"Daan Paatra" at Pushkar

Spotted at Pushkar: a collection box (Daan Patra) for Gau Seva (the welfare of cows). A young bull stands next to it, looking quite annoyed with life :)

Holy Cow Container, India -
Rod Waddington from Kergunyah, Australia [CC BY-SA 2.0
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The cow is depicted with a peacock feather decoration for her horns, indicating the linkage of cows with the cowherd God Krishna of the Braj region. The Braj region (Brajbhoomi) is the land associated with Krishna's birth and major events in his life. While there is no official geographical demarcation, it lies more or less within the golden triangle circuit that is popular with tourists. Pushkar is nearby.

The cow is depicted with auspicious symbols (the Om and the Swastika) on her body. She is adorned with jewellery, denoting her special status. Similar decorations can be seen in many Rajasthani miniatures, particularly the Pichhawai paintings depicting Krishna as a cowherd. 

Ranthambhore Visit April 2018

My fourth visit to Ranthambhore in the last 10 years, and great sightings of tigers.

Here is one of the young tigresses we saw. Look at her alert face, ears pricked, stalking!

Summer (April-June) is a great time to visit this park, so what are you waiting for?

Couple milking cows, Birbhum, West Bengal

I have been travelling in rural Bengal, and have visited many villages. I saw and learnt many things, and I hope I can find the time to post at least some of the pics. Here is the first one. In a little village in Birbhum district, about 4hrs from Kolkata, I came across this couple and their cows. 

As soon as you drive away from Kolkata, you start to see women wearing cotton instead of the hideous synthetics that dominate city markets. I loved the contrast of her pure white taant shadee, against the skin and the brown hay...isn't it lovely? And here still, the British imposed modesty of the blouse has not made its way to the older generation. I wish we could all be like this, but now that Victorian prudery is well established, there is not much hope. Strangely, the modern Indian woman seems to be going back to the choli-less state! With halter necks, thin straps etc! But we are yet to see in the city memsahib, the casual nonchalant grace of this woman.

I always thought cows were milked at dawn, but I came across this couple a little after noon (as you can see from the shadows). I realised that the milk is probably being used for their own consumption, and they are not taking it to market. That's why they have the flexibility to milk at any time.The cows here don't have the oversized udders which you see in commercially reared cattle. A more natural state, perhaps.

From what I can tell, these are the indigenous Gir breed of cattle. There is some misguided effort by the government to cross-breed these with foreign breeds for higher milk yields, but it's a myopic policy. By improving feed and care, the same Indian breeds can produce much more milk, and they are in fact, doing so very successfully in Brazil.

Cows and bullocks are valuable and are usually housed in little sheds. On this shed, we saw the harvest of masur dal (red Bengal lentil). Bengali Comfort food = rice and pyaj diye moshur dal :)

Some people earn their livelihood by taking animals to graze. The man in this photo doesn't look like he is the owner of these calves; he is probably on some kind of wage.

Every village you visit has walls decorated with cow-pats. Cows provide much of the fuel used for cooking.

And of course, no meal is complete without some milk sweets! On the menu: a sort of bread pakoda, bread dipped in an egg wash (duck's eggs, because the Brahmins here don't eat chicken), two types of milk sweets (sandesh), a ghugni with motor (peas), and a delicious salad of cucumber tomatoes and onion.

Dr. Sarah Lamb is an anthropologist, who spent 2 years living in a village in West Bengal. We were on a nostalgic visit to meet one of the families. What a lovely day.

Shundorbon (Sundarban) - the Beautiful Forests of Bengal

- by Deepa Krishnan

The Shundorbon (Sundarban) is the largest single block of tidal halophytic mangrove forest in the world. Shundorbon means 'Beautiful Forest'. It is easily accessible from Calcutta.

A halophyte is a plant that grows in waters of high salinity, coming into contact with saline water through its roots or by salt spray.

"Shundorbon" is made of two Bengali words: Shundor (beautiful) and Bon (forest). The name comes from the beautiful Shundari tree which makes up more than 70% of the forest.

The Shundorbon extends over Bangladesh and India, covering approximately 10,000 square kilometres. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

India has 3% of the world’s mangroves, of which the Sundarbans comprise almost half of the total area. Apart from the Sundarbans, the other large belts of mangroves are in the Andaman-Nicobar Islands and the Gulf of Kutch in Gujarat.

The Sundarban National Park is one of the largest reserves for the Bengal tiger. It is also home to a wide variety of birds, reptiles and invertebrates, including the salt-water crocodile.

Photo credits:
First photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundarbans#/media/File:Boat,_trees_and_water_in_Sundarbans.jpg
The Sundari tree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritiera_fomes#/media/File:Sundarbans_02.jpg
Map of Shundorbon: Public domain

The Painted Havelis of Shekhawati (1)

Every once in a while, exotic cliches come alive. Peacock posing against faded wall, in the village of Mandawa.

Photo credit: Gaurav Jain, Delhi Magic

Some of India's most wealthy Marwari business families have their havelis in the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan. Birla, Piramal, Dalmia, Goenka etc are known to all Indians. Today many of the havelis lie abandoned, making for a surreal walk through what must be the country's largest open-air art gallery.

Elephant sighting in Kabini, April 2015

We had a wonderful trip to Kabini this week, with sightings of several animals and birds by the river. 

Summer is usually the perfect time to see the gathering of elephants by the river bank. Usually as the river dries up, the green grass emerges from dormant seeds, providing nourishment to elephants.  Apart from this, there are dense clumps of Giant Bamboo grass along the river bank, which also the elephants love to eat.

But right now, the bamboo is dead. This type of bamboo flowers once in three decades or so, and yields bamboo rice (very expensive, nearly Rs 2000 per kg). After the flowering, the bamboo dies. You can see the dead thickets of Giant Bamboo in the photo below (on the left). With the bamboo gone, the Kabini riverbank cannot support big herds of elephants. So the matriarchs have taken their herds to other parts of the forest. Only some individuals remain, especially solitary tuskers. We had some excellent individual sightings. 

Here is a closer look at the two elephants in the photo above. The older one is definitely female, but I cannot tell whether the young one is male or female. It is possibly a mother and child. The mother has decided to remain by the Kabini riverbank for the moment. Perhaps she will migrate elsewhere later in summer.

Here is another tusker that we saw. He is also busy eating the green grass. He is surrounded by groups of jungle mynahs. When he feeds, he disturbs little insects in the grass, which the mynahs love to eat.

We drove into another part of the park and were rewarded by a unique encounter with a tusker in musth. He is the Ganesha of Kabini, with one tusk :) Check out his ears, and compare them with the tusker in the previous photo. These pink edged ears are a sign of age. This is a much older elephant, compared to the one in the previous photo. He was in musth (you can see the secretion from the glands on his temples). He probably lost one tusk in a fight with another elephant. He was moving quite rapidly, and when we left him we saw him reaching up with his trunk to break branches of a tree. 

We also saw a very young male elephant, whose tusks were just beginning to emerge. He was grazing by the side of the road, but vanished into the forest when he spotted us. He must have been kicked out of the bigger herd and was now beginning his life as a solitary male.

On our safari, we also stopped at the forest department's elephant camp, where we saw Arjuna, the impressive elephant who heads the Dussera procession of the Maharajah of Mysore. I felt rather sorry for him, frankly.

Apart from elephants we saw many other creatures big and small. We had a magnificent but short sighting of a leopard, which was the highlight of the trip. I enjoyed seeing the Giant Malabar Squirrel, which I had not spotted before. The langur-chital groupings were fun to see. The birding was also good. In fact, I enjoyed everything about Kabini, and think it is a wonderful place to visit in summer.

The gorgeous Noor of Ranthambhore - sighting in October 2014

I got these photos of Noor aka Mala (T-39) from Robert and Katie Cowan. They were in Ranthambhore last week. Isn't Noor just gorgeous?

Here's another photo: you can clearly see the "beads" on her back. This characteristic pattern is what gives her the name "Mala", which means garland. Noor and her two cubs have been among the star attractions of Ranthambhore this season.

Noor is the daughter of the Sultanpur tigress T-13 (Chhoti), and the granddaughter of the legendary Machhli (T-16). Noor's first cub is a male called Sultan (T-72); born a couple of years ago when she mated with Ustad (T-24).  This year she has had two more cubs with Ustad. 

The grass has started to dry up in Ranthambhore in many places, although many places are also still very green.  In this photo below, you can see that Noor looks well-fed and healthy; and there are reports that she has been having good hunting success.

In my previous trip to Ranthambhore, I had excellent sightings of Noor; but that was just a few days after Sultan was born, and she was super skinny and hungry at that time. Take a look at my previous encounter with Noor here. http://delhimagic.blogspot.in/2012/06/tiger-sighting-at-ranthambhore-may-2012.html

Ranthambhore Tiger update

An update on the female tigers of the tourism zone in Ranthambhore, courtesy Dicky Singh of Ranthambhore Bagh:

• All the mature females of the tourism zone of Ranthambhore have cubs right now: T 8 with one cub, T 19 with four cubs, T 39 has cubs (though no one has seen them as yet) and T 41 with one cub. Besides these, there are three or four young females that have either just come of age or are still too young to have cubs. Besides these females, there are about 14 males that can be seen in the tourism zones.

The photo below is something I clicked 2 years ago. The tigress in the photo is T 39 and she had just then given birth to her first cub. I am glad to hear she had a second one this year.

If you enjoy nature and wildlife, and wish to visit a tiger sanctuary, right now is the best time to do it. April, May, June are the best time for sighting tigers as the undergrowth will be less thick, and the water sources limited. Here is T 39 walking thhrough the shrubbery just a few feet from us. Can you imagine this scene in winter, when the forest is green and dense? The tiger would be impossible to see! So go now, people, while there are fewer tourists in the jungle.

More photos here: http://delhimagic.blogspot.in/2012/06/tiger-sighting-at-ranthambhore-may-2012.html

Sparrows in K R Market, Bangalore

When I went to K R Market, I saw a sparrow visiting a heap of peas.

There were many chirps and when I looked around, I found many more sparrows nearby.

I wondered why there were so many sparrows and then I saw that the vegetable vendors have placed old cardboard boxes with hay to provide nesting for the birds.

Life is strange. Sometimes it is cruel, but sometimes you find kindness when you least expect it.

Nal Sarovar Bird Sanctuary

By- Deepa Krishnan

The Nal Sarovar Bird Sanctuary is 1.5hrs drive west of Ahmedabad. Spread over 120 sq.kms, it is the largest wetland bird sanctuary in Gujarat.

The huge lake and the extensive reed beds and marshes support rich aquatic life and plants, and thus provide the perfect habitat for birds. Over 225 species of birds have been spotted here, of which 140 are water birds.

The best time to visit Nal Sarovar is in winter when migrant birds appear from various parts of the world. Thousands of migratory waterfowl flock to the shallow areas of the lake and the ponds on the outer fringes of the lake. Birding is usually done on foot as well as by small hand-punted boats.

Popular waterbirds include flamingoes, cranes, ducks, gulls, terns, kingfishers, shovellers, cormorants, egrets, herons, ibis, etc. Apart from waterbirds, you can also see birds of prey, bee-eaters, rollers, doves, lapwings, coucals, parakeets, fly catchers, starlings, mynahs, bulbuls, sunbirds, wagtails etc.

Photos courtesy Gujarat Tourism