Western Ghats

Look for these

• 01

  Shola and grassland, the signature pattern

  On the high hills you will see dark, dense pockets of stunted evergreen forest sitting in the folds and creases, with open rolling grassland over everything else. That mosaic is called shola-grassland and it is thousands of years old — the forest survives in the sheltered hollows where frost cannot reach, the grass holds the exposed slopes. Silent Valley, Eravikulam and Mukurthi all show it beautifully. Once you know to look for it you will see it everywhere.

• 02

  The Nilgiri tahr at Eravikulam

  A stocky wild goat that exists only in these hills, and at Eravikulam near Munnar it has been protected long enough to stop fearing people — you can often watch them at close range on the Rajamala slopes. There are only a couple of thousand left in the world and roughly half of them are in this one park. Go early; the shuttle bus fills up.

• 03

  The Kaas plateau in bloom

  A sheet of laterite rock in Satara district, Maharashtra, that carpets itself in flowers for a few weeks after the monsoon — usually late August into September, and the dominant colour changes week by week as different species come up. The soil is only a few centimetres deep, which is exactly why so many of the plants are endemic. Visitor numbers are capped and you must book online; do not turn up hoping.

• 04

  Silent Valley, and why it is still here

  A patch of undisturbed tropical evergreen forest in the Nilgiri cluster that was going to be flooded by a hydroelectric dam in the 1970s. A campaign led by Kerala poets, teachers and scientists stopped it, and the valley was declared a national park in 1984 — the first environmental movement in independent India to actually win. It is also one of the strongholds of the lion-tailed macaque.

• 05

  Periyar from the water

  Periyar is unusual among Indian tiger reserves in that the core experience is a boat on a reservoir rather than a jeep on a track. Elephants, gaur and sambar come down to drink at the edges, and the drowned tree trunks standing in the water are the remains of the forest flooded when the Mullaperiyar dam was built in the 1890s. Take the first boat of the morning.

• 06

  Endemics worth knowing about

  The lion-tailed macaque with its silver ruff, restricted to a few rainforest fragments. The Malabar giant squirrel, absurdly large and rust-coloured, moving through the canopy. The great hornbill. The Malabar grey hornbill. And in the pre-monsoon nights, the purple frog, which nobody sees for eleven and a half months of the year. Ask a guide about it and watch them light up.