There exists in India, a tropical evergreen rain forest with an unbroken evolutionary history of 50 million years. Steep escarpments and ridges on all sides ensured that this plateau remained unsullied by man, thereby preserving its rich bio-diversity. The multi-layered canopy harbours a variety of plant and animal species, many of them hitherto unheard of by Science. A new frog genus supposed to be of the Jurassic era was discovered in the year 2003. It is no wonder then that scientists have described Silent Valley as ‘the richest expression of life on Earth’.
Silent Valley is a virgin, fragile forest, nestled in the mountain folds of the Nilgiris in Southern India. In God’s own country, Kerala, Silent Valley is surely God’s own abode. It has etymological connotations to the absence of noisy insect cicadas that are generally abundant in tropical rain forests, although now, cicadas form an integral part of the forest. The local names of the valley and the river that flows through it, resurrect the grand tale of the Mahabharata. In the local lingo, Silent Valley is called Sai-randhi-vanam or Sai-randhiri (synonymous with Draupadi, wife of the Pandavas) and the river is called Kunthipuzha (synonymous with Kunti, mother of the Pandavas).