False Water Cobra

A snake safari in India

The first thing that happened was that an old man wearing a cap crowned with a peacock's claw, a hornbill's beak, a bearskin and a pair of knitting needles strolled up to the veranda of the government resthouse. "You want snakes?" he asked in broken Hindi, "Come with me now."

It was late afternoon. We had only just arrived from Assam, driving north for the last 100 miles up through increasingly thick jungle on a deteriorating dirt road, watching the last vestiges of modern India drop away. The garish advertising went first, the traffic next, then the plastic litter and jerry-built, stained concrete buildings. In their place came deep jungle and mountain rivers, interspersed with bamboo longhouses and people who stared. "Are you ghosts?" one man shouted. By the time we reached Leporiang village at the end of the track, we had slipped out of the 21st century and landed, hopeful and smiling, in something very different to the rest of the howling, honking mayhem that is modern India.

The north-east of India has never made much of a contribution to the country's tourism phenomenon. There have been, for a start, plenty of political problems. Culturally more akin to Burma or China than Delhi or Mumbai, the region has been a minefield of independence movements and ethnic rivalries. And of these, Arunachal Pradesh is one of the most remote and inaccessible. It covers those jungled mountains that extend 350 miles eastwards from the Bhutanese border all the way to Burma. Claimed by China and largely ignored by Delhi, its steep-sided hills and rampaging rivers have barely been touched by the modern world. Our hosts, the Nyishi tribe, are a people whose knowledge of the lands beyond their jungles was, until half a century ago, largely based on slaving forays among the lowland Assamese. I had arrived as part of a scientific expedition, one that amateur naturalists can accompany, with the aim of collecting snake venom for anti-venom serum.

This is not a frivolous or obscure project, as expedition leader Gerry Martin pointed out. "There are about one million snake bites in India every year – 50,000 of them fatal. Thousands of other people are incapacitated."

The problem is that Indian snakes are not well studied. Scientists are just beginning to realise that venom is often location-specific and also that certain species may in fact be several distinct species. Our other expert, Rom Whitaker, American-born but brought up in India, is one of the greatest authorities on Indian snakes; he was quick to point out the limitations of current knowledge.

Snake!! False Water Cobra in Plum Creek - Keith's Photo Blog

At the end of my bike ride last night I saw this guy crossing the street headed for some homes.

Three cars stopped in the road. One whole family got out and watched. It was a snake flash mob!

I shot a quick video and took him back toward the water. (added music just for fun).

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