Navadarshanam - Poster Child for the Future

I believe that the world would be a drastically different place if everyone every year went to live in nature for a while.  The value of our forests and the biodiversity of animal species is something that can never be quantified, but somehow it can still be felt by us if we only just take the time to go and appreciate it.

What started as an overgrazed and abandoned farmland was able to be turned around completely into a thriving jungle at Nd.  Surrounding the property there are still vast amounts of land that are suffering from being misused by humans, but with some time and effort Nd has proved that not all hope is lost.

This is outside the Nd property (with an electrified fence on the right to keep the elephants away).  You can see how little trees there are - mostly dried out shrubs on mineral depleted soil.

In the 110 acres within the Nd border and the connecting national forest and wildlife refuge however, the view is completely different.  There are trees of all heights and shapes, better soil and water quality, and increased biodiversity.

The people here grow almost all of the food they consume all year in some garden patches downhill from the living areas.  Even though its for human consumption, in order to create the least amount of harm for nature everything is done organically and naturally.  The only food miles that the food travels are from hauling the baskets uphill to the kitchen.

The Nd land is so biodiverse and the surrounding land so dead, that many times there are unwanted and dangerous visitors that stop by.  Especially during the dry season, elephants are desperate enough to take rocks and bash down the electric fence just to get to a source of food.  The wildlife refuge that has been set aside for them is continually being encroached by land robbers and new construction that they have no where else to go.
There are increasing numbers of elephant sightings and interactions with humans, to the point where one 'rouge' elephant has killed 12 people in the nearby villages just by throwing them over its back using its trunk.  But there would never have been rogue elephants if there were no rogue humans to instigate it in the first place.  I always imagined them to be gentle, docile creatures, but in the wild jungle there is no such thing.

This is a sign at the edge of the forest reserve.  When I went for a walk with a couple of the other people at the workshop when we had a spare hour, and we decided to stop here and climb rocks to see if we can spot any elephants.

This is the view from the top of the rock!  We ended up hearing the trumpeting of an elephant pretty close by, which apparently is a dangerous sign if there's only one elephant.  The next twenty minutes we could hear it moving around in the jungle, knocking down and snapping trees beneath its feet.  We never saw the wild majesty itself, because some of the younger male villagers came and started yelling and throwing rocks in that direction and we left before it caused anyone to get hurt.