12/12/09 POST for 11/29 through 12/1/09 Written at Siem Reap, Cambodia
Upon returning to Delhi by air from Varanasi (via the excellent regional airline “Kingfisher”—we would commit serious offenses to have an airline even ¾ that good serving U.S.!) we were met by the driver hired for us by our Delhi guesthouse. He guided us around thugs at the airport who tried to “help” with our luggage, and drove us through the long, horrible traffic to Jaipur. I’ve done a couple posts on Jaipur, so that gets us to Sunday morning, 11/29.
We spent much of the 29th driving south to Ranthambhore National Park, to stay two nights at a government guest house. The pics for this post are mostly self explanatory, being sights on the road, in the Park, on the road to the Keoladeo National Park, and birdwatching in that Park. Keoladeo is only an hour or so outside of Agra, scene of the Taj Mahal. These 3 days were a respite from the constant crush of people and hawkers.
The guidebooks insinuate that corruption has tainted the management of the National Parks, but we saw no direct evidence of that. The animals were certainly used to humans driving by (in Ranthambhore) in open buses called canters, holding about 20 people. No one tempted fate by wandering from the canters to see what the animals would do.
Case in point: We took two, 3 hour canter rides in Ranthambhore, on different routes, in hopes of seeing a tiger. This is one of two national parks where one has a chance to view the world’s dwindling population of tigers. Shortly after 5 p.m., on the second ride, with the Park closing at 5:30 (dark), the canter stopped because a tiger had been spotted in the bush. Everyone rushed to the side indicated by the guide. After several obstructed glimpses, I saw the tiger walking rapidly toward us through the bush. About 30 yards away, it paused, yawned in the same unconcerned way that our Maine Coon cats do, and turned to walk parallel to our track. Childhood stories of how tigers turn into melted butter came to mind as the tiger seemed to flow through the dusk; a magnificent force of nature! In the excitement, I failed to switch my ISO from 80 to something of shorter length, so I got a blurred photo. I’m posting it anyway.
Additional photo mea culpas: Many of the bird photos—both in Keoladeo and later at Tonle Sap in Cambodia—are grainy because of the extreme magnification used to be able to get a picture at all. The “white” ibis from Keoladeo is a example. (The Cambodians, more reasonably, call this bird the “black-headed” ibis. We saw several at Tonle Sap, though I couldn’t get pictures.) And the best sight, in my opinion, at Keoladeo was through binoculars, of the sarus cranes. According to our Birds of India book, these native-to-India birds mate for life and are not hunted due to their status as role models for fidelity. They are human-size (150cm) and awesome!
Also at Keoladeo, we saw two antelopes fighting, and I did my best to capture it.
Paul
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