Reclus, it was said,  ‘does not belong to any people in particular, but to all humanity… He belonged to all humanity firstly because of the ideas he had always preached and practiced, ideas which are superior to all racial and national prejudices, and secondly through this quality of sincere savant, for science, worthy of the appellation, science which has no other aim but the honest search for truth, has no party and knows no frontiers’.

Reclus toured the Nilgiris in 1895 and wrote an account titled,        ‘The Mountaineers of the Neilgherries’. Describing the land after the monsoon rains he wrote,

“After the rain season the atmosphere seems deliciously pure and transparent; vegetation starts into fresh life, the grass shoots up, brilliantly tinted flowers glow amongst the ferns, creeping plants run riot over the trees. The precipitous mountains stand up like walls, seamed with deep gullies. At their base are bamboo thickets and an impenetrable jungle, covert of the tiger, bear, and wild boar. The swamps are succeeded by the prairie, and beyond it lies the forest. Above, perpendicular rocks; below, the plateau, swelling into shady hill-sides, which are furrowed with narrow valleys, the beds of limpid streams. The traveler journeys through parks and woodlands, by paths bordered with mulberry and eglantine, over prairies scoured by buffaloes; suddenly he finds himself at the edge of the plateau. A vast plain stretches away into the distance. Alternating patches of forest and cultivated and tint it with green and yellow and violet. Here and there it is picked out with White by those human hives, the towns. The azure sea bounds it to the west; in the south rise the faint blue Cardamums The eye is satiated with soft brightness, as it broods over the wide expanse, pierces the aerial depths, dwells upon an innumerable variety of forms, colours, movements. At eventide the divine splendour that fills the heavens breaks into dazzling colours.. gold, orange, crimson, scarlet, vermilion, slowly melting into clouds of purple and rose. And when the sun is swallowed in ocean, earth, weary of radiance, drunken with light, draws a veil of transparent shadow over her voluptuous limbs, envelops herself in silence. The atmosphere grows strangely limpid, the stars seem more brilliant than elsewhere; the constellations rise like swarms of fire-flies, and the infinite universe stands revealed”

Nilgiri Documentation Centre

This annual / seasonal migration of men and buffalos will begin in February. The women folk, children and the old will be left in the villages and the men will drive the buffalos to their respective hundies. They usually start at day break and reach the reach the destinations by night fall.

All through the long trek they sing to keep themselves from tiring. One song before crossing the first stream paying obeisance to Goddess Gangamma, another to keep the herd in check (every buffalo and cattle had a name) and finally a song of merriment and dance when the destination is sighted. ‘After seeing the lush green grass, my hungry stomach has filled up’ goes one song.  

Occasionally, disputes and fights arose for the use of space or water leading to tragic events. Such stories have been immortalized by epic ballads like  Bimaraiah – Kamaraiah.  

The temporary dwelling-hut of the men had a low sleeping level, the necessary churn-pole for processing milk, and a fireplace set in a low platform. Cattle-huts surrounded the dwelling-hut, and there was also a separate calf-pen. Milk and milk products, excluding clarified butter,  formed part of their diet.

In the latter days, milk was daily sold by the Badagas to tea shops nearby and clarified butter was sold in the Ootacamund shandy, both requiring a walk of anywhere between five to twenty miles. Grains and other edibles were obtained from the market on return.

After the British rule the planting of acacia or eucalyptus trees reduced the number of hundis.   The Badagas were also required to obtain grazing permits from the Madras Forest Department in Ootacamund. A basic fee of 2.50 rupees and an additional charge of 50 paisa   per buffalo and 25 paisa  per cattle head was  paid for a three-month permit.

Over time buffalos and buffalo-hamlets vanished from Badaga life and memory.

Image: A buffalo herd : Mongabay

Nilgiri Documentation Centre

” M. Leschenault , French naturalist, came to me at Coimbatoor, in November 1818, with fever; he was confined to his bed, and in a very dangerous state, until January, when he proceeded to Pondicherry. He returned in April, in a most miserable state of weakness and suffering, hardly able to walk, without appetite, and with his skin the colour of saffron. He accompanied me (obviously carried by palanquin)  up the hills in May; and I never saw so great and so rapid a change in any man. He was able to take constant walking exercise; his appetite and strength were completely restored in less than three weeks, so that he was able to go from stage to stage on foot. Dr. Jones, the assistant surgeon here, was one of the party: he had been a fever subject for four years, and in the months of February, March, and April, the attacks were repeated and violent. The hill-air completely set him up, and he has had no fever since”

Nilgiri Documentation Centre

The Nilgiris for a Sanatorium.

28th May 1827.

The Board have already refused the offer made by Mr. Sullivan of his House on the Nielgherries as an Hospital for European soldiers in consequence of the Report made by the Medical Board of its not being

adapted for that purpose. But though I am satisfied that it is unfit for an Hospital I think that it might be of great use in furnishing accommodation for sick Officers. Even if we had a good Hospital on the Hills the want of supplies and the difficulty of bringing them from below would render it almost impossible to provide in a suitable manner for the wants of sick soldiers. This can never be done even in the most limited manner until supplies become easily procurable by its being an object

for private dealers to provide them.

The most likely way to attain this end would be by giving every facility to Officers of Civil and Military Service to visit the Hills for the recovery of their health. They require no assistance from the public but shelter from the weather. They can find their own supplies and the constant residence of a certain number in succession would gradually encourage Bazarmen in the low country to make it their business to supply all their wants. As the building of Houses on the Hills is from the want of materials and workmen of every kind attended with much difficulty and delay, I propose that we should rent Mr. Sullivan’s House for two or three years. It is better built than any house that is likely to be erected on the Hills for some time and would furnish accommodation at once for eight or ten Officers.

The Reports of Medical men on the climate of these Hills which we have hitherto received are highly favourable to its healthfulness, especially in restoring constitutions enfeebled by climate rather than broken down by disease. It is highly probable therefore that many young men would be saved by a year’s residence on the Hills who would otherwise be inevitably lost, and that many Civil and Military servants whose constitutions have suffered from a residence of some years in the country would by a residence of some months on the Hills obviate the necessity of going home. If only a very small proportion of these Officers could be restored to health by a temporary residence on the Hills instead of a Voyage to Europe the charges incurred by Government would be amply repaid.

Nilgiri Documentation Centre