Bharatpur,
India
Friday, December 24, 2004
The others in my group had had enough of early starts on cold bumpy buses (actually I quite like them)so we chipped in a bit more cash and hired an Ambassador car (old white Indian car - quite old fashioned looking, can see them everywhere!). Somehow 5 of us managed to squeeze into this beauty and all our luggage although Dale had to sit with his legs wrapped around the gear stick. Ouch! A few hours later we arrived at a small town called Bharatpur where the Keoladeo Bird Sanctuary is located. The park supports a population of 375 species of birds, numerous mammals and reptiles. With the onset of winter, migratory birds from all over world come here. Michelle and I took cycle rickshaws into the park for 4 hours and our drivers Mr Singh (Sikh) and Mr Singh (Hindu) turned out to be expert ornithologists and somehow whilst cycling could spot all kinds of birds from a few hundred metres distance in the trees. It took us ages even with binoculars to even see what they could see without binoculars!!!!! We saw coots, pelicans, Siberian cranes, kingfishers, egrets, all kinds of Herons, Lesser and Greater spotted eagles. We even saw a python, spotted deer, a jackal, and several cheeky monkeys!
Christmas eve was a bit of a quiet one with a quick dinner in our totally empty hotel restaurant in the middle of nowhere, not a cracker or decoration in sight - so a bit flat for the others.
