In this series, I will share my elephant encounters. These are moments from different forests and years. Each one stayed with me in a very different way. Some were close, some were tense, and some were simply about realizing how little we see in the wild even when we think we are looking carefully. The first one was from BR Hills while the second one was from Honey Valley, Coorg. The 3rd story was from Kerala and the 4th one is from Tamil Nadu.

Plantations in Coonoor, Tamil Nadu (2026)

We were birdwatching in one of the famed tea plantations in Coonoor. Presence of elephant dung very close to the estate house had alerted the staff and us that elephants had visited in the night. The time was now 8.30am. Usually by this time elephants might have headed back to the forest. So we were not expecting activity. But we were still alert. As we moved towards the main estate in the jeep, we stopped at a small waterfall area to explore birds. The forest around seemed uneasy. There was movement and some sounds. Suddenly we heard a huge thud. Something heavy had fallen.

Our naturalist wondered if it could be an elephant. We moved carefully in the jeep and two minutes later saw a fallen tree blocking our narrow jeep path. Something felt off. We were not alone. We got down to check if we could move the tree. It was large but it seemed that 3 of us could probably move it. But then we heard a loud roaring like sound. It sounded like a warning to stay away. What we heard (I got to know later from experts) was an “elephant roar”. Elephants are known to vocalise in a number of ways and roars are sometimes heard during playful time or during courting. It is possible that this behaviour led to the tree falling. That is not uncommon. One cannot also rule out that this was a warning sign to stay away. We immediately decided to leave and backtracked the jeep. A day later, we found out from a local that a female and a tusker had been seen in the area. We most likely came close to a courting pair. Definitely not something we wanted to intrude!

Acknowledgments: My thanks to Dr. Sreedhar Vijayakrishnan and Shaan Subbaiah.

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