Parambikulam Wildlife Sanctuary is the final link in a chain of reserves across southern India. And it's not just for rich tourists, says Sarah Barrell
Sunday, 13 March 2011
'Nothing stinks and everything is pleasant." So concludes the welcome film at India's newest tiger reserve. I'm at base camp in Parambikulam Wildlife Sanctuary, a little-known, recently created conservation area in eastern Kerala.
Myself and some 15 Indian tourists are jockeying for position in front of a screen in the spanking new interpretation centre watching a list of "dos and don'ts" aimed at those unfamiliar with the conventions of a nature reserve. That goes for most of the group.
Wildlife safaris are new to India's domestic travel market, partly because posh lodges in tiger tourism hub states such as Madhya Pradesh price out many local visitors. Day-tripping was the only easy way to visit Parambikulam until last year when basic camp facilities were added. Apart from my British companion and me, visitors to the reserve today are all from Kerala and neighbouring Indian states. A minibus transports us en masse, from the broiling Tamil Nadu town of Annamalai, past orderly groves of coconut palms, teeming villages and litter-strewn streams.
An hour later we bump on to the sole Forest Department road that climbs up through the wilderness of the Western Ghats towards the park. On arrival in camp, first impressions are of an old Indian army base renovated to resemble a child's playground. "That looks like one I might have made," says my companion, raising an eyebrow to a roughly hewn wooden table.
The same could have been said about the bamboo raft we clambered on to later. Somewhat alarmingly, the craft is used for croc-spotting; its gap-tooth, rustic finish generously allowing us to track the hefty mugger crocodile as it slips off the bank and passes beneath us. Parambikulam was created in 2007, but India's Environment and Forests Minister declared the reserve officially open only last year. It's just beginning to turn its hand to tourism.
But should tourists be here at all? Last year, in the face of plummeting tiger numbers, there were rumblings from the Indian government about severely limiting travel to the subcontinent's 38 big cat reserves. The debate is raging about the place for tourism in India's national parks: is it aiding or adding to the problem of the country's diminishing tiger numbers? Wildlife tourists are traditionally wealthy and foreign – their money often funding smart lodges rather than the conservation of the animals they've come to see. Apart from scientists and rangers, say critics, humans shouldn't be present in India's parks at all.
The more informed side of the argument, a view that Parambikulam shares, is that managed carefully, tourism is an essential part of promoting, protecting and sustaining India's wildlife and tribal communities, as it has been in the best South African and Amazonian reserves. Parambikulam was created to form the missing link in a chain of seven conservation areas stretching 4,000sq km across the middle of southern India. It's partly run by indigenous tribes who live on the land, and entrance is restricted to 30 vehicles a day, most of those aboard regulated buses that must come and go before sunset. Movement around the park is very restricted, too. Wildlife-watching is done in the equivalent of a public bus, along more or less the same prescribed route and only at dusk.
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