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NEW PICTURES ADDED TO ALBUM "INCREDIBLE INDIA" !!
Christmas 2010 came early. With 2 friends of us we've spent Christmasbreak in Northern India. After one day delay, due to severe snowfall in Western Europe, we arrived in Delhi, to meet our guide Rakesh Sharma. Straight from the airport we drove through this metropole by night and reached the borders of Corbett National Park after 8 hours driving. After a night in a lodge called "The Den", alongside the beautiful Kosi River, we entered the heart of Corbett: Dhikala. Every morning and afternoon we made gamedrives. Specially in the morning temperatures were low. The good thing about that was, that every morning there was some groundfog. With the sunrise seeping through, landscapes became very mystical(see picture below).
We found Corbett, the oldest National Park in India, very beautiful and good for birds. The park is named after a famous British tigerhunter called Jim Corbett. He managed to kill a couple of maneating tigers in the old days and the local people liked him very much for doing so. One notorious tiger killed more than 300 people! During our stay we saw quite a number of tigerfootprints but we only saw one, not before we almost left the park. We saw a tigress crossing the trail with great speed. During this event we heard tigers roaring very close by.
 elephant in morning mist.
 Sunbeams in the forest...
We drove back to Delhi and stayed there for the night and continued our way south to Bharatpur. Ellie and I had been there in Spring a couple of times to visit the worldfamous Keoladeo National Park. Very dry in March and April, in fact dry for almost 4 years, last August the monsoon was very benificial for this wetlandarea and indeed, it became a wetland once more. The change was enormous compared to Spring: Trees with hundreds of nesting Painted Storks, Blackheaded Ibisses, Spoonbills, etc !
 Blackheaded Ibis in flight....
We stayed in the nearby Sunbird Hotel and visited the park a number of times, mostly by rickshaw. Because it was Christmasbreak in India, the park was loaded with, mostly, Indian visitors. As far as birds are concerned, one of the most common herons we saw was the Indian Pond Heron (see picture below).
Thousands of wintering ducks were present, many of them were Pintails. Some Spotted and Greater Spotted Eagles caused great panic amongst these ducks every once in a while. Hopefully there will become a longterm policy to provide this area with enough water, so it remains a World Heritage Site for years to come.
 2 Painted Storks in Keoladeo NP...
The last part of our holiday we flew from Delhi east to Guwahati, the capital of Assam. In April we'd spent almost a week in Kaziranga and were surprised by an early monsoon. Now it was dry and a whole lot cooler. Like in Corbett, these lower temperatures caused fog in the morning. Specially the tea-eastates were looking very misterious in these foggy circumstances.
 Teagarden in morning light...
Kaziranga itself was a great place to visit. We encountered many Indian Rhinos, Elephants, Buffaloes and all sorts of Deer.
 Indian Rhino crossing the trail...
We stayed in Wild Grass Lodge, a fantastic place for food and lodging. Often in the evening there was traditional dancing and music from the state of Assam. Compared to the madness of the traffic and the grueling amount of people around Delhi, Assam is really very relaxing and a tempting place to visit. That is also one of the nice things about India: It is everything you can think of, you see many extreme contrasts and it is always different.
 Assam Sunset..... |
