Nature’s Layers Unravelled – Encounters with birds, beasts, and relatives
Our Great Himalayan National Park trek plan gets altered, as the path to Ghumtarao is snowed out. We end up doing local excursions at Dhel Thatch on day four and five, trying to spot some wildlife, and enjoying the fauna and the Himalayan sun.
Day 3 of our Great Himalayan National Park trek takes us from Humkhani to Dhel Thatch (3500 m) – 7 km and 1400 m to climb. Sandeep Somasekharan continues with Part 4 of the travelogue
Once we are across the bridge, it feels as if behind us a huge wall of forest has grown, shutting us out completely. It is silent, dark and mysterious. Day 2 of our Great Himalayan National Park trek, recounted by Sandeep Somasekharan
Day 1 was an ‘acclimatizer’. Ha. Acclimating is an oxymoron. Ask those who laboured up the slopes from Neuli to Shakti and ended up painfully breathless by the end of the day. Part 2 of Sandeep Somasekharan’s report of The Green Ogre trek to the Great Himalayan National Park in 2012
Warming up for our trek to the Great Himalayan National Park, the Ogres spend time in Delhi, waiting impatiently to get there. Part 1 of a new series by Sandeep Somasekharan
Christmas day, I took out my socks and found my car keys inside. I took it as a portent and headed out birding
On a hot summer morning we went looking for the famed flamingo flock of Osman Sagar. And came across a treasure trove of birds
A Fourth of July trek report from Mission Peak, California. Warning: Birds inside.
I remembered a little affront I heaped at the mighty mountains when I landed at Aut. Taking a reel out of Apollo 13, I mimicked the scene where Jim Lowell covers the moon with his thumb and looked at a peak far away, murmuring, “As tall as my thumb.” Anand Yegnaswami reflects on his trek in the Great Himalayan National Park, one year later.
The Vembanad Lake in Alleppey, once praised by Lord Curzon as the “Venice of the East”, is a Ramsar Wetland and a Birdlife Important Bird Area. But those tags have not stopped greedy and exploitative tour operators from turning it into a sickening playground of hooligans and a dumping ground for trash. Here’s a horror story that will turn Stephen King’s stomach.
Winter’s officially out the door, but we still entertain memories of a January morning in Bharatpur amid winged angels and wicked vandals Accompanied by the creaking of the cycle rickshaw’s suspension, the eerie silhouettes created by the dense fog eclipsing the post meridian sun presented a negative portent right out…
A birding spree from Mudumalai to Masinagudi and Theppekadu to Ooty
Dandeli, post-monsoon, is a completely different forest. Quieter, darker, denser, and offering a whole new birding experience that left us unsatisfied A misty morning welcomed us as we got down at the VRL bus stand at Dandeli and through the veil of vapor we could see three Malabar Pied Hornbills…
To derive joy from the simple act of birdwatching, all you need to do is wait, watch and listen. Jennifer Nandi reveals the Birding 101 in the third episode of her travelogue on Bedni Bugyal A Blue Whistling Thrush, ever the skulker, trails us as we walk its wooded paths…
If we as a people so revere nature, why do we go to so much trouble to disfigure it? The view from Kavala Caves, Dandeli Is there a legit word ending in “phobia” for the fear of being ripped off? Whatever it is, it was on our minds when we…
