Coorg Forest, Southern India

Jennu Kuruba

Deep in the forests of Coorg, a rainy district in the South Indian state of Karnataka, live the Jennu Kuruba, an Adivasi tribe of honey gatherers and farmers. The Adivasi, whose name means "those who lived here before", descend from the earliest inhabitants of India, and the ancestors of the Jennu Kuruba, "the people of the honey", have been gathering honey in these forests for thousands of years, climbing on the tallest of trees or sticking their heads right into a beehive hidden under some bush. They still love to do so from time to time, and are always on the lookout for a beehive as they walk through the forest that they seem to know like the back of their hand.

Since the days of an early golden age in which people did not need to work the plough and lived off the fruits of the land, honey was always regarded as one of the forest's most precious gifts, and played a special role in the life and identity of the Jennu Kuruba. Once upon a time, goes one of their stories, there was a king whose daughter said she would never dare to eat some honey, which was gathered by the lowly Adivasi, who touched it with their dirty hands and were regarded as unclean under the Hindu caste system. The king and the queen bought a couple of bottles and left them on the table. In the morning, they found them completely empty and the princess never said a bad word about the Adivasi again.

These days, the Jennu Kuruba also farm the land and work on nearby coffee and pepper plantations, where they are well-paid for their skills in working with trees which they have honed over their history as honey gatherers. The forest in which the Jennu Kuruba live is also changing, as wild bees become increasingly rare all across the world, a development that they say is a sign of great changes. Their ancestors used to take care of the forest, they also say, and so should we all do, if we are to keep enjoying such gifts as the honey produced by the bees, and everything else that the earth offers us.