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There are landscapes that carry silence like an inheritance. The Nilgiris is one such. It is a land whose quietness does not imply absence but an older, deeper fullness, the murmur of age-old forests, the patient drift of light across grasslands and the steady, almost ceremonial, movements of elephants who have travelled the same pathways for centuries. Over the past month, a different kind of stillness has settled across the Sigur plateau, one that feels like a missing note in a familiar composition.

For weeks now, people who know this landscape intimately—Irula trackers, forest guards, conservationists, plantation workers, resort staff, villagers and even police patrols assigned to volatile forest fringes—have been asking the same question with a mixture of worry and reverence. Where is Rivaldo?

The 54-year-old tusker, whose slow, stately presence once provided a strange reassurance to both forest and settlement, has not been seen for more than a month. Known for the regularity of his wanderings, his composure around humans and his recurring appearances in familiar haunts, Rivaldo’s absence has begun to weigh heavily on the region’s collective imagination.

Elephants disappear. That is the nature of their ecology. They walk long distances, shift ranges, vanish into ravines and valleys that no human eye can easily penetrate. But Rivaldo’s disappearance feels like more like a rupture than a biological event.

To trace why his absence feels so profound, it helps to begin with a house beside the Sigurhalla stream and the man whose vision shaped his relationship with the forest.

In 1964, E.R.C. Davidar, writer, naturalist and early conservation thinker, built a modest home along the Sigurhalla stream. It would come to be known as Cheetal Walk. With its tiled roof, its veranda and stone steps leading into a clearing, it looked like any other dwelling of the Nilgiri foothills. But the house was conceived as something far more radical: a place where humans would not impose themselves on the forest but would inhabit it gently, leaving pathways open for the creatures who had walked there long before any human arrived.

Cheetal Walk, along the Sigurhalla stream

Davidar believed that if humans did not behave as aggressors, wildlife would not respond as victims or adversaries. He allowed elephants, deer and even predators to move through his property with as little hindrance as possible. He refused to fence off the land. He avoided the reflexive fears that govern so much of human interaction with the wild. Slowly, as if in recognition of this unusual hospitality, the forest accepted him. Elephants wandered across the grounds without alarm. Deer grazed near the veranda. Leopards passed by as though the house were simply another feature of their terrain.

It was in this atmosphere that a young tusker began appearing regularly. Over the years, he became one of the most recognisable elephants in the region. He was dignified and noticeably calm despite living in an area increasingly marked by conflict. He would eventually be named Rivaldo by Davidar’s son Mark.

Rivaldo’s early years near Cheetal Walk shaped his temperament. He learned, through repeated encounters, that humans were not necessarily beings to fear.

When Mark Davidar died on 19 October 2013, it was not only a personal tragedy for a small community of conservationists but a snapping of the link between Cheetal Walk and the elephants of the Sigur plateau. Mark—who had inherited his father’s patience and his quiet powers of observation—was the last steward of that space.

Despite the lack of familiar human presence, Rivaldo continued to return to Cheetal Walk, often lingering at its edges, as if expecting Mark to emerge. Locals still speak of the poignant sight of a large tusker standing near a gate that no longer opened, of the persistence of memory in a creature whose world was already beginning to fray.

Around the time of Mark’s death, Rivaldo suffered the injury that altered his life. The tip of his trunk was severed, either in a poacher’s snare or by a crude explosive meant for wild boar. The injury made feeding laborious and often painful. Large fruits became difficult to grip, branches harder to break and water arduous to draw. For an elephant, whose trunk is essential for almost every aspect of survival, this was a profound impairment.

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In the years that followed, perhaps missing the quiet reassurance of Cheetal Walk, Rivaldo began approaching human settlements. He displayed none of the aggression typical of elephants repeatedly harassed by human activity. Instead, he approached with the cautious dignity of an animal seeking no more than necessary.

Villagers left vegetables and fruit. Tourists offered food from passing jeeps. Resort workers fed him as guests took photos. Unwittingly, humans reconfigured the boundaries between forest and settlement. The habituation that developed was not a product of malice but misplaced compassion.

By 2021, Rivaldo was so visible near human habitations that the forest department confined him to a kraal, claiming they wished to retrain him. The decision ignited fierce debate. Conservationists argued that Rivaldo was being punished for the behaviour of humans. Local communities felt betrayed. Resorts, that had once viewed him as an asset, quietly pushed for his removal.

Eventually, Rivaldo was released. His recovery was remarkable. He adjusted his routes, avoided settlements, rejoined wild herds. His story became a reference point for the possibility of rewilding.

Rivaldo was last seen in late October 2025, near Theppakadu. Forest staff had spotted him walking slowly, accompanied at times by younger tuskers. Then, without warning, he disappeared.

The first week, people shrugged. The second, they asked questions. By the third week, the drone flights began. By the fourth, trackers studied the forest floor with growing tension.

It wasn’t just about a missing elephant anymore. It was about the state of the Nilgiris.

The Nilgiris are a landscape under siege. Resorts have spilled over forest margins. Estates have fenced traditional elephant paths. Traffic has increased, at all hours. Waterholes are unreliable due to changing rainfall. Illegal structures crowd the edges of Mudumalai. Ecological buffers have collapsed under the weight of unregulated tourism and speculative real estate.

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The elephants that once walked this land with the confidence of ancient ownership now navigate a landscape that has shifted beyond recognition. An older elephant like Rivaldo is especially vulnerable. He may have reclaimed his wildness, but the wild is no longer what it used to be.

Officials state no carcass has been found. No disturbed herds or confirmed distress. They note that elephants can disappear for weeks. They remind people that radio collars fail. Yet the undertone of worry persists.

The forest holds its silences closely, and this silence has a weight that is difficult to dismiss. A host of difficult questions occupy the emptiness left by Rivaldo’s going. How can one ‘protect’ elephants while destroying their habitats? Where is the room for conservation within unrestrained ‘development’? How is coexistence possible when the very land that enables it is vanishing?

Meanwhile, the region waits. Foresters walk their routes before dawn. Tribal trackers examine the ground. In tea shops, men speak of Rivaldo in the present tense. Hope persists.

Somewhere, perhaps in a valley too deep for human eyes, a tusker may still be moving slowly, carrying memories of a house that welcomed him without fear. Or perhaps he has gone the way old elephants often do, quietly and without drama.

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