By this point in time we had stopped looking to winding roads as even slightly challenging, because we had become so accustomed to them. Although, every once in a while I would still look out of the window and see the sheer drop of the valley and let out an involuntary gasp. The road was narrow and not very good, which meant the suspension was working overtime to keep us comfortable, but we were comfortable, no doubt about that. Out of the blue, up ahead we saw a sign that indicated that wildlife was abound and that we should proceed with caution, which could only mean one thing – we had reached the Chinnar wildlife sanctuary.
Well, maybe not the actual sanctuary, but the road that led to Ooty passed by the entrance to the sanctuary and allowed us to traverse through a portion of the forest reserve. A flat, empty, smooth road with forests on either side? Of course, I put my foot down and gunned it, although I was on high alert, making sure to slow down every time I caught even the slightest signs of movement out the corner of my eye. The brakes responded fabulously, although there wasn’t much that caught the eye apart from a lone deer standing a few feet away from the road, grazing peacefully.
Thank god I was on constant vigilance mode too, because I found out later that Chinnar plays home to the highly endangered Grizzled Giant Squirrel, and running it over by mistake would have led to no small amount of guilt on my part and a nasty situation all round. A family of wild boars did run past our car, though, and were out of sight before we could chase them down and shoot them (as in – take a photograph, just clarifying!). Once we entered Tamil Nadu again and gaps started appearing in the woods, making way for little villages, we noticed that the bulk of the day had passed, and we were driving in twilight (insert witty remark about vegetarian vampires here).
