Birding In Rajasthan

Kahi dur jab, din dhal jaaye. Sunset at Bharatpur.

March 2, 2022: Recently I had a short and quick 5-day trip to Rajasthan with Suranjan and Arijit. It was a very fruitful trip in terms of wildlife sightings, in company of two of the most wonderful friends I have. In those four days (one day spent in travel to Jaipur) we saw everything we wanted to see. Pelicans and a python in Bharatpur, Indian skimmers, black bellied terns, gharials in Chambal near Dhaulpur (locally pronounced as Dholepur) and even a wild hare in Bharatpur at night. In Jhalana, which is right inside Jaipur city, I had my life’s first leopard sighting in the wild. It was a mating pair. They were copulating when we arrived there. I couldn’t expect anything more from one such short trip.

On the non-birding front, I had some of the most delightful jilipis in the world at a snack shop in Jaipur. Will have to find out the location and name from Arijit for future trips. It was from out of the world.

The Journey – On Wednesday, 16^th February, 2022, I took a taxi to AMRI to hitch a ride in Suranjan’s car to the airport. He is a chest physician in that hospital (in case you do not know). His driver drove us to the airport, while Suranjan polished off three cigarettes. I was a little apprehensive about the airport protocols during these pandemic times. However, I found no one checked any of our vaccine certificates or any declaration form etc. We breezed through security without any incident except that Suranjan briefly lost his made in Denmark watch. It was retrieved from the security area after some 10/15 minutes of frantic search by the CISF security personnel. They even scanned his bag to see if it got lodged in some corner. Turned out it had slipped off the tray while being loaded on the rollers.

Anyway, these are small roadblocks when one is travelling with Suranjan. He is known to have left his camera bag in taxi (which he got back), stamped boarding pass at security point etc.

Ready for the trip

The flight took off in good time and we arrived at Jaipur with plenty of day light left. Arijit was waiting at the airport and we reached his home in about ten minutes. At Jaipur airport they checked our vaccine certificate when we were about to come out of the airport.

Arijit’s house is in a complex of small exclusive houses for other senior forest officials. Arijit, an IFS officer, incidentally is a big boss in the forest department of the state. I do not know his exact designation but we get VIP treatment whenever we travel with him. Once in Tal Chhapar the local DFO came driving some 200 kms in his beacon fitted jeep just to say hello to him. So he must be pretty high up. But he is one of the most unassuming  and affable government officials I have ever known. An officer and a friendly gentleman of the first order. From the state's chief minister to the forest guard every one seems to like him.

Suranjan at Jaipur

His house in Jaipur overlooks a lovely large lawn with wild bushes behind. It’s a common lawn cum garden for all the occupants of all the buildings in that complex. It attracts plenty of birds including some pea fowls near the water tank kept in the garden. The other residents gather at the lawn in the morning to watch birds and have their morning cuppa. Arijit’s Man Friday is a young guy called Ravi. He is from Dausa, which is nearby on the way to Bharatpur/Agra. He cooked for us and gave us tea etc. A very nice, quiet and efficient boy with a slightly effeminate voice.

In the night, after unsuccessfully trying to sleep next to a mildly snoring Suranjan, I discovered another empty room in the house with a cot and mattress where I slept alone peacefully. Arijit has three such rooms and a large living area where we ate. He has an aquarium in every single room. The main one in the living room is very well planted, mostly with crypts.

Bharatpur - Next morning, we left for Bharatpur in a white Mercedez SUV. It belongs to one of Ariit’s friends. The bearded driver was Vijay, yet another soft spoken and courteous Rajasthani. We took breakfast somewhere on the way after Lalsot. Alu Paratha with raita, achar and butter. The tea after this was terrible. The tea leaves in question were perhaps factory sweepings. The old waiter was extremely perplexed to know that we neither wanted milk nor sugar nor any ginger or lemon or anything in our tea. He even asked incredulously "what is the meaning of such a tea, sir?"

We reached Bharatpur’s Shanti Kutir in good time for lunch. There is nothing much to write about the Jaipur-Bharatpur road. I have driven on it a few times. It's a four laned road that ultimately goes to Agra via Fatehpur.

Three of us at Bharatpur

Soon enough we saw some pelicans (both rosy and Dalmatian) and all that Bharatpur is famous for. I noticed that the spoon billed storks were conspicuous by their absence (later we saw just two of them). But we saw a family of Saras cranes. The parents and a little one. Not so little any more though but its head was still brown. We also saw a huge wild boar that looked menacingly at us.

Aptly named Shanti Kutir

I have been to Bharatpur two times in the past and on both the occasions we took the famous Saradarji rickshaw (Bharatpur has some 30 rickshaw pullers cum guides who are all sardars, possibly second generation Pakistani refugees). After this 2022 Gypsy safari with Arijit, I realised that on a rickshaw one does not get to see even ten per cent of Bharatpur. If you are not a forest department guest with access to a Gypsy, your best bet is hiring a bicycle and travel on your own, as many serious birders were doing. The rickshaw is for the casual visitor only.

That evening a friend of Arijit came down from Dehradun. Anoop Singh. Another IFS and Arijit’s batchmate but he is now the Director General of Forest Survey of India. He is a chemical engineer from Roorkie. We had a small adda session in the evening in Suranjan’s room where the local Bharatpur DFO (not of the park but of the district outside the park) came to say hello. The park DFO was travelling outstation. So he did not come.

Abhimanyu who is the district DFO is a young man who did his MSc in applied mathematics from Roorkee. He very politely refused to join us for the drinks on the ground that his parents in law were visiting him. Anoop tried to pull his leg for this, but he was steadfast in his decision.

Chambal near Dholepur

Dholepur, Chambal : Next morning the four of us – Arijit, Anoop, Suranjan and I went to Dholepur which is on the bank of Chambal river. Our agenda is to see the famous Indian skimmers and the Gharial. Although the skimmers can be seen in a few other places, for Gharials this is the only place in the world.

The road from Bharatpur was very nice through sparsely populated villages. The landscape is rather flat and green. We made a small mistake and went through Dholepur  town, which is not really necessary. The town has a palace that has been restored recently and is rented out at super premium rates. Vasundhara Raje was married (now divorced) to the king of Dholepur and her son manages the place. In case you do not know, she is part of the Scindia family and has been the BJP chief minister of Rajasthan for two terms.

The forest range officer of Dholepur was waiting for us by the side of the highway in front of his office which is basically a check-post on the highway. Just before the new bridge over Chambal river we turned right and went down towards the ghat where speed boats were waiting for us. The straight road crosses the river to go to Morena in MP from where one can go to Gwalior. In fact Chambal is the border between MP and Rajasthan. 

The two sides of Chambal were once the dreaded lands of dacoits. The small towns of Bhind, Morena, Ettawah (in UP) are etched in my memory as datelines of all the dacoit oriented news reports we used to read in the 80s. The dacoits are long gone but some of the local people still sport those dacoit-like moustaches. We saw a few of them.   

The river looks rather tranquil here with a big arc towards the right. In fact if you google for Chambal this is one of the shots that you get to see. There are a few sand spits in the middle of the river. Two boats were waiting at the sand bank. The river flows from right to left. There are two bridges on our left-hand side. The older bridge is abandoned now. There was a forest department tent. I don’t know if they pitched it for Arijit’s arrival.

We boarded a small open boat with a Yamaha engine and a canvas canopy on top. The sun can be very strong here despite the weather being quite chilly. Breakfast was loaded. Basically biscuits, dry fruits like cashews and almonds etc and not so dry fruits like grapes, apples and oranges. We were individually given life vests.

The boatman was a young guy called Munna (8619073416) who was extremely knowledgeable about both animals and camera angles and sun light etc. He took us to see the Indian skimmers first which were there on the sand bank across the river. But before that we saw a pair of Brahminy ducks close to the river bank. It’s one of the closest sightings for me of this particular species (I have seen many of them in various places but never this close). I got some delightfully close shots of the bird from eye level. Brahminy duck is one of the noblest looking animals in the world. They look dignified and quiet. The male has a round black ring around the neck. The colour is gorgeously ruddy. They are also called ruddy shelduck.  I believe they mate for life and if one dies the other circles around the place and falls dead soon.

Munna took us past a few sand spits to the other side of the river. The tiny islands (barely a few hundred square feet in area) either had a few large crocodiles or Gangetic turtles, not to speak of sundry little waders like river lapwing or thick knee etc. We were not interested in those but headed straight for the skimmers. There was a flock of around 25 skimmers on the sand bank on the other side (Madhya Pradesh) of the river.

In Sumit Sen's famous words stated in the context of some other bird - "they are very rare but if you go to the specific place where they are found they are easy to see". This is precisely the case with Indian skimmers.

Some of the skimmers were busy in courtship and didn’t care that we were close by. There were a few pratincoles too, but we almost ignored them. 

The ravine on the MP side looked more wild than on the Rajasthan side which was quite green. The water was very calm. We were told that Chambal is a river with the cleanest waters in India, there being no industry or major city on its banks to pollute it.

On the MP side of the river the guide showed us a couple of Egyptian vultures and a jackal. There was another owl but it was too difficult to ID it or even see properly (Govind Sagar Bharadwaj who went there the next day with his 500 mm bazooka id-ed it as Eastern Grass Owl, which is a rare bird to see). We moved further upstream and saw a few brahminy ducks and then came the gharials.

Chambal is famous for being their home. Dhritiman got a BBC award for his photograph of a mother alligator with a few babies on her head. Udayan Rao Pawar had got the same award in the junior section a few years ago with a similar photograph.

We saw crocodiles too. And we also saw a particular flying fish. They were indeed flying off the surface of the water for short distances.

All these creatures – the skimmers, the gharials and the crocs use the sandy banks to lay eggs here and propagate. I believe the sand is of the right grade for them to lay eggs. They require a particularly soft variety of sand to lay eggs.

The gharial is critically endangered and is not found anywhere else. There is another type of turtles called red-crowned roof turtle that can theoretically be found here. I believe they cannot be seen in the wild any more. There is an artificial propagation center for them somewhere downstream. But let’s keep that for some other day. We did in fact see some turtles but they were rather ordinary Indian Tent Turtle (Pangshura Tentoria).

Once off the river, we went to check out the forest check-post where they have made a decent bed room with a toilet. They showed it off to Arijit who appreciated the work. They offered us some samosas and kachauris. These Chambal samosas, I must say, are totally different from anything I have seen or eaten so far in life. 

After Dholepur we came back to Bharatpur and did some more birding in the second half. We were presently joined by Govind Sagar Bharadwaj a renowned Rajasthan cadre forester from HP, junior to Arijit. He is renowned for his photographic skills and I have been his fan for a very long time. He has a 500 mm tele that he carries around everywhere. 

In the evening we went to the hotel next door – Sunbird. It is apparently the oldest lodge in the town. It seemed pretty well kept and upmarketish. Suranjan had come and stayed here way back in the late 80s as a college student when this was the only hotel in Bharatpur. The owner, one Randheer Sirkaar, invited Arijit and Co for an evening adda and dinner. Arijit seemed to be the only IFS in Rajasthan cadre who this gentleman did not know.

At the evening adda session we heard the unbelievable and incredible story of GSB’s encounter with a tiger. I will write about it some other time with his permission.

When we were driving back to Shanti Kutir at around 10 pm we saw a white wild hare crossing our path. Again this is a lifer for me. Before this I had never seen a wild hare in a jungle and always wanted to see one.

Next morning was spent in birding in Bharatpur before breakfast and then after some heavy breakfast laced with dozens of delicious jilebis we went back to Jaipur in time for lunch at Spice Court near the CM’s residence. We had mutton bati and jungli drowned with beer. The bati seemed a little dry and the jungli was too hot. Bati is like an oversized gutka kachuri with minced meat inside.

Spice Court is a very decent place with a lawn of its own and a large dining hall. It has the look and feel of a golf or polo club. Indeed it has many polo related photographs on its walls.

I know of only Neros and LMB in Jaipur as eating joints. Now this is a new addition to that list.

Jhalana - We woke up early next morning to go and see leopards in Jhalana. This is a newly developed sanctuary inside Jaipur city that now hosts some 35 leopards. If you spend half a day there you have 70 per cent chance of sighting a leopard. We saw three actually. Again a lifer for me.

We boarded a forest department Gypsy from the gate of the park (officially it is still not a sanctuary or national park). Four of us - Arijit, SM, our driver and I. We also had a young doctor with us called Sourav Kalia. He lives close by and comes here often. He is quite well known in the birding and wildlife photography circle. Arijit had asked him to join us.

The first sighting, within virtually less than ten minutes of entering the park, was of a mating pair. We were the first to spot them. Day light had still not broken properly and it was not very well lit for photography. After a few attempts I decided to concentrate on seeing the sight rather than photographing.

Could I believe my luck? Having seen both the male and female together I could understand the relative difference in their size. It takes a lifetime for many to see this sight. Soon a few more jeeps arrived and they decided to move away.

The lone male leopard at Jhalana

We saw another male later, lazing on the forest floor. Photography here was possible with some patience. After this we spotted a desert fox busy digging a burrow alone. We spent a long time photographing it and watching its antiques.

We also saw a spotted owlet and a couple of nightjars, among birds, not to speak of rufous tree-pies. The  tree-pies were feasting on an old kill of a large deer (or was it a Nilgai?)

The day's trip ended with a visit to a kachauri-samosa shop with some of the most delightful jilebis I have ever eaten in life. I think I ate a humongous amount of them, putting even Suranjan to shame.

We caught the evening flight from Jaipur airport and came home by 9 pm, ending a delightful short trip. Oh! I forgot to mention, on the return flight Suranjan lost his reading glasses, which unlike the watch, could not be retrieved. 

Here are some photographs from the trip for posterity

Desert fox - Jhalana, Jaipur

Dalmatian Pelican, Bharatpur