EXPLAINED: Ghats - The Real Truth

Barbs and Loaches of the Western Ghats: India's Uncounted Ornamental Fish Trade

Fish That Live in One River and Nowhere ElseThe Western Ghats mountain range runs roughly 1,600 kilometres along India's western coast, and the streams that tumble down its eastern and western slopes carry one of the highest concentrations of freshwater fish endemism on the planet. Of the approximately 290 freshwater…

Times Life · Oct 13

India's Purple Frog: 46 Weeks Underground, 130 Million Years of Survival, and Two Weeks to Breed

A Species Science Almost MissedThe Purple Frog, Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis, was formally described by scientists S.D. Biju and Franky Bossuyt in a 2003 paper published in Nature, making it one of the most significant amphibian discoveries of the century. It had been living in the forests of the Western Ghats for…

Times Life · Sep 23

How the Malabar Pit Viper Uses Infrared Sensing to Hunt in Total Darkness in the Ghats

A Face Built for the DarkBetween the Malabar pit viper's nostril and its eye, on each side of its head, sits a small depression called the loreal pit. It looks unremarkable. It is anything but. This pit is a heat-detection organ, lined with a membrane packed with temperature-sensitive receptors that…

Times Life · Sep 21

Shola Forests of the Western Ghats: How Millions of Years of Isolation Built a Sky Island of Endemic Species

The Geography That Made an Island Without WaterA Shola forest patch rarely exceeds a few hectares. It sits in a valley crease between rolling montane grasslands in the upper Western Ghats, places like Munnar, Kodaikanal, and the Nilgiris, tucked low enough to catch moisture but surrounded on all sides by…

Times Life · Aug 23

India's Most Secretive Feline: What Science Has Actually Documented About the Clouded Leopard

A Cat That Rewrote the Anatomy of ClimbingThe clouded leopard's canine teeth are the longest, relative to skull size, of any living cat on earth. That single biological fact has been confirmed, measured, and published, and it is one of the few things about this animal that science can state…

Times Life · Aug 10

Malabar Whistling Thrush: Why the Western Ghats' Most Melodic Bird Is Called the Whistling Schoolboy

The Bird That Sounds Like It Learned From a Music TeacherThe first time most people hear a Malabar Whistling Thrush, they look around for a person. The song is that convincing, a clear, unhurried series of melodic phrases that rise and fall like someone whistling a half-remembered tune on the…

Times Life · Aug 4

Beyond Coorg: A Slow Travel Through Karnataka's Coffee Hills and Plantation Estates

The Road That Doesn't Rush YouThe first thing Chikmagalur takes from you is your itinerary. You arrive with a list, Mullayanagiri, Baba Budangiri, the coffee museum, and within a day the list is somewhere in your bag, unread. The hills do this. They are not dramatic in the way that…

Times Life · Jul 17

Pushkar Mela First-Timer's Guide: Everything You Need to Know Before the Fair in Rajasthan

What the Mela Actually Is (Versus What Instagram Tells You)The Pushkar Mela is two fairs running simultaneously in the same patch of sand, and most tourists only find one of them. The outer fair, the one with the ferris wheel, the folk dancers hired for tour groups, and the stalls…

Times Life · Jul 10

The Konkan Railway Is the Most Scenic Train Journey in Coastal India, and It Still Feels Magical

The window seat earns its reputation hereYou board at Madgaon or Ratnagiri or somewhere smaller, and within twenty minutes the train has already made its case. A river appears below a bridge so high you feel the drop in your chest. Then a tunnel swallows everything, the light, the sound,…

Times Life · Jul 4

The ‘missing’ insect that is raising alarm bells about one of world’s best biodiversity hotspots

Research points to alarming species decline, habitat degradation, and deeper ecological stress in India’s Western Ghats

The Independent UK · May 4