GAUR Call
The first 10 minutes of the trek was fun, with my wife and
daughter, quite experienced with wilderness and birding, taking turns to
identify bird calls and spotting them. The tea plantations to the left and the
forest boundaries to the right made it a picturesque walk on a single trail, a
semblance of a road created by tea pickers frequenting this stretch. I was at
the front of the pack and just as we were taking a blind turn, we came face to
face with this massive bull Gaur, one of the biggest i've seen. I am 6.1 feet
and this seemed almost my height . . . especially with those massive horns.
Behind this bull was another one, possibly its partner. The animal and all of
us were taken aback by this sudden encounter. There was hardly 10 feet and a few
tea shrubs between us. All of us including the bull froze and time seemed to
stand still. The air was tense, while it took a few seconds for reality to dawn
in. I had silently motioned to the estate guards to my side and asked the
women and kids to be backed off. One of them did lead the rest of the
group away, while the other guard and I were still left within 10 feet of the
animals. We dared not move and instigate a charge. My hand was reaching out to
my jacket for the pepper spray, which would certainly give us a few more seconds
to run in the event of a charge. 
Slowly the tension began to ease. The snorting; glaring bull
seemed to accept we were harmless. However, all along this tense ordeal, I was
imagining and visualizing a great frame of this situation through an imaginary
viewfinder. The early morning rising sun was diagonally behind the bull and the
glow of the outline of the beast was simply magical. The golden glow of the
back light was too tempting for me not to get a few shots, however there was no
way I was taking my eyes off the beast to fiddle with the camera settings, for
the distance between us was too close for comfort (if you see the picture the
hump is slightly burnt out due to the high ISO setting, which I knew well even
while making the shot). Secondly, I would have enraged the bull if I had raised
the camera, so I made a few shots from the hip level, hoping for a decent
frame. Then, we slowly started back tracking and once we were at a safe
distance, settled in to take a few more shots of the animals before it ran away with its partner and we got back to our
group and continued on our trek.
We had another rather tense encounter, when we were getting
back when a ghostly herd of Gaur were seen on both our sides. We had actually
strayed into the middle of a large breeding herd (the animals were on both
sides of the little forest track, and we walked into the track cutting out the
herds on both the sides). This was a perfect recipe for disaster and I immediately
knew that this could turn to be a dangerous situation. There were many babies
in the herd and some rather nervous moms, while a few big bulls were already
snorting. The guards split the group again, taking the women and the kids away
quickly while I followed bringing up the rear and stopping to get a few shots
when the herd regrouped. Several bulls, aware of my presence (though I was
lying flat behind a tea bush), turned to flap their ears and sniff, while I
held my breath. Suddenly, they were gone and I didn’t hear a sound as they
passed.
We (a few close friends and their families) were vacationing
at the Stanmore bungalow at Valparai last December, which is probably one of
the best plantation bungalows I’ve experienced. We decided to hike across the
estate one morning and the estate guards agreed to accompany us on the small
trek. I knew it was prime elephant country and ensured all of us were dressed
in dull colors, trekking shoes and strictly had no perfumes or deo’s on us that
morning.
Just before we started the trek, the guards warned all of us
that large herds of Gaur and Elephants were seen the previous evening and if we
were to encounter them, we should stay bunched together not panic and never run
different ways. As a seasoned forest goer, it was one of those normal briefings
for me, but for many (especially the women and kids) this was a nerve wracking
warning and tension began to mount.
The first 10 minutes of the trek was fun, with my wife and
daughter, quite experienced with wilderness and birding, taking turns to
identify bird calls and spotting them. The tea plantations to the left and the
forest boundaries to the right made it a picturesque walk on a single trail, a
semblance of a road created by tea pickers frequenting this stretch. I was at
the front of the pack and just as we were taking a blind turn, we came face to
face with this massive bull Gaur, one of the biggest i've seen. I am 6.1 feet
and this seemed almost my height . . . especially with those massive horns.
Behind this bull was another one, possibly its partner. The animal and all of
us were taken aback by this sudden encounter. There was hardly 10 feet and a few
tea shrubs between us. All of us including the bull froze and time seemed to
stand still. The air was tense, while it took a few seconds for reality to dawn
in. I had silently motioned to the estate guards to my side and asked the
women and kids to be backed off. One of them did lead the rest of the
group away, while the other guard and I were still left within 10 feet of the
animals. We dared not move and instigate a charge. My hand was reaching out to
my jacket for the pepper spray, which would certainly give us a few more seconds
to run in the event of a charge. 
Slowly the tension began to ease. The snorting; glaring bull
seemed to accept we were harmless. However, all along this tense ordeal, I was
imagining and visualizing a great frame of this situation through an imaginary
viewfinder. The early morning rising sun was diagonally behind the bull and the
glow of the outline of the beast was simply magical. The golden glow of the
back light was too tempting for me not to get a few shots, however there was no
way I was taking my eyes off the beast to fiddle with the camera settings, for
the distance between us was too close for comfort (if you see the picture the
hump is slightly burnt out due to the high ISO setting, which I knew well even
while making the shot). Secondly, I would have enraged the bull if I had raised
the camera, so I made a few shots from the hip level, hoping for a decent
frame. Then, we slowly started back tracking and once we were at a safe
distance, settled in to take a few more shots of the animals before it ran away with its partner and we got back to our
group and continued on our trek.
We had another rather tense encounter, when we were getting
back when a ghostly herd of Gaur were seen on both our sides. We had actually
strayed into the middle of a large breeding herd (the animals were on both
sides of the little forest track, and we walked into the track cutting out the
herds on both the sides). This was a perfect recipe for disaster and I immediately
knew that this could turn to be a dangerous situation. There were many babies
in the herd and some rather nervous moms, while a few big bulls were already
snorting. The guards split the group again, taking the women and the kids away
quickly while I followed bringing up the rear and stopping to get a few shots
when the herd regrouped. Several bulls, aware of my presence (though I was
lying flat behind a tea bush), turned to flap their ears and sniff, while I
held my breath. Suddenly, they were gone and I didn’t hear a sound as they
passed.
Certainly one of the few very close calls with a Gaur in my
few decades of wilderness photography.
