My search for a mobile-free environment for a few days at the end of every year takes me to remoter and remoter nooks of the country. Ever since I decided some years back to avoid partying in Delhi on New Year’s Eve, I have adroitly managed to dodge the cellphone by choosing places that have not yet been invaded by the ubiquitous mobile phone tower. No, I don’t have anything against cellphones; if I did I wouldn’t have got myself one way back in 1996. On occasion the mobile is indeed a life-saver. But at the risk of offending my friends and acquaintances, I do find the plethora of Happy New Year calls and messages rather intrusive, repetitive and sometimes pesky. Switching the phone off is not quite a solution; one is tempted to check for important missed calls and messages.

Following a visit to the Kanha Tiger Reserve in 2001, I realised animal sanctuaries shelter not only the winged and the four-legged, but could be an ideal retreat for humans escaping the tyranny of the telephone. So, for a second year in a row, my wife and I packed our bags, stuffed our Hyundai Terracan with provisions and took off for Tiger Reserves in the fringes of Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand.

After an extraordinarily exciting stay at a Forest Rest House at a place called Haldu Padao in the Kalagarh range, this year I drove to a similar facility at Kolhuchaur on the advice of BBS Rawat, a retired forest official who has made Kotdwar, gateway to Lansdowne and Pauri his home. These excursions are not for the faint-hearted or the effete urbanite. First you need a sturdy four-wheel drive to get there because most such remote destinations require fording rivers, going through rough jungle tracks often full of deceptively deep slush that can cause a vehicle to skid, besides negotiating boulders on the way. We counted 12 rivulets that we forded to and from Kolhuchaur — all on the Kolhu River, which gets its name from cyclical manner it meanders through the thick foliage, resembling an oil-presser’s (kolhu) stone circle.

Second, there are virtually no creature comforts at these Rest Houses built by the British and meant to serve only as temporary inspection bungalows. So, one has to lug all eatables and drink from the city, including rice/wheat, vegetables, cooking oil, masalas, packaged milk and water, tea, coffee and, of course, alcohol if you are so inclined. Facilities at Haldu Padao were reasonably good as it has a newly-constructed two-storied guest house in addition to a 120-year-old British-built bungalow. Kolhuchaur was more basic, cooking in particular turned out to be quite a chore since, unlike Haldu Padao, there was no bottled LPG either and all meals had to be prepared by lighting firewood even for a cup of tea in the morning. Neither place boasted electricity, but they have solar panels, which on a sunny day can generate enough power to light up some dozen bulbs (happily all CFL), for a few hours in the evening.

The great thing about these escapes is the complete quietness one can experience. You start literally listening to the sounds of silence especially after sundown, occasionally interrupted by piercing cries of a solitary barking deer or cheetal, and later in the night by the mighty trumpeting of herds of elephants. We heard a tiger roar in the distance a couple of times at Kolhuchaur, although more tiger sounds were audible at Haldu Padao. This being mating season tigers are even more reclusive than normal. If visitors are after animal sightings, these are not places to head for; you are better off in the zoo. National Parks are the last refuge of India’s harassed and hunted quadrupeds, they cannot and must not become substitutes for the city zoo. It is important to remember than humans are the intruders in wildlife sanctuaries and it is good that the authorities firmly discourage intrusive safaris by nearby resort owners.

I gather that Corbett Park’s most favoured tourist destination, Dhikala, has a staggering 179 hotels and resorts on its periphery! Throughout the day, Chunnu-Munnu type tourist families, picnic baskets and digi-cams in tow, invade the core area in jeeps and elephant back. When I visited Kanha, I was appalled to find some 200 cars and mini-buses lined up, full of New Year’s Day picnickers, readily paying Rs 100 per head for an elephant safari to watch tigers mating.

As the officer-in-charge at Kolhuchaur pertinently pointed out, in these remote places inaccessible to most holiday makers, you should sight a tiger only by accident, never by design. That brought to mind the one royal male we spotted just before dusk at Kanha when it came bounding out of the forest, emerged on the vehicle track, furiously glanced at us and then walked along the road quite oblivious to intruders. That sight will forever be etched in mind, whereas the elephant safari to derive voyeuristic pleasure out of the animals engaged in love-making makes me queasy in retrospect.

Intrusive tourism is not the only problem confronting India’s depleting forest cover or wildlife habitats. Areas outside the core area of Corbett Park, for instance, are plagued by a variety of other ills, such as illegal felling of trees, poaching, particularly of leopards and deer, abysmal communication facilities, ill-paid and ill-trained forest staff and so on. As a forest official at Kolhuchaur succinctly pointed out, painstaking fieldwork and regular inspection of forests by senior officers has virtually stopped: “Instead, we have frequent seminars where theories of conservation are discussed in depth”.

Till a couple of decades ago, junior and middle-ranking forest officers possessed admirable expertise derived from years of observation, study and experience. But now, most of them hanker after “soft” postings in or near cities, unwilling to live in isolated, non-family locations. This, in turn, fuels corruption and inefficiency. Outside the core area, villages continue to flourish, accentuating the man-animal conflict. In Kolhuchaur, for instance, there are several Gujar habitations, residents earning a livelihood through farming, rearing animals and selling buffalo milk. The Government needs to seriously explore relocating human habitations not just outside the core area but also the peripheries of National Parks. Animals do not adhere to man-made demarcations; in fact, very often more wildlife is found in the non-core areas closer to the plains than in the hilly core area of National Parks like Corbett and adjoining Tiger Reserves.

India’s forest wealth is still resplendent both in terms of flora and fauna. Uttarakhand is particularly well endowed with 77 percent of its total area being forested. It is pointless spending billions of rupees on cosmetic tiger conservation schemes without simultaneously focusing on basics like quality manpower, regular patrolling, developing an adequate prey base for tigers and leopards, nurturing forest undergrowth, elimination of destructive weeds, relocation of villages and regulation of tourist traffic.

Conservation needs not just long term planning but also a mindset that is committed and emotionally attached to preserving India's forest resources.