Bird-watching in Sattal, Kumaon Hills

A recent visit to Sattal, in the Kumaon Hills, located about 20 kilomteres from Nainital, for bird-watching was most enjoyable. While there are a number of lodges in the town (more a large village), the accommodation at the Kumaon Mandal Vikas Nigam was very central and not crowded at all. More to the point was the ease of access to some of the birding areas in and around Sattal. One of the notable features was the trusting nature of the birds in the neighbourhood. One Grey-winged Blackbird practically came upto my feet and was photographed with a 25 mm lens from about 4 feet away.

The White-throated Laughing Thrush was equally trusting (though laughing thrushes are generally quite suspicious of men) and came and sat on a branch of a tree near my head.

It is possible that a person sitting still does not usually disturb the birds and animals. Here a barking deer, normally a shy animal, stood at a distance of about 20 feet, without feeling nervous. This experience was quite enjoyable.

Manas National Park - A re-visit after 35 years

The Manas National Park in western Assam has many feathers to its cap. It was among the "first batch" of Tiger Reserves in India way back in 1973.It is one of the very few wilderness areas in India that has been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, together with Kaziranga National Park (also in Assam) and the Bharatpur (or Keoladeo) Bird Sanctuary near Agra. Manas is also home to the endemic Golden Langur, the Bengal Florican and the Pigmy Hog, besides many other wild animals like the one-horn Indian rhinoceros, wild buffalo, tiger, gaur, elephant and many other species.

The Manas River (or the Beki, as it is called in the lower reaches - shown above) and the rugged hills of Bhutan to the north define the National Park to a signicant extent. Thus Manas offers a variety of wildlife habitats, from riverine forests, to heavy rain-fall and moist deciduous forests, besides extensive grasslands.

Over the years, Manas has witnessed ups and owns, but now the wildlife has made a good come-back. The local settlements have grown and Barpeta Road, once just way-station, is now a bustling town with fly-overs and shopping malls. A number of lodges have come up locally (where there were once only government rest houses), and a variety of facilities are on offer, including river rafting, wilderness walks and jeep safaris in the forest.

Manas National Park is conveniently accessible by train via the rail head of either New Bongaigaon or Barpeta Road, or by air from Guwahati City.

pdg-books: Books by Prosenjit Das Gupta

Over the years a number of books on history and wildlife by Prosenjit Das Gupta have been published. The first such was "10 Walks in Calcutta", published in 2000 by Harper Collins, which was on the Best Seller list of "The Statesman" newspaper for several weeks.
Over time, other books appeared and a consolidated list is as follows --
(i) "10 Walks in Calcutta" published in 2000 by Harper Collins and revised, enlarged edition published by Hermes Inc. in 2006.
(ii) "Walks in the Wild", published in 2002 by Penguin Books, being an account of the impressions and experiences in India's  wildlife in the national parks and wildlife sanctuaries from 1968 to 2000; this was subsequently revised and enlarged and published with the title "Wild Experiences"by Sanbun Publishers in 2011.
(iii) "Tracking Jim", published in 2005 by Penguin Books, documenting researches on the life and times of that legendary hunter, Jim Corbett, who shot many man-eating tigers in the Kumaon region of India and authored the well-known books on his experiences on those hunts. It also covers the search for the localities and places associated with Corbett's hunt for the man-eaters, and their descriptions, so that others interested may discover Jim Corbett in their own way.

(iv) "After Elwin", published in 2007 by Chronicle Books, deals with the life and researches by the well-known social worker and ethnographer, Dr, Verrier Elwin, on some of the tribes of eastern and central India, such as the Saora, the Baiga and the Muria. It goes on also to record the travels and experiences of the author in following up on the foot-prints of Dr. Elwin in those same tribal areas much later, in the 1970s. This was substantially revised and brought out with the title "Chasing a Dream" by CinnamonTeal Publishing in 2014.
(v) "Issues and Idioms", published in 2015 by CinnamonTeal Publishing, was the author's first foray into current affairs of India. This has attempted to unravel how the language of political communication and public discourse in both Parliament and the national media has changed over the 60-odd years since Independence of India in 1947 and why.
(vi) "A Conflict in This Air" published in 2016 by CinnamonTeal Publishing deals with the Sino-Indian border conflict in 1962 and covers the researches by the author into the history of the three main protagonists in the the issue, viz. China and Tibet since the 8th century, with British India coming into it since the early 19th century while Imperial Russia was ready to intervene at times. With the India-China border dispute cropping up every now and then, this provides useful background material. 

(vii) "A Partition in the Mind"published in 2018 by CinnamonTeal Publishing attempts to put the Partition of India in a historical perspective by trying to understand the basic philosophies of Islam and Hinduism and how this in one way or the other impacted the development of India as a nation. It also deals with the role of the colonial British administration, which directly or indirectly played an important role in this process.  It is to be hoped that this would lead to a better understanding of how the Partition of India came about.

The more current books will be available On-line from CinnamonTeal Publishing. Some of the earlier books have become out-of-print over the years but copies may still  be obtained from Amazon, Goodreads, and several other agencies.

Wildlife in India - Multitude of Experiences

There are those for whom viewing wildlife is an outing, and for some it is a passion. If it had not been a passion for me, I could not have been at it from 1968 onwards, partly for the thrills of the experience and partly in discovering the panorama of life all around.
India is blessed as few countries are in enjoying varied wildlife landscapes: from the heights of the Nandadevi and the Kanchenjungha National Parks at 12000 feet or more, to the Desert National Park near Jaisalmer and the Marine National Park near Jamnagar in Gujarat. Added to this are the fifty odd Tiger Reserves all over India covering more than 70,000 sq. kms. and the Protected Areas such as National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries designated under the Wildlife Protection Act 1972 (including the tiger reserves)  numbering over 600 and accounting for about 170,000 sq. kms. across India.
Having started visiting these wilderness areas over fifty years ago, I was able to see many of them, and not once but several times, over these years. Also, regulation of visitors was not so strict in those times and I could move around on my own or with a tracker in many places, especially in Palamau, Simlipal, Dudhwa and Corbett.

I had many interesting  impressions and experiences over this time and I wanted to share this with others who may not be able to spare the time to go out frequently into the forests, and this resulted in the book "Walks in the Wild", published in 2002 by Penguin. The book was well-received and was
favourably reviewed by the Bombay Natural History Society and the Sanctuary Asia magazine; the review by Sanctuary magazine is given below:

"Palamau, Simlipal, Betla, Bandhavgarh, Dudhwa, Corbett, Ranthambhore, Bharatpur, Manas, Kaziranga, Madumalai, Nagarahole, Bandipur, Chilika… all magnificent wildlife destinations that every nature-lover dreams of visiting.

For decades, Prosenjit Das Gupta has explored the wilds of India from evergreen forests to scrub habitat driven just by his passionate interest in wildlife and nature. In this pursuit of adventure and his quest to record the beauty of nature, he has been charged at by elephants and rhinos, has had a tiger walking right towards him and has been stranded all alone in the middle of the forest.

The book covers his fascinating experiences of his sojourns to various sanctuaries and national parks mostly between the mid-70s and early 90s. Central and northeast Indian reserves are more widely covered in the book, probably because the author is based in Kolkata. He writes of his first love – the Palamau National Park, tiger sightings in Kanha, birdwatching, exciting afternoons spent on machaans and his gratitude to trackers and knowledgeable forest guards who taught him so much about wildlife. His experiences at a Goalpara police station in Assam, an elephant exploring with its trunk and trying to catch the scent of the author, who was crouched on a machaan and seeing flying lizards make interesting reading.

His wild encounters on foot, elephant back and bicycle are written with humour and captures the high drama of the jungle. It reveals the author’s love for the wilds and his passion for wildlife photography. Unfortunately, the black and white plates in the book are reproduced rather badly and are quite unremarkable. The author also touches upon the pioneers of wildlife biology and conservationists in India and also discusses the ill-effects of tourism. A compelling read that will want you to drop everything and set off on a trip right away to discover wild India.

http://www.sanctuaryasia.com/conservation/reviews/book-reviews/1232-walks-in-the-wild.html"

That this brought me several new friends was an unexpected bonus. There are plans now to update and enlarge this publication.

Vanghat - close to Corbett National Park

Many people visit Corbett Tiger Reserve each year and, it is certainly one of the premier wilderness areas in India. Perhaps not quite as many people know about Vanghat and, fewer still take the trouble to visit it. 

Vanghat is located about thirty five kilometres from the town of Ramnagar, itself accessible by a six-hour road or rail journey from Delhi, past the village of Mohan on the way to Marchula in the Kumaon Hills. 

The first sense of excitement comes with seeing the Ramganga River glittering like a streamer of light and winding its course through the high cliffs on either side of it. This excitement increases when one is walking with a guide about two kilometre along a footpath that clings to the hillside through scattered forests, where a ghoral, a Yellow-throated Marten,  a Yellow-billed Blue Magpie or a Kaleej Pheasant can be seen with equal ease. The alternative is to ford the Ramganga River in a 4-wheel drive vehicle at five places and to do the last stretch on a bamboo raft. 

Making the last stretch by bamboo raft

Cottages at Vanghat

A Brown Fish Owl close to the river

Grey-headed Tree pie in the campus

I took it easy this time, my fourth visit to Vanghat in twelve years: the intervening years had taken some toll. Sumantha Ghosh, in spite of his very heavy schedule, provided all the consideration and ensured all my comfort.  So in the end, I could just stand or sit anywhere in the campus and soak up the sun as it moved across the sky or listen to the sound of the  Ramganga River as it brushed past the black rock-face of the cliffs. In the process, I managed - without really trying -to see about 45 species of birds just within the Vanghat campus, including a pair of Kaleej Pheasants, a flight of Long-tailed Minivets and an unexpected bonus of a Rufous-bellied Niltava; Grey-headed Tree-pie seemed to have taken over the dining area, with a Blue Whistling Thrush keeping them company. The alarm calls of the kakar and of the sambar on the second evening on sighting the tiger that at times comes in to the neighborhood, was the icing on the cake.

Vanghat! Long may you continue to give this unalloyed delight to lovers of wildlife in India.