India 06

As we travelled in the afternoon to Bharat Pur to stay on the grounds of the Keoladeo Ghana National Park, a Unesco World Heritage bird sanctuary, we took the morning time to sort our things, eat a leisurely breakfast, walk in the organic garden, work on our blog, wash a bit of laundry (which we take wet and hang to dry as soon as we arrive at our accommodation, as what we have read says we might not have access to hot water) and reflect a bit.

We have been fortunate to have been in domestic settings arranged by Shanoo and to have met so many lovely people - this has been a highlight for us and these experiences have better enabled us to contextualize the snapshot sights we have experienced. Yolanda reflected on how interesting it is to think that the rose petals collected from a childhood neighbour's garden and squished into a small bottle for "perfume" by 6yo Yolanda might originate as a thread from Mughal times (that neighbour had a large collection of Indian hand crafts) or that a hair-style copied by Yolanda from a pal who had been in India quite a few years back might be why her comb/clip/scrunchie combo matched that of Bushra, Charisma, and Jyoti (as well as Shanoo's mother). We left Agra with Madan just after 1:00pm and arrived at the Hotel Bharatpur Ashok, The Forest Lodge on the Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary grounds around 3:00pm (later than expected due to a couple of business stops for Madan en route).

En route, Bob took a lot of photos out the car window, including one of the fly wheel sugar cane cart operation we had seen at the wholesale produce market the day previous.

Upon arrival at the National Park, and after quite a bit of confusion on our part (including a quick deal at the Sanctuary gate, that we were eventually "rescued" from) we were enticed by Satto Gurjar and did a tour of about 2 hrs to see nocturnal and exotic wetlands birds including two kinds of owls. The Park was a former duck hunting reserve for the Maharajas and serves as a major winter area for birds from Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Siberia and China. Some 364 bird species have been recorded here.

We are great at spotting and photographing the birds but thought it would be okay to have Satto along to name them. We arranged to go out again with Satto at 6:30am the next day. Though we had wanted to explore on our own, Bob really found it handy to have a walking bird encyclopedia with us. At the Lodge, we were given masala tea and we sat for a couple of hours after figuring out the Wifi. We typed and listened to our ceiling fan and golden jackals in the dark beyond our balcony, with an intermission of dog howling and wild boar squealing and other sounds that made us think the jackals were close by. After a late dinner at the lodge, we rid our room of as many mosquitoes as we could and with the air conditioning and ceiling fan action we might not get bitten too much overnight.