they live on trees, eat leaves, go around strutting, illiterate and so on.
-Stan Thakaekara

He further …

We set out on the Grassroutes journey to understand and investigate three major issues; the Forest Rights Act, the Tiger Task Project and the confusion surrounding the proposed INO (Indian Neutrino Observatory). All the three issues had one common thread: the delicate relation between man and environment. On 20th Jan we went into the core zone (’inviolate’ on paper) of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve to learn about the relocation issue.

The entral theme of Stan’s argument, to my understanding, was that social justice is a more honorable goal than capitalism. To which we have no problems. But, to believe that that everyone can have equal opportunities is living in a fairy world. And hence the question Is God Capitalist? Anurag’s argument during the dip at the stream in Masinagudi was God had to be capitalist, else everyone would have had equal opportunity. Touche!

A couple of days ago we paid a visit to Chembakuli, a village inside the Mudumulai Forests.

Firstly, to get to the village one has to walk a kilometer on a donkey track inside the dense forest once the jeep drops you off near the entrance of the forest. Then you take a left turn and climb uphill, merely following the tribal gentlemen who is leading the way. All around you are tall trees forming a canopy and ravines and valleys that stretch as far as you can fathom. There is absolutely no indication of any sort of road or path here.

And then out of no where pops the top of what looks like a shed, a community meeting spot.

I have a bus to catch in another half an hour from the Gudulur Bus station.
This means that I have to blog whatever comes to my head and not articulate at time’s expense. The last 3 days of the trip have been quite interesting. I choose to use a rather mild term, Interesting as compared to “Insane” or “Kick-ass” or “Surreal” for I believe we’ve just begun.
 
Yesterday we trotted on donkey tracks where we saw tiger pugmarks, we saw a fence that was destroyed by an elephant just hours ago …

Day 0 of Grassroutes looked very hectic when I was checking the schedule on my mail. It was a long day alright. The orientation was at IIM Bangalore thanks to the kindness of Pradeep from mapunity.in (We’ll be having our trip geo tagged on the amazing Mapunity platform. And yes do check out the Bangalore Transport Information Service thing they enable! The geek in me is drooling)
But, what happened after the initial Lessig style presentation by the Grassroutes team was awe inspiring. I love hearing first hand accounts of interesting …

My original plan for this winter was to look for a brief internship and invest all my time in it and gain some valuable experience, preferably in the field of social media.
I was almost certain about my plans this winter but thatrquote s when I got to know about Grassroutes. At first glance it seemed fun and had a certain RDB-esque feel to it, to break free from the shackles of the routine that werquote re so used to and just DO something. Grassroutes seemed like just the thing. But …

We are a motley bunch of 20 year olds. To put it in perspective,

A freelance designer, self proclaimed presentation consultant and Nirvana fan
A workaholic who is heading a team of 25 with grit and tenacity
A born-to-be-a-traveller, linker, free spirit who specializes in generating buzz
A social media enthusiast who writes for Mutiny.in
A generalist who specialises in fighting fires [metaphorical ones]

Other than the fact that we all are members of the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership at our college [and the obvious adoration for Apple], the thread that ties us together is that …

In amidst the beautiful terrain of the Nilgiris lies the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve Park, the epicenter of our Grassroutes road trip. Though only 321 square kilometers, it is a part of the much larger Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (NBR), and in that capacity an extremely critical habitat. The NBR is 5500 square kilometres, across three states, and home to the largest single Tiger and Elephant population. Recognising this, Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary was recently declared a Tiger Reserve, but is fraught with problems:-

The boundaries for the Core and the Buffer Zone of …