Sahyadrica

An Indian Humpback Dolphin, Sousa plumbea , off the coastal waters, overlooked by Konkan hills. For the first time in my explorations I find myself wanting to express this feeling, for I am as much in awe as in search of words. I have always maintained that mountains moved me. Sahyadrica’s tagline was ‘belonging to the mountains’ – the name itself means ‘of the northern Western Ghats.’ That has changed over the years, of course, but even as I wrote about the coastal region where land and sea meet, even as the sea inspired me, even as the coast offered me a diversity of experiences in various shapes and forms of marine organisms and coastal communities, it is mountains that captured my wonder and awe whenever I stood at the foot of one before climbing to the very top. It may be because the coast doesn’t challenge me the way a mountain does, or so I thought. That is a thin line I walk, for even if I am comfortable on a boat in the high sea, I am not underwater, which is why what remains ...