Delhiwale: Stories from the jungle book

While a part of the city reels under the threat of destruction of trees, here’s a guide to Delhi’s wooded regions.

Secretive and silent. Intertwined trees, twisted trunks, thorny twigs, rocky slopes and clumps of grass. The nearest burger outlet is two miles away. This is Delhi’s Central Ridge, a forest in the Capital’s heart abutting Sardar Patel Road in Chanakyapuri.

A view of the Mangar Bani forest in the NCR. (HT Photo)

For a city on the edge of a desert, Delhi is remarkable for the number and diversity of its trees. This dry, dusty metropolis is home to 252 species (New York has 130). We could just as well be in a rainforest. But Delhi’s pockets of wilderness are rarely frequented. The popular Lodhi Garden and Nehru Park are wooded but the grass is trimmed, and the hedges pruned. The natural wilderness that once existed is now hidden, built on or degraded. Connaught Place was a forest of babool trees before the British destroyed it to make a commercial district. Over the years, especially after independence, many parts of the Aravalli hills, which ended in isolated hills and rocky slopes in the Capital, have been flattened to make way for neighbourhoods and bazaars.

Still, some tree-filled havens persist.

Not far from the Chattarpur farmhouses in south Delhi, is a jungle consisting of dhau, a tree with small leaves and silvery trunk. A species that’s adapted to rocky land, there are great jungles of dhau in Ranthambore and in Bundelkhand. But here it is close to the limits of a metropolis, with the skyscrapers of Gurugram threatening an invasion from the west.

Early morning is the best time to visit Mangar Bani. The forest is sacred, the trees are worshipped and there are two temples. The valley has a village of Gujjar herdsmen who believe in a mystic called Gudariyadas Baba. The forest has survived —until this moment—because of the faith of villagers. They believe that cutting a tree—even a branch—would invite Baba’s wrath. Even so, there were mortifying reports of more than a hundred trees being felled last month.

Indeed, walking in the valley reveals the fragile beauty of our fast-receding green cover. Pradip Krishen, author of Trees of Delhi, says, “Mangar Bani is like a little museum of what the rocky past of the Ridge must have looked like before being swallowed by Delhi.” Just this month he posted pictures of the forest on his Facebook, marvelling, “even after all these years, amazed to see Mangar Bani in new leaf, showing us how beautiful our natural forests in the Aravalli can be.”

In summer, dhau sprouts new leaves. By the time the monsoon arrives, the area is one of the most beautiful sights in Delhi. “Standing on a cliff with the valley below you, it’s like looking at a giant cloud of green,” says Krishen. The new leaves of dhau have long silvery hair on their tips. When you look at trees from the distance, you see little silver points of light.

This morning, after the rains, tiny red velvet mites appear, their almost-luminous bodies in stark contrast to the greens around them. A monitor lizard, more than a metre long, ambles into the undergrowth. Above, a sunbird flits in the low branches. Below it, a centipede plays dead.

To the north, at the other end of the city lies Shalimar Bagh. Nestled between shopping malls, banquet halls, bungalows and apartments are the 100-acre remains of a network of Mughal-era orchards and gardens. The description of that park, however, has already appeared on these pages.

Then there are places we do not associate with forests though they offer a sense of wilderness. You may, for instance, consider an exploration in Jawaharlal Nehru University. There’s a stream, indigenous bushes, native trees. Close your ears and the city disappears.