Chikhaldara
We spent the weekend in Chikhaldara and Amravati with Dr. Raut and his family. Chikhaldara is a hill station in northeast Maharashtra, very remote and beautiful. Many people in Chikhaldara and the nearby Melghat Tiger Reserve are “tribal people,” a somewhat romanticized and stereotyped minority in India. I was amazed at the lengths that they go to when gathering firewood, climbing from the plateau down to the valley and back up again, a couple of thousand feet each way. They also graze their cows and buffalo inside the tiger reserve, which maybe isn’t that big of a deal since we didn’t see any tigers when we were there. Deep in the middle of the forest we found a large group of city people gathered to watch the sunset, snapping photos with their phones and gawking at the airplane that passed overhead, the second one I’ve seen since I’ve been in Maharashtra.
