Locking eyes with a ‘goral’

Stephen Alter pays homage to India’s wildlife splendour by uncovering overlooked locations and underrated species

the plains of North India, and his interest in snakes and leggy wildlife.

‘Shared consciousness’

While out searching for a species of an insectivorous plant near his home in Landour, Uttarakhand, he chances upon a young goral. For a fleeting moment, they lock eyes, “arousing in me a startling sense of shared consciousness.” How did the antelopelike animal perceive him? Alter’s description of that instant calls to mind artist and critic John Berger’s influential essay

in which he talks of the element of surprise when humans and animals consider each other across the “abyss of noncomprehension.” After tracing the historical relationship between humans and animals, Berger bemoans the physical and cultural marginalisation of animals in the modern era. Although he doesn’t specifically say so, Alter offers a way of looking at animals in the Anthropocene. In his encounters with a spectacled cobra and a dancing frog, he ruminates on how they sense him and perceive the world.

Using that springboard, he uncovers overlooked locations and underrated species, little known cultural and historical sites while also travelling to popular places in his quest to see charismatic animals. His vivid descriptions take readers to the cold heights of Ladakh, the arid plains of Tal Chhapar, and the murky swamps of Sunderbans, while exploring the broad theme of the book: what is our relationship with wild fauna and how do we engage with them.

Bookended by the cobra

The first and last chapters on Agumbe in Karnataka and the area’s most celebrated denizen, the king cobra, form bookends. (I had a small influence in nudging Alter to visit the place.) In the second chapter on Vrindavan, he explores the myth of Kaliya Mardan. The reviewer could be forgiven for thinking that this book was all about snakes. But then the author veers sharply to Dudhwa and its most famous resident, Billy Arjan Singh and his controversial rehabilitation of