Monday December 1 - Velavadar

After cookies and coffee, we left for the morning Safari at 7:00 with our driver/naturalist Sidharth. To my surprise and delight there was a female blue bull, who had come in for the night and reluctantly got up and left when she saw us.






We went to the grasslands first and saw a huge herd of over a 100 Black Bucks, possibly all male, feeding. When they lowered their heads all we could see was the tip of their antlers. A very neat sight, they are sleek black and white antelopes.

We then saw a large herd of 19 male Blue Bulls, these were larger than any we had seen in other forests.

Then we saw the wolf at distance, who was brought to our attention by a flock of cranes that started honking in alarm. A wolf sighting is pretty rare, one of few carnivores we had not seen before.

We moved on sighting several birds on the way.

Pretty soon we came across a large herd of female Blue Bulls intermingled with a sounder of female Wild Boars with quite a few piglets in toe

We then proceeded on to the Savannah side where we saw several birds, Blue Bulls, and lots of Black Bucks.

Next came another wildcat and then a partridge sighting.

After this we proceeded on to a large waterbody, dammed lake. Here we saw White Dalmatian Pelicans, Lesser Flamingos, White Ibis, and a large flock of migratory ducks. The blue teals were extremely shy and we couldn't get close enough to photograph them.

A very successful morning, and just in time to return back to the lodge for lunch.

Lunch was good and different as before, we had a nice chat with chef.


We went to the savannah for the afternoon safari and saw wildcat at a distance and tracked it for a while but it outsmarted us and vanished in the grass.

Next came across a large flock PF partridge or Indian Common Quail, sudip spent some time trying to a closeup but didn't succeed.

We saw some more Black Bucks, they are so pretty and graceful.






Headed towards a waterbody where Sudip managed to get some photographs of migrant Northern Shovelers.

Came back after another successful day of Safari, washed up and eventually went to dinner.

There were a few more people here today, including a group of women from Ahmedabad. This seems to be pretty common in this part of India, where groups of women travel together without any men.

We leave tomorrow, a very beautiful location and thoughtfully laid out cottages and eating areas.






We discussed a packed lunch with the chef over dinner, another tasty meal, and pretty soon after retired fo the night.

Location:Blackbuck Lodge