Revealed: Here's how beautiful the Western Ghats were!

Dense mist floats about every now and then, its ethereal, amorphous form as if pulled on all sides by some magical force, to reveal a sparkling clarity to the wet air. What appear like stars descended on earth are but the sparkle of fireflies along hill roads, as the hum of silvery waterfalls, the chorus of amphibians and the melody of crickets enhances the magic.

I could very well have penned those words in a diary had I the slightest hint of what lay in store for a 9-year-old. Back in the monsoon of 1971 that had been my first ever journey through lush verdure outside of the backyard wilderness of my suburban Mumbai home and it took me through the Sahyadri Hills, having joined an uncle on a drive to Pune.

I later learnt that those hills we had climbed earlier that morning to reach a vast plateau atop was also called Western Ghats. Almost every image of that journey seems so fresh in the mind's eye. Perhaps that's the power and allure of nature that ensures her memories never fade. I have since made scores of trips along the length of these mountains and experienced just how extensive and ecologically profuse India's second most formidable mountain system really is-an absolute biogeographic zone, no less. Also read: Wildlife tourism: 8 budget stays in Indian national parks

The Western Ghats are not one mountain but more like a cluster of ranges, especially in their southern spread where numerous lesser ranges branch from the main mountain-mass, like a candelabra. The Agastyamalais or Ashambus, Annamalais, Brahmagiris, Cardamom Hills, Nelliampattis, Nilgiris, Palanis, Satyamangalam, and the Wayanad Hills-what an unbridled realm, this labyrinth of mountain ranges in southern Karnataka, Kerala, and extreme western Tamil Nadu.

With a length of nearly 1,500 km north to south, from South Gujarat to the nearextreme of Kerala and Tamilnadu, the WG is a narrow, near continuous mountain system save for a unique 30 km break, the Palakkad Gap. Together with the Malabar Plains, this zone covers just over 4 per cent of India's geographical area. Several major rivers originate in these mountains that also nurture these waters.

Most are shortflowing raging torrents that rush down the steep western slopes and the narrow plains into the Arabian Sea, resulting in some spectacular waterfalls in their short seaward runs. And several key rivers like Krishna, Godavari and Cauvery that originate in these mountains as tiny trickles actually flow right across the Deccan plateau for over a 1,000 km to drain into the Bay of Bengal.

Over 5,000 species of India's flowering plants exist here, as do more than 550 species of birds and nearly 130 mammals, some 175 of amphibians (frogs, toads), besides several thousand of other life forms. There is a very high degree of endemism (species not found anywhere else) observed in the Western Ghats. This includes 1,800 species of flowering plants, over 125 amphibians, 27 birds, and numerous reptiles, fish and insects.

Interestingly also, these mountains have, along their entire length, an intimate and integral link with the narrow strip of the verdant Malabar Plains, that are the Konkan in the north, Kanara in the central region of Karnataka, and Malabar further south. As the human population in these mountains has risen with more and more settlements and changing land-use, as the blitzkrieg of uncontrolled tourism has bulldozed across the charms of more and more hill sites, as more and more dams and reservoirs began cropping up once the hydel and irrigation potential of these mountains and hill-streams for the drought-prone, higly populous lowlands was strongly realised, well some of the change was predictable.

Though, it is the scale and speed of this contemporary developmental blitz that has raised serious local, national and international concern, because the Western Ghats, quite simply, are amongst the world's biodiversity hotspots.