Vellari Combai

Vellari Combai is one of the oldest Kurumba villages in the Nilgiris. This village lays on the eastern slopes of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, north of Coimbatore hills, west of Mettupalayam town. From Kotagiri- Mettupalayam road one need to walk 1.30 hours and had to cross Chundapatty (another kurumba village) to reach this village.
There are around 20 families in this village, they are engaged in small scale agriculture, they grow jack trees, arecanut trees, coffee, coconut trees, pepper vines etc. Major portion of the landholding has been left uncultivated for more than seven years because of regular cropraiding by elephants and Indian gaur. Major portion of the landholding looks like a degraded forest now. Soil is cultivable with a color range of brown and black. As the village is on the steep slopes there are no wells so they get drinking water from the hill top through a pipe connection provided by the Hill Area Development Program. We could see that it was raining on the south east hills of the village and feel the change in the atmosphere but not even a drop fell onto these slopes. On the same day of May 2011, by 02.00 hours, as though a huge cloud which could not hold any more water, rain started and continued till 06.30 am.
Impacts of land use change in the upper region can be seen within the village and near by slopes also. Two kilometers south-east of this village there is a rock with ancient paintings, villagers call this as ezhuthupara (a rock with inscription). If traveling towards this rock we need to cross four mountain originated streams. One of them is perennial and in summer months villagers depend this stream. The first stream from the village had a massive land slide in the last year still we can see huge rocks and large amount of mud fluxed down.

Drawings on Ezhuthupara

 As I mentioned earlier this area looks exactly like a forest area. To prove this lets look at the number of bird species observed here. 39 bird species from morning to afternoon! All of them are forest birds. A pair of Great Indian Hornbill, Streak throated woodpecker, Velvet fornted Nuthatch, Malabar shama, Yellow browed bulbull, Scarlet minivet, Brown crowned pygmy woodpecker etc.

Brown Crowned Pigmy Woodpecker