CAFE
A festival for tomorrow’s youth
The now underway ‘Youth For Tomorrow’ Festival 2015 has been taking high school classes by storm. Café looks into the…
The devotees gather
The early hours of October 12 saw thousands of devotees thronging the Our Lady of Merces Church in Colva for…
When Goa grooves to the Dandiya moves
The festival of Navratri is celebrated in various ways in Goa. Different communities settled in Goa, like the Bengalis, Gujaratis,…
Of Monologues and Folklore
Poetry, monologues, kirtans, dramas and one-act plays have formed the fulcrum of author Bharathi Kunkolienkar’s oeuvre of work. Her latest…
The charm of Chambal
The quickest way to get yourself from Agra to the capital city Lucknow is by train from Agra Fort to Lucknow’s legendary Charbagh station. However, the quickest way to do things is never the best alternative and has been the subject of admonishment from grandparents to the family’s toddlers for eons. This is particularly true of this stretch, because if you take the train, you miss the breath-taking boondocks that make up Uttar Pradesh’s Chambal region. This area is a little cluster of villages along the banks of the Chambal River, and is a look at the very heart of rural India. Here, one can still find a local craftsman toiling over his art with only the simplest of implements to aid him. Shops in the area will sell you only the most indigenous manner of goods, be it a few grams of jaggery or a bitter gourd. And if you’re that little boy who decided that cricket isn’t half the sport that cricket is, then you’re in for at least a month’s wait before ‘Prith Sports’, the local sports shop, gets you a football from ‘the mainland’. Once home to the seemingly infamous ‘Bandit Queen’, Phoolan Devi today, the Chambal Ravines host a series of tourist lodges and other facilities that aim to promote eco-tourism. One of these is the Chambal Safari Lodge. A project of Ram Pratap Singh, who inherited it, today the lodge serves as a place where ornithologists and other birding enthusiasts can in turn go down to find themselves in the thick of all things aviary. Migrating birds that fly across thousands of kilometres all make their way across to Uttar Pradesh. The wetlands of the state provide a temporary home to various species from the months of October to February. Traversing areas across Europe, Tibet, Siberia, and China, some of the species that find their way to Uttar Pradesh include the likes of Northern Pintails, Gargany Teals, Forest Wagtails, Chinese Coots and Pochard. All in all, of the 1300 species of birds in India, the state is home to 500 of them, including 13 which have been categorised as globally threatened and near threatened. These include the Slender Billed Vulture, Bengal Florican, Black Bellied Stern, Sarus Crane, Indian Skimmer and the Black Necked Stork. However, Chambal’s wildlife extends far further than just that of the feathered kind. It is also home to the Gangetic Dolphin and species of crocodile. What is of particular interest is that one of the crocodiles that can be seen in Chambal is the Gharial, one of the rarest species of its kind. In 1975, the year that Whittaker started a breeding programme for Gharials, there were only four remaining. Today, their population has expanded considerably, and they now amount to approximately 1000 in number. While they were earlier found in rivers that flowed right from Japan to Spain, today, they find themselves limited to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. The Chambal Safari Lodge itself has much to offer, and is a quaint throwback to a colonial era. To an extent, it may even be fair to say that it is a tad removed from reality, as it is one of the last bastions of living space in the heart of the wilderness that finds a way to peacefully co-exist in harmony with its surroundings. A night spent here is reminiscent of a chapter out of Jim Corbett’s ‘Man Eaters of Kumaon’, with sounds of the forest emanating through the gaps between the wooden rafters of the rustic ‘living quarters’. Ram Pratap Singh doubtlessly has plenty of stories to tell about the lodge’s history. However, he is the kind of man who times his speech wisely and waits for the right time before delving into a tale. Perhaps one of the lodge’s colder nights, with people huddled around a bonfire may be best to prise more history from him. Box Popular bird circuits in Chambal: · Sursarovar Wild Life Sanctuary · Okhla Bird Sanctuary · National Chambal Sanctuary · Patna Wild Life Sanctuary · Saman Wild Life Sanctuary · Lakhbahoshi Bird Sanctuary · Shaheed Chandra Shekar Azad Bird Sanctuary · Sandi Bird Sanctuary · Dudhwa Tiger Reserve · Sohelwa Wild Life Sanctuary
Agra, beyond just the Taj Mahal
Agra, sitting in resplendence along the Yamuna, has long since been a haunt of tourists from across the world. However,…
