Meet the Kerala man who lives for king cobras

During school lunch breaks, Vijay Neelakandan, who always ate quickly, would dash straight to the nearby Parassinikadavu Snake Park. The moment he saw a king cobra raising its hood inside the chilled glass enclosure, a rush of adrenaline would surge through him. His veins felt alive, and the hairs on his arms stood on end.

`What is it, Vijay? Want to have a closer encounter?', M P Chandran, the man in charge of the snakes at the park, would ask. Vijay would give a small, knowing smile and head back to school. But the moment classes ended, he was gone again. Until the centre closed at five, he stayed by Chandran’s side every day, absorbing everything about the snakes.

After completing his undergraduate studies at Thaliparamb Sir Syed College, Vijay went to India’s oldest wildlife reserve, Corbett National Park, to see a king cobra in the wild for the first time. That first encounter ignited a fascination which has carried him through forests across India and beyond for over thirty-one years.

A love for the wild
At just nine years old, Vijay visited his grandfather’s house in Mumbai and took part in an environmental camp at Sanjay Gandhi National Park. The experience left an indelible mark. From that moment on, he knew his path lay in the forest. His parents, Neelakandan Iyer and Bhuvaneshwari, wholeheartedly encouraged his choice and gave him their full support.

After completing his undergraduate studies, Vijay headed to Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand in 1998. There, he landed a temporary job as a naturalist at a five-star resort near the park, guiding foreign visitors through the forest. The knowledge he had gained at Parassinikadavu proved invaluable during those days. Within a month, his expertise earned him not only a permanent position but also a promotion to manager.

It was in his second month at Corbett that Vijay encountered, for the first time in the forest, the creature he had long been waiting to see. It was a fourteen-foot king cobra, lifting its hood from a height of five feet. In the months that followed, he witnessed many such encounters. He stayed at Corbett for three years before moving on to work as a manager at five-star resorts near various national parks across India. Often, he would quit work midway to return to the forest, emerging only months later. Over the years, he spent months in all seventy-two of India’s national parks, with the longest periods in forests having a high number of king cobras.

Understanding the forest
“To know the king cobra, you must first know the forest,” Vijay says. According to him, studying tigers or cobras requires learning the forest in its entirety. When a tiger rises after rest, the entire forest seems to awaken. From the smallest creatures to elephants, all sense its movement. The same is true for the king cobra. By the time it begins to slither, other animals have already received the warning. Even an elephant will move aside, for a king cobra’s venom is a threat no creature can ignore.

King cobras feed exclusively on other snakes. Even the hatchlings, the moment they emerge from their eggs, survive on a diet of snakes. Once they have fed, they can go for months without food, and when they do eat, it will always be a grand meal!

Vijay explains that king cobras are sure to be present in landscapes dotted with lakes and waterfalls. Forests in Wayanad and the Agumbe region of Karnataka have significant populations. In Kerala, they are most commonly seen in the forests surrounding Sabarimala.

With the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 being strictly enforced, studying king cobras in India comes with many restrictions. That is why Vijay travelled to countries like Thailand and Myanmar to gain a better understanding of their life cycle. In the Netherlands, king cobras are even kept in homes, sometimes three or four together in what looks like an aquarium. Vijay spent several days there observing how their feeding patterns change under such conditions.

Observing the mother
The chance to see firsthand how many eggs a king cobra lays and where it chooses to lay them finally arrived much closer to home. In 2017, Vijay learned that a king cobra had been spotted on the property of a farmer named Mathew Velikkakath near the Kottiyur forest area in Kannur. When he visited the site, he noticed the mother snake had carefully built a nest using dry leaves to lay its eggs. Vijay spoke to the villagers and reassured them that he would personally stand guard to protect the mother snake and her eggs.

He then stood guard at the nest for one hundred days. The nest contained twenty-three eggs. Using dry leaves, the mother snake had carefully built the nest so that not a single drop of water could seep in. When the villagers had destroyed the first nest, she simply built another nearby and continued laying her eggs. Forest officials also joined Vijay in standing watch.

The king cobra is the only snake that builds a nest and lays eggs. After mating, she waits for about two months before laying them. The nest is usually hidden deep in the forest. Hatching can take between seventy and one hundred days. Four days before the eggs are due to hatch, the female leaves the nest. She goes without water or food for all those days, and by leaving beforehand, she prevents herself from seeing her young as prey once they emerge. King cobras, which feed on other snakes, they even prey on each other.

Of the twenty-three eggs, nineteen hatched. Vijay continued to keep watch until the newborns made their way into the forest. He says that witnessing the mother’s care firsthand and understanding it in the wild was one of the greatest milestones of his research career.

Carrying the wild home
In 2018, Vijay founded the Kannur Wildlife Rescue Force, a collective dedicated to raising awareness about wildlife. His own home, ‘Neelakandan Abode,’ is located in a small patch of forest near the Rajarajeswara Temple in Thaliparamba, Kannur. The land was once a fourteen-acre forest, and it now houses his eco-conscious home.

Vijay is now turning the knowledge he has gained from three decades in the wild into a book. It features photographs of king cobras captured in forests across India and abroad, along with detailed descriptions of their lives. The 350-page book, titled `The monarch: My journey with king cobras', is being printed in Singapore. Printing 2,500 copies of the book is estimated to cost around one and a half crore rupees.

Vijay says that the book, which has no copyright, can be reprinted by anyone. There is no need to even mention the author’s name. The sole purpose of this effort is to spread knowledge about the king cobra to the world.