Our first stop was Nalsarovar. This is the largest water bird sanctuary of the country. Nal, a wetland supporting a large number of species of birds of great importance due to the location on the migratory route of the birds. The population of pelicans, ducks and geese reaches 2500 and 46000 respectively in winter. The depth of the water does not exceed 1.8 metere, which makes it one of the largest shallow lakes in the country.
The sun was just beginning to rise as we got into the little dinghy to go closer to the birds. This being a Sunday had many tourists from Ahmedabad but amazingly once on the water, the oarsman all seem to know how to not crowd one another.
I am not a bird person but really enjoyed the ambiance and the beauty of the lake in the lights of the rising sun.
After about a couple of hours on the lake, we started our onward trip towards Lothal.
Lothal is a perfect place to get an insight of the Indus Valley civilization. The most dominating site at Lothal is the massive dockyard spanning an area of 37 meters by pretty 22 meters perhaps the greatest work of Maritime Architecture. Lothal was also famous for its arterial streets, microbes of gold, ivory and coppersmiths’ workshops, potteries and underground sanitary drainage.
I had been looking forward to seeing the Harrappan artifacts and ruins and i wasn't disappointed. Much work has been done but much is left I excavated as well.
We proceeded on towards Black Buck Lodge at Velavadar and arrived in good time. It was pretty hot and dusty by this time and we were greeted with a cold glasses of fresh lemonade, an welcome drink for sure.
We were taken to cottage # 6, which was the very last one on the woodlands side. The cottages are set a distance apart and are large and well appointed. There is a porch at the back from which we saw a herd of antelopes, what a neat place, too bad we are only staying here two nights.
There 14 cottages, well maintained with beautiful grounds. There was wifi at the reception and dinning room. The manager was experimenting with routers in some of the cottages and to my surprise and delight ours was one of them.
We arranged for an additional afternoon safari and went to lunch. Lunch was quite different from typical Gujarati venue, and quite enjoyable. The chef came to our table to introduce himself, his family is originally from Goa but he was born and brought up in Ahmedabad. It turned out his brother lives in Chicago, a small world indeed.
We met Sidharth, who was going to be the driver naturalist for all our safaris. He is a young man from the nearby village, well versed in the birds and mammals of the area, and with reasonably good knowledge of English.
We later realized how fortunate we were, and that very few do speak English, and I had to concentrate very heard to understand what they were saying. I believe I am correct in saying that this is the first time, there has been a lack of English speaking personnel in such places. Nowhere in India had I faced this before, everyone speaks passable English but obviously not in Gujarat.
We left for Safari shortly after lunch, Sidharth (another name for Buddha) explained to us that the wildlife refuge had two distinct parts separated by the road, grasslands and savannah.
We first went towards the grasslands where we saw flocks of ring necked parakeets, cranes, honey buzzards, wild cat, and a couple of Blue Bulls. The wild cat had a killed some bird and had stripped its feathers clean, and probably taken the meat someplace. The was quite large and was in plain sight.
Considering this is a very small refuge, that's a lot in one two hour trip.
We were the only ones in the lodge tonight so we could set our own menu and was served accordingly. Unfortunately we were too tired to enjoy the the food and returned to our cottage shortly and retired for the night.
Location:Blackbuck Lodge
No comments:
Post a Comment