Checkin out the birds!
Trip Start
Jan 18, 2010
1
15
44
Trip End
Jul 30, 2010
Bharatpur, Rajasthan, India
Friday, March 19, 2010
We stayed in a guesthouse which was a block with a few rooms attached to a family home. As Bharatpur doesn't really have any restaurants we ate simple, home cooked food every night cooked by the lovely Mrs Singh. There was just one large table and so we spent our evenings chatting and exchanging India stories with a British and a German couple who were very friendly.
The bird sanctuary (Keolado National Park) was an oasis of calm and tranquility and was a short 10 minute walk along a busy highway from our guesthouse. We were able to hire bikes and explore the park on our own terms (once we'd negotiated the slightly pushy guides and the several ticket checkers! - this is true of pretty much every site that we've been to, uniformed men armed with hole-punches wanting to check your ticket at 5 minute intervals). Once past the hole-punchers we were soon cruising through the park on bone rattling bikes and enjoying the fact that it was just us and the wildlife.
We visited the park three days running and saw new things every day. We saw Kingfishers, Herons, Cranes, Storks, Vultures, Parakeets, Eagles, Lapwings, Geese and many other birds we couldn't identify (our 'Birds of India' book couldn't tell us all of them!). We also saw loads of other wildlife including Deer, Chitals, Mongoose, Jackals, Turtles, Snakes and (some what predictably) hundreds of cows!
The highlight of our visits to the park was when we came across a pair of Saras Cranes. We stopped to look at them and they started to perform a mating dance which was really graceful and elaborate. They mirrored each others movements and danced around each other for about 10 minutes.
I think we'll appreciate having had such a calm few days as we're off to Agra next which sounds pretty manic!
