Trekking is a soft-adventure sport which can turn horribly wrong if everything is assumed to be orderly with little application of mind. The death of 14 trekkers on the Western Ghats of Tamil Nadu on the Kurangani-Kolukkumalai route last Sunday due to massive fire is tragic to say the least. The Theni district, under which the trekking route fell, is a dense forest area and according to an estimate nearly forty per cent of the region is forest. The said forest region is a “reserved” one and the trekkers are believed to have taken “permission” from the personnel at the check post before embarking further.
It has to be noted that the men and women went up to the hilltop in Kolukkumalai when permission is usually accorded only till the base. Whether or not a written permission was taken is pertinent because reserved forest areas cannot just be entered like that. Meticulous documentation, including prior authorisation letter from the department, is needed. Were the teams well-equipped in terms of manpower and instruments?
That is to say the presence of exceptionally well-informed guides, who know the region like the back of their hands, cannot be overstressed in a thick forest area. Wearing appropriate clothes and carrying mobile phones are useful; but the presence of maps and GPS can be very handy when all seems lost for a quick escape. That said, written or none, the inexplicable reason for allowing such a large contingent, numbering up to 30, into the forest will linger on.
There are seasons when trekking is considered appropriate, and for the Theni forest area January-May is considered inappropriate because of the leaves losing their moisture. The resultant dry leaves accumulate in a heap over the slopes easily vulnerable to fire through small frictions. Few forest officials tried to pin the blame on “man made” fire, like burning old forest for new crop cultivation, which is ludicrous and shocking because it is important to dissect the reason for the loss of lives and not trace the roots of the fire. That there was raging forest fire in the area over the couple of days previous to the incident again makes incomprehensible the admission of visitors to the forest.
