Apr 18 2009

Alwar Bagh near Sariska

We are staying at the Alwar Bagh between Alwar and Sariska (another national park).

For the majority of the time it's just been us four and one other room booked out so it's like having the whole resort to ourselves. The chef certainly knows his stuff so I guess this weight loss of mine won't be staying off for long.

When we arrived we were asked what we like to drink and an hour later we saw a car come back from the market and unload the bottles of Kingfisher and Old Monk rum. What a great service, you wouldn't get that in England, you'd just go without.

The kids have asked for ice cream but the waiter explains that there isn't a way to get it back from Alwar (15 km away) without it melting and even if they did the power supply around these parts wouldn't keep it solid for long. Of course, they're kids, they don't understand.

The owner of this hotel is very friendly and confirms my chat with the waiter who told me he is "very good boss sir". Sir, he called me Sir, brilliant, wonder if I can get the lads at work to continue that? (Lads: don't answer this, I think I know what your answer will be and I'd like to keep this blog clean of rude words.)

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Apr 15 2009

Safari So-goody

(Sorry for the lack of updates but Ranthambhore isn't famed for its Cyber Cafe's or broadband connections.)

Over the last three days we've done five safaris in Ranthambhore in jeeps. I've done one more than the rest of them just to give me one more chance to see the elusive tigers but this safari was done in a clanking great diesel truck which literally drove away any wildlife.

So what was the grand total number of tiger spots we made? One.

It's seems we've been quite unlucky but it's nice to leave this place realising that it's a real national park that contains wild life, not some open air zoo.

Tigers aside, Ranthambhore is a great place for wildlife: the birds (eagles, kites, vultures, treepies, parakeets, kingfishers), crocodiles, mongooses (or is that mongeese?), chittal deer and so on we're plentiful and a lot less elusive than those tigers. I've taken a few photos and hopefully there'll be a few good ones in there.

The Raj Palace hotel turned out to be very nice indeed and it's hard to imagine that you could find staff more friendly and eager to please.

(BTW, I'm sorry if this sounds like one of those everythings-fantastic-Christmas-round-robin-letters (I don't mean you Helen J) but everything is literally brilliant.)

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Apr 09 2009

Horse Riding In Udaipur - by Emilia

Early in the morning, I awoke because I was going to ride an indian horse; I was excited.

In my mind I thought: what are the horses going to be like?; how tall are they (10 feet tall - only joking)?; how fast are they?

Half an hour later, my mum, sister and I caught a tuk-tuk to the stables, when then got ridiculous hats which were large; mine was light sky blue! Next, we went to get our horses, mine was chestnut brown. Amazingly, I managed to get on the horse without a box to stand on; this for me was a great achievement as I normally use one when I go horse riding in England.

 I was lead through the countryside, the hills, countryside villages and rocky slopes. In the villages, everyone who we passed said 'Namaste' to us and was very friendly.

Afterwards, we went to a waterhole, there were boys fishing and having a swim; they caught two fish. Funnily, there was a boy who was naked, he jumped into the water and acted like a fish and did backflips off of a rock.

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Mar 31 2009

Keoladeo National Park: Twittering About Twitching

Watching birds isn't really my thing but the Keoladeo National Park is reputed to be one of the best bird sanctuaries in the World: it seemed worth a day's exploration. It's a very good place to escape the masses of people in the big cities (Agra, Delhi) and to be able to wander around, or cycle, is just wonderful.

Today we spent eight hours, with a guide, spotting birds and looking for a nice big Indian Rock Python to take a photo of.  We found one quite soon after feeding turtles and Macaque monkeys are the Hindu temple in the park.

If you listen to what people say about the place you HAVE to get there very early to see any activity at all. We arrived at 10am and thought we'd only last a couple of hours but the heat wasn't too bad as there was a lovely breeze cooling us down. We saw bird after bird after bird including Ibis(es?), Storks, Owls, Eagles and many, many more. Our guide was very good at spotting and brought along a pair of binoculars and a spotting scope on a tripod for us to use.

Now yesterday at the Taj Mahal I managed to hold myself back and only took 100 photos, but today, I just couldn't help myself and shot a few hundred - they're probably all rubbish but I MUST have got at least one good one. Thanks to the guys in my team at work I took virtually all the photos using my new monopod that they bought me this last Christmas; it was brilliant and I couldn't have done without it.

Unfortunately the Rainbow Cyber Cafe here in sleepy old Bharatpur has done a good job of hiding ths USB slots on the PC so I can't upload any of the images without risking thumbling in the dark and switching the PC off! But keep any eye on the Winchcombe Gallery at www.winchcombe.org/gallery.aspx for some India photos: I'll upload when I can.

We're staying at the Hotel Sunbird, which is really nice albeit quite simple. Food is pretty good at 90 rupees (£1.30) for a nice curry; naans come in at a hefty Rs30 (£0.45).

Tomorrow we're off to Jaipur (3.5 hours by car) to see the Amber Fort and hopefully we'll get to ride an elephant.

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