Man Who Made a Forest

It is not easy these days to find an exceptional person. Someone who is genuine enough and compassionate enough – to surrender his life to giving. Leave all the magnificence of the whole wide world, and transcend to a state where none of it really matters. To go back to the roots; those that sprout from the ground we stand on and create existence.

A little more than 30 years ago, a teenager named Jadav "Molai" Payeng began burying seeds along a barren sandbar near his birthplace in northern India's Assam region to grow a refuge for wildlife. Not long after, he decided to dedicate his life to this endeavor, so he moved to the site so he could work full-time creating a lush new forest ecosystem. Incredibly, the spot today hosts a sprawling 1,360 acres of jungle that Payeng planted — single-handedly.

The name of the forest is Mulai Kathoni. It is located near Kokilamukh of Jorhat, Assam, India, with a total area of about 1300 hectares.

The Forest houses around four tigers, three rhinoceros, over a hundred deer and rabbits besides apes and innumerable varieties of birds, including a large number of vultures. There are several thousand trees among which are valcol, arjun, ejar, goldmohur, koroi, moj and himolu. There are bamboo trees too covering an area of over 300 hectares. A herd of around 100 elephants regularly visits the forest every year and generally stay for around six months. They also gave birth to 10 calves in the forest in recent times.

It all started way back in 1979, when floods washed a large number of snakes ashore on the sandbar. One day, after the waters had receded, Payeng, only 16 then, found the place dotted with the dead reptiles. That was the turning point of his life. An he started planting trees which led to this.