Notes from India's wildlife sanctuaries and coastline

Some of the photos I keep coming back to are not from work at all. They are from Sasan Gir in November 2019, the Goa coast in July 2019, and Pahalgam in Kashmir in December 2023. Three very different places, in three very different seasons.

This is not a travel guide. It is a set of notes on wildlife safari in India's sanctuaries and on the coastline, about why these places matter and what a founder can learn from places that run on patience rather than speed.

Gir: the only wild home of the Asiatic lion

Sasan Gir is in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, a few hours from Ahmedabad. The Gir forest is the only place in the world where Asiatic lions live in the wild. Not one of several places. The only one.

That fact alone is worth sitting with. A little over a century ago, the Asiatic lion had been hunted down to a very small number, and Gir was its last refuge. Protection by the Nawab of Junagadh, and later by the Indian and Gujarat governments, slowly brought the population back. Gir became a sanctuary in 1965. Official counts have risen steadily since, and the most recent ones put the population at several hundred lions, now spreading beyond the forest into the wider Saurashtra countryside.

My photos from November 2019 are of Asiatic lions in Gir. Knowing the history, it is hard to look at them without thinking about how close that species came to not being there at all.

What Gir teaches about long work

Conservation is the opposite of a quick win. The lion population did not recover in a quarter or a financial year. It took decades of steady, unglamorous work: protecting habitat, managing conflict with villages around the forest, counting carefully, and continuing even when progress was slow.

Building a company is much shorter than that, but the shape is similar. The results you want come from boring work done consistently for a long time. I find Gir a useful reminder of that when a week feels slow.

Visiting Gir

A few public facts that help if you are planning a wildlife safari in Gir:

• The park closes during the monsoon, roughly from mid-June to mid-October, and reopens after that. November falls in the early part of the season, when the forest is still green from the rains.
• Safaris run on fixed routes with permits booked through the official Gujarat forest department system. Book early in peak months.
• Devalia, inside the Gir area, has a fenced interpretation zone. It is a separate experience from the jungle safari, and useful if you have limited time.
• Lions are wild. No guide can promise a sighting, and a good one won't.

Goa in July: the coast in monsoon

Most people picture Goa in December: sun, crowds and parties. I went in July 2019, which is monsoon season on the west coast.

The monsoon changes the coast completely. The sea becomes rough, and swimming is usually discouraged or banned on many beaches during these months. The hills and fields inland turn a deep green. Tourist crowds are much thinner.

It is not a wildlife sanctuary in the safari sense, but the coastline is its own ecosystem. Goa's mangroves along its rivers and estuaries, and protected areas such as the Bhagwan Mahavir and Cotigao wildlife sanctuaries in the Western Ghats side of the state, are part of what makes it more than a beach.

What the monsoon teaches

Seeing a place in its "off" season is a good lesson in perspective. The same place can be loud and crowded in one month and quiet and wild in another. Neither is the "real" Goa. Both are.

Markets are like that too. A business looks different in its busy season and its slow season. If you only ever see one, you misunderstand it.

Pahalgam in December: winter in the Lidder valley

Pahalgam sits in the Lidder valley in Kashmir's Anantnag district, surrounded by pine forests and mountains. In summer it is green and busy, and it is a base for the annual Amarnath Yatra. In December, it is winter: cold, often snowy, and much quieter.

The forests around Pahalgam are part of a larger Himalayan ecosystem. The Overa-Aru wildlife sanctuary lies close to Pahalgam, and the wider region is home to animals such as the Himalayan black bear and, in Dachigam National Park near Srinagar, the hangul, Kashmir's endangered red deer.

What the mountains teach

Mountains have a way of resetting your sense of scale. A problem that felt large at a desk feels smaller next to a valley that has been there for millions of years. I don't mean that in a soft, motivational way. I mean it practically: distance and silence help you think clearly, and clear thinking is a founder's most useful tool.

Why wildlife sanctuaries in India matter

India has a long, imperfect, but real record of protecting wild places. The Wildlife Protection Act came in 1972, and Project Tiger began in 1973. Today the country has more than a hundred national parks and several hundred wildlife sanctuaries, from Gir's dry deciduous forest to the mangroves of the Sundarbans.

These places are under constant pressure from roads, farms, mining, tourism and climate. The ones that survive do so because people kept caring about them long after the news moved on.

A few things I try to keep in mind as a visitor:

• Follow the rules, even when nobody is watching. Stay in the vehicle, keep quiet, don't feed animals.
• Choose responsible operators. A guide who chases animals for a photo is not a good guide.
• Go in the off season sometimes. Fewer crowds, a different side of the place.
• Remember you are a guest. The animals live there. We are visiting.

Closing notes

Gir, Goa and Pahalgam have little in common on a map. One is dry forest in Gujarat, one is a tropical coast in the rain, one is a Himalayan valley in winter. What they share is that they all run on their own clock, not ours.

That is a good thing to remember when you spend most days building software, as I do now at Bolo Media. If you are curious about the language side of my work, I wrote about building in the language I grew up speaking. And if you prefer a different kind of team sport, there is what European football teaches about building a team.