Chlidonias Goes To Asia, part five: 2016-2017

I did hear them. I had earlier read (in the Indian mammal field guide) that their contact calls sound human, and they really do.

 

I'm almost up to date with the thread now. I just have the last two days in Mumbai to add but I haven't written that yet. It might be another while though because I'm not sure when I'll have internet again.

I saw southern plains grey langur yesterday which was the 70th mammal for the trip (without resorting to trapping bats and rats to bulk up the numbers like mammal-watchers are prone to do). Thirty-six of the seventy (over half) were lifers which is a pretty good rate.

Today (I hope) I catch a bus up to Ahmedabad and there are three places there I may or may not visit (Gir for lions; Velavadar for blackbuck, wolves, etc; Little Rann of Kutch for wild ass). Because I don't get any WIFI anywhere I can't really book parks ahead of time (and also I don't necesarily know when I'm going to be at any particular place) so there's the possibility I won't be able to get into any of them.

 

1) Happy New Year to you also, and to anyone else who wishes to be wished so. I spent Christmas Day on an all-day travelation. Today while on an all-day travelation (train from Mumbai to Ahmedabad) I realised it was New Years Day. Both days which probably shouldn't be travelation days. Also, travelation is another word from my made-up-words dictionary.

2) I would like to think so, but on the other hand how would one know who was the best painter of invisible monkeys? They are invisible.

3) Asia's a big place and includes a lot of non-Asiany bits like Central Asia (the stans, for example, which probably have a mostly European bird fauna). I don't know how many species there are in total, but you could spend a few hours counting them up if you like - List of birds of Asia - Wikipedia

3a) Currently my bird list is at 1579. It should be up to 1600 some time soon. My mammal list is currently at 273. I have country lists but no "Asia list" so not sure what that total of birds would be, and I can't just add the Asian country lists together because there is too much overlap in species.

 

seeing I mentioned this in the post just above, these are the seventy mammals I have seen so far on the trip. (They are numbered the way they are because I just took it from my year list, and I had already seen a few species in NZ before the trip).


7) Himalayan striped squirrel Tamiops macclellandii
8) Grey-bellied squirrel Callosciurus caniceps
9) Siamang Symphalangus syndactylus
10) Red-bellied (Pallas') squirrel Callosciurus erythraeus
11) Dusky langur Trachypithecus obscurus
12) Sunda slow loris Nycticebus coucang
13) Greater tree shrew Tupaia glis
14) Crab-eating macaque Macaca fascicularis
15) Southern pig-tailed macaque Macaca nemestrina
16) Prevost's squirrel Callosciurus prevostii
17) Ear-spot squirrel Callosciurus adamsi
18) Variable giant squirrel Ratufa affinis
19) Plantain squirrel Callosciurus notatus
20) Red giant flying squirrel Petaurista petaurista
21) Giant flying fox Pteropus vampyrus
22) Low's squirrel Sundasciurus lowii
23) Brooke's squirrel Sundasciurus brookei
24) Long-tailed giant rat Leopoldamys sabanus
25) Small-toothed palm civet Arctogalidia trivirgata
26) Bornean black-banded squirrel Callosciurus orestes
27) Mountain tree shrew Tupaia montanus
28) Red-bellied sculptor squirrel Glyphodes simus
29) Brown rat Rattus norvegicus

30) Five-striped palm squirrel Funambulus pennantii
31) Rhesus macaque Macaca mulatta
32) Nilgai Boselaphus tragocamelus
33) Large-eared pika Ochotona macrotis
34) Woolly hare Lepus oiostolus
35) Bharal (Blue sheep) Pseudois nayaur
36) Mountain weasel Mustela altaica
37) Red fox Vulpes vulpes
38) Ladakh urial Ovis orientalis vignei

39) Tufted grey langur Semnopithecus priam
40) Sri Lankan (Grizzled) giant squirrel Ratufa macroura
41) Chital (Spotted deer) Axis axis
42) Three-striped palm squirrel Funambulus palmarum
43) Wild pig Sus scrofa
44) Sambar Cervus unicolor
45) Asian elephant Elephas maximus
46) Indian muntjac Muntiacus muntjak
47) Toque macaque Macaca sinica
48) Indian flying fox Pteropus giganteus
49) Black-naped hare Lepus nigricollis
50) Rusty-spotted cat Prionailurus rubiginosus
51) Purple-faced langur Trachypithecus vetulus
52) Lesser false vampire bat Megaderma spasma
53) Rufous horseshoe bat Rhinolophus rouxi
54) Small Indian civet Viverricula indica
55) Grey slender loris Loris lydekkerianus
56) Sri Lankan mouse deer Moschiola meminna
57) Sri Lankan dusky squirrel Funambulus obscurus
58) Feral water buffalo Bubalus bubalis
59) Leopard Panthera pardus
60) Ruddy mongoose Herpestes smithii
61) Golden jackal Canis aureus
62) Blue whale Balaenoptera musculus
63) Flame-striped (Layard's) squirrel Funambulus layardi

64) Malabar giant squirrel Ratufa indica
65) Bonnet macaque Macaca radiata
66) Gaur Bos gaurus
67) Nilgiri langur Trachypithecus johnii
68) Nilgiri tahr Nilgiritragus hylocrius
69) Indian dusky squirrel Funambulus sublineatus
70) Stripe-necked mongoose Herpestes vitticollis
71) Jungle striped squirrel Funambulus tristriatus
72) Black-footed grey langur Semnopithecus hypoleucos
73) Lion-tailed macaque Macaca silenus
74) Black rat Rattus rattus
75) Indian grey mongoose Herpestes edwardsii
76) Southern Plains grey langur Semnopithecus dussumieri

 

interestingly enough, the pronunciation of the acronym of my new title is the same as that of a primate...

 

at a total guess, I'd say if you took out 400 or 500 birds from my life list then the remainder would be my Asia list, so around 1100 to 1200 species.

 

The Agumbe-Udupi road was closed for vehicles, but motorbikes were still using it. I got a lift down this road to the village of Someshwara which is on the bottom end of the wildlife reserve (9km from Agumbe). The next bus from there to Udupi wasn't for almost two hours, so we carried on to a town called Hebri another 10km further on. For some reason, even though Udupi to Agumbe is apparently about an hour by bus, from Hebri (which should have been 20km closer) it still took over an hour to get to Udupi. There are trains from Udupi to Mumbai but all seats were booked for the next couple of days. There were only waiting list seats available, which are tickets you buy but can only actually use if someone else doesn't turn up. Instead I went back to the bus station.

It is something like 1000km to Mumbai from Udupi, or 20 hours by bus. I didn't fancy doing this in one trip. I've been on longer bus rides before and they aren't fun, and I really don't like sleeping on overnight buses, mainly because I don't get any sleep. I decided to break the journey in two and asked which were the best in-between towns for this. Ankola was about four hours away, Belagam was halfway at about eight (I know half of twenty hours isn't eight hours, but this is what they told me). It was already noon at this stage, and so I chose Ankola, figuring that if I left there early the next morning I'd get to Mumbai late afternoon.

In Ankola I stayed at the Radha Krishna Lodge which is across the road from the bus station and had a relatively amusing name (as in, one of my sisters is named Radha and one of my brothers has the middle name Krishna). It was 300 rupees and infested with bed bugs. In the morning I had about a hundred bites across my back and a couple of dozen on my feet. Other than that it was fine.

As usual, upon arrival in the town I had to spend half an hour walking through the streets just trying to find an ATM that worked. The daily withdrawal limit had just gone up to 2500 rupees (previously it was 2000 rupees), although the machines seemed to decide for themselves what they wanted to let you take out. I was of the opinion that the seemingly endless number of days for which the withdrawal limit was set so low was a deliberate strategy by the government to try and force the country into a cashless society. There's a big push for this in India right now, trying to convince everybody that EFTPOS and credit cards are the way to go. Which is fine, it's just that India is not even close to being ready for this. It's like putting a dog in front of a piano, showing it how noise is made when it puts its paw on the keys, and then just expecting it to be able to play Chopsticks. It's not going to happen. Even for me, as a tourist, probably 90% of my spending can only be done with cash. The cheaper accommodations don't have EFTPOS facilities, most of the places I eat don't, you can only pay for tuktuks with cash, you can only pay for buses with cash unless you buy tickets online or from agents and even then I think probably only for the more expensive "tourist buses" rather than the local buses I take. Then the locals have all that (except the hotels) plus they need to buy food at the markets. A huge percentage of the population don't even have any sort of bank cards. Six days later the withdrawal limit went up to 4500 rupees which shot down my theory.

My splitting of the Udupi to Mumbai trip into two days to make each section shorter did not work. It just made it more convoluted. As it turned out, Ankola wasn't even on the direct Udupi to Mumbai route. Instead at 5.45am I took a bus from Ankola to Hubli, three hours away, and then from there a two hour bus to Belagam. From there I could get another bus for the next 500km to Mumbai. In other words, it took me five hours just to get from Ankola to the bus I needed to get to Mumbai! All these buses were of the "old school bus" type, probably rejects from other third-world countries. At least the final bus, the one to Mumbai, was mostly empty, unlike the sardine-can trips of all the others.

The Mumbai-bound bus left Belagam at 11.40am. I had asked the conductor how long the trip was and he had said ten hours. Sadly, I believed him. At 9.30pm we rolled into a big city and I'm thinking "this must be Mumbai". I was about to get my bags but the conductor motioned me to sit back down. This was Pune. There were still four hours to go before we reached Mumbai.

At 1.30am I finally reached Mumbai. Almost twenty hours since I left Ankola. All the cheap hotels seemed to be closed for the night. I drove around in a little taxi for a while looking for somewhere that was open. Most that we tried were shut or full. One was 1600 rupees and had cockroaches literally just running about on the bed; the guy just shrugged when I pointed that out. Eventually I ended up at a crappy place called the New Shalimar Hotel which was still too expensive (1000 rupees per night) but it was 3am by this time and I needed to sleep! At least with this hotel I could pay for my stay with my credit card and they had WIFI.

 

I'm usually an early riser, but after yesterday's twenty hours of bus rides and not getting to a bed until 3am I expected to be sleeping late. Instead I woke up at 8am (so, late for me but much earlier than I had expected). I didn't want to be spending long in Mumbai, partly because it was expensive and partly because I just don't like big cities. My main sights to see were the flamingoes at Sewri mudflats, the Byculla Zoo, the Bombay Natural History Museum, and the Karnala Bird Sanctuary. It was too late to visit the bird sanctuary today (it is a fair way outside the city), so after getting some breakfast I headed to Sewri.

Although most people (or at least me) tend to associate flamingoes with Africa, every year 30,000 flamingoes migrate southwards to Mumbai and settle at Sewri. About 95% are lesser flamingoes and the rest greater flamingoes. I'd never seen a flamingo before, except in zoos, and Mumbai had a firm place in my itinerary for this specific purpose.

The nearest train station to my hotel was the Sandhurst Road Station. Having just arrived I didn't realise the Mumbai taxis all have meters - this isn't something which is really normal in Asia - so I got charged 100 rupees to get from the hotel to the station when the real price (as I found out on the return trip with the meter) was about 30 rupees. Sewri Station is just four stops along from the Sandhurst Road Station - the ticket costs just five rupees - and once there you just cross the tracks and find one of the roads heading east. There's an actual road-crossing at the station from which you just keep walking until you hit a T-junction (and then turn right) but I followed some other local people across the tracks themselves and went along a smaller road, through some slums. A policeman on a motorbike asked what I was doing there - perhaps I looked like I didn't belong - and when I said I was going to the jetty to see the flamingoes he said he'd give me a lift there on his bike.

The best time to see the flamingoes, so I had read in a book called "Where To Watch Birds In World Cities" (it really does exist), was five hours before high tide because during high tide they all disappear into the mangroves. It was strange to imagine 30,000 flamingoes disappearing into mangroves but apparently it is so. Anyway, it was high tide when I arrived and there were zero flamingoes. The policeman said to come back at 2 or 3pm.

To fill in the day I took a taxi from by the train station to the Byculla Zoo which was not what I was expecting from a zoo in Mumbai. I saw my first Indian grey mongooses there, wild ones hanging out in the hyaena cage with some domestic cats.

See the little review here: Mumbai Zoo

Having spent less than half an hour at the zoo, I headed for the Bombay Natural History Museum. The taxi driver assured me he knew where it was, but we were driving so far from the zoo, to which I had thought it was relatively close, that I had some strong doubts. My doubts became even stronger when we stopped outside an art gallery and the driver says "museum". Um, no. I asked someone outside the gallery and he told my driver where to take me, which was basically around the corner - the driver had inadvertently brought me to much the right place by sheer accident. I got out at the building for the Bombay Natural History Society which is where I thought the museum was (it was next door) and was met by a guy who wanted to walk me to the museum entrance.

"You look like a Greek God," he said to me, almost as an opening remark.
"Um, okay..."
"Are you bachelor or married?"
"Bachelor" This is a standard question, to which they respond with amazement when you say you aren't married.
"So you can travel because you are a bachelor!"
"Yes."
""Have you ever done any nude modelling?"
"Um, no....?" This was a bit of a strange question from someone who only met me one minute ago.
"Have you had any nude photographs taken of you?"
"No." Must remain polite.
"Have you ever had a sexual experience with a man or a woman?"
"Not with men..." Looking around for a means of escape.
"With a man?" This was where he suddenly sounded really hopeful.
"NOT with a man!"
"So you have had a sexual experience with a woman?"
"Yes..."
"What do you like to do?" Then he starts listing sex acts.
That was when I'd had enough of being polite and told him to piss off.

When I got to the museum entrance the fee was 500 rupees. I decided I didn't need to go in there after all. After a surprisingly difficult time trying to find somewhere to have lunch I headed back to Sewri where it was now approaching low tide. And there were the flamingoes. Thousands of them.

Flamingoes are one of those animals which are really weird to see in the wild, like peacocks. You are so familiar with them from zoos and every childrens' animal book ever that it's almost like "oh okay, flamingoes" instead of "oh my god, flamingoes!!" I don't know if there were 30,000 of them - I don't even know how you would count them - but there were LOTS. And the greater flamingoes were surprisingly easy to distinguish even at a distance because they were white while the lesser flamingoes were pink. So there were great swathes of pink, and then one big blob of white, and those were the greater flamingoes. The greaters are greater too, of course, being maybe twice the height of the lessers, but this isn't so obvious except when they are standing right next to each other. As the tide moved the flamingoes moved closer, and groups of lessers were flying back and forth. Really awesome birds to see.

It wasn't just flamingoes on the mudflats of course, although the majority of the waders were too far off to identify without a scope. But there were quite a number of western reef egrets which is a heron I have wanted to see for a long time, as well as redshanks, greenshanks, Eurasian curlews, little stints, and various plovers.

The next day I went to the Karnala Bird Sanctuary. This is quite a way from Mumbai by the town of Panvel, which is an hour south by train so you need to start early. I got to the Sandhurst Road Station at 6am, bought a ticket for 20 rupees (and there's nobody else there that early, so no queues), and the ticket guy told me that train coming into the station right now goes to Panvel. I quickly jumped on and 35 minutes later I was at Andheri Station, the last stop. I had to go all the way back to Sandhurst Road Station, not in the best mood, to wait for the next train which really went to Panvel. Instead of getting to the sanctuary at 7.30am I was only just leaving (again) Sandhurst Road at that time.

In Panvel I walked round to the bus station, about 500 metres distant, and found a bus to Karnala. I had read they go every half an hour, but when I was at the sanctuary I saw at least four go by within about ten minutes. From Panvel the bus takes about half an hour and I got dropped right at the entrance. It was now close to 10am - almost four hours to get there!

The sole reason I wanted to visit Karnala was because four-horned antelope (chousingha) are found here. This is the only living antelope with four horns, and I had reasoned that they would be easiest to see early in the day before it got too hot and before many people were around. That may have been a correct reasoning because I didn't see any. The sanctuary is mostly dry forest, and would be nice early morning I think. I saw hardly any birds (all very common species) but there were three species of monkeys - rhesus macaques, bonnet macaques, and southern plains grey langurs. I think the Indian Mammal Field Guide includes these particular langurs as within the range of black-footed grey langurs (that author doesn't recognise the Southern Plains species) but they look very different. These were the first I'd seen and made the 70th mammal species I've seen on this trip (of which 36 have been "lifers" - ones I've seen for the first time in the wild - which is over half so a pretty good rate).

 

Did he look like Eric Idle?

 

ah yes. I wonder what would have happened if I'd just let the conversation run. (I mean, I know what would have happened because I know what he was after, but it would indeed have been funny if at the end he asked "what's it like?").

I always try to be agreeable when strangers are talking to me, but there's a limit.

 

well in this particular case I assumed it was a genuine mistake but it is something you would expect the person not to get wrong, given that that is their job. And specifically here it really impacted on the day's activity because it meant I didn't get to where I needed to be early enough.

I've been having more trouble in India communication-wise than in a lot of countries I've been where English is rare. In, say, China when I was trying to talk to someone each sentence might take five or ten minutes before we each understood each other (using a mixture of words, pictures, sign language, smoke signals, whatever worked) - but they would always be wanting to know how they could help and what I was asking. In India I think the problem is that they do speak English, which sounds very weird as a problem, but often they can't understand my accent, I can't understand their accent, and even more so they think they speak English better than they actually do. So I will ask something like "where is there an internet cafe" and they will take one word out (say "cafe") and then just keep repeating that there is a cafe across the street. In China they would quickly have figured out that I didn't want a cafe because I would then be trying to ask the question in different ways - in India they just keep repeating the same answer with no apparent realisation that I obviously don't mean that.

So a lot of issues do arise from simple misunderstandings. There's a common thing throughout Asia too, where a person will answer a question even if they don't know the answer, because it is rude not to. There's a saying in Vietnam that if you come to a crossroads and ask four people there which road leads to X you will get four different answers including the road you just came in from. Basically you never believe anything you are told in Asia unless you see it for yourself.

With regards to your first sentence, I tend to get the opposite. If I want to try and look for something difficult, whether it be pigmy hog or Nilgiri marten, the immediate reaction is shutting off to the possibility because "it is impossible", and that doesn't change. I can't get them to understand that even if it is rarely seen, not looking gives zero chance whereas looking gives a small chance. It's just "no".

I should say too, because I'm not sure how obvious it is - not everything is going wrong all the time when I travel. It is just that the wrong things are more interesting. So an uneventful day's travel will simply be written as "I caught a bus from X to Y to Z and arrived at 6.30pm". Boring. But if I get put on the wrong bus that's funny, so I write about that. Maybe it makes it sound like I'm always in strife, and possibly it sounds like I'm angry all the time, but most of the things that happen are mild inconveniences at worst. I treat it as while it may be annoying at the time it makes for a good story. The boring bits I have because I want the blogs to be helpful (e.g. if anyone is going to the place and wants to find out about buses or costs or accommodation or whatever) but the issues that arise are simply more entertaining to write and read about than normal events.

 

Next stop after Mumbai was the city of Ahmedabad, not so much for the city of course, but because the state of Gujarat has several good wildlife spots, in particular the Little Rann of Kutch and the Velavadar National Park.

I was not sorry to leave Mumbai. The city is almost as much of a dump as Calcutta. And I mean that literally. There are piles of rubbish everywhere, and not just piles like "piles of leaves", but piles like mountains. India likes to think it is a first-world country but it is barely a third-world country. It is a country wallowing in squalor. In other poor countries in southeast Asia people may be living a simple or basic existence but usually they aren't literally living in their own refuse. In India that is the norm. It is especially obvious when on trains, passing through a lot of areas quickly. Houses just surrounded by great banks of trash, with the people living there simply keeping a path clear from their door to the street. I think this may be a direct consequence of the introductions of plastics. In the past everything was biodegradable - plates were banana leaves, chai cups were little clay mugs smashed after use - and so the refuse was either directly eaten by pigs and cows or broke down naturally. Now everything just sits there, the piles getting bigger and bigger and the people having no idea what to do about it except to just keep adding more to the pile. But, having said that, the same situation should apply in the rest of tropical Asia and it really doesn't. I mean, there is rubbish everywhere in other Asian countries, but the people aren't actually living in the rubbish piles. That seems to be a distinctly Indian thing. I have a feeling this may be something to do with it having been a British colony; it is like they have just been left with the ruins of their own country and don't know how to cope with it in the modern world.

There are trains from Mumbai to Ahmedabad but I figured I would probably end up on a bus. I headed to Mumbai Central where the train and bus stations are across the street from one another. There were A/C buses leaving at 11am for between 400 and 600 rupees (say, NZ$8 to $12). I was told they took twelve hours, which probably meant fifteen, so I'd be anticipating an arrival time of somewhere after midnight. I checked at the local bus station (as opposed to the A/C bus ticket stalls on the street) and was told there were only night buses from there. Just to be safe I also went into the train station to see if I might be able to get a seat.

There are lots of really helpful and friendly Indians in India. The ones at the train ticket counters are not among them. They invariably have an infuriating habit of simply ignoring you. It's like they have a one-question limit. I ask when the next train is, and this lady says 1.40pm; so I ask when it arrives in Ahmedabad and she just ignores me. I persist and eventually she decides to tell me it arrives at 9pm. I ask if I can get a seat and she ignores me. I persist and eventually she bothers to look on her computer and says all the seats are booked. I would understand if she didn't speak English, but she does. And same for every other person I've had to talk to at a train ticket counter. They almost refuse to give you the information you need to get the ticket.

I went back out to the A/C bus stalls to get a ticket for one of those, but the man there says that there's a train called the Sourashtra Express which passes through Ahmedabad and leaves Mumbai at 8.25am. It is now only 8am. I went back to the train station and ask the lady about this train, which she knows all about. Why did she not bother telling me about it? Lady just shrugs.

The Sourashtra Express costs just 150 rupees to Ahmedabad for a general seat (i.e. not A/C, not sleeper), and takes twelve hours. So it's the same length of time as the buses but gets there at 7.45pm which is much more convenient when trying to find a hotel on arrival! And in case you're wondering, no I don't know what Indians think "express" means either, considering that the other non-express train takes about seven hours for the same distance.

You may recall me discussing a few posts back about how I had been led to believe that you could only get train tickets online, which was not true at all. One of those sources (probably Lonely Planet because it is so untrue) emphasised this by stating that the classic overcrowded Indian trains were a thing of the past now. No, not even nearly! Up to 2pm the train was fairly quiet, lots of seats, but that all changed at a station called Surat. As the train pulled up to the platform it sounded like there was a riot in progress. What the noise was, was all the people waiting to board, and as soon as the train came in they started yelling and shoving at each other because whoever didn't get through the doors in time had to miss out. Each door was just a solid wedge of people as some tried to get off while everyone else tried to get on. When the train left the station the carriage was packed wall-to-wall, and it stayed like that for the next several hours. Actually that's not true, it didn't stay exactly like that - more people were getting on at each subsequent station! Still, better than the bus. I guess.

I got off at Ahmedabad Junction Station at 7.45pm and was found by a tuktuk driver who said he could take me to a hotel, and thus I ended up at the Hotel Mumak which looks somewhat unloved from outside but is quite nice to stay at and has the elusive WIFI. As ever, my first action after checking in was trying to find an ATM. I did find about ten of them. None of them worked. The next morning I went round them all again and eventually found one of them was able to give out cash. I also found out, to my surprise and eternal thankfulness, that the daily limit had gone up to 4500 rupees. The government had belatedly printed new 500 rupee notes after ditching all their old ones, so now the ATMs give out 2000s and 500s.

The raising of the withdrawal limit today was excellent timing. My next two ports of call were Camp Zainabad (aka Desert Coursers) at the Little Rann of Kutch and then Velavadar National Park, at both of which I can use only cash not card. I'd had no idea how I was going to manage this because there are no ATMs near those two places. Also related to good timing, the ATM card I got at the Madurai airport onto which all the American dollars had been put as rupees has basically been emptied, so from now on I will have to be using my own card. As I've said before, Kiwibank charges a $6 fee on every foreign ATM transaction (no fees on EFTPOS transactions luckily) so if I was restricted to withdrawals of 2000 rupees at a time for the next five weeks I'd be looking at around NZ$150 just in fees.

Much of the first part of today was wasted going round the ATM circuit, and then trying to find an internet cafe to print off some plane tickets. In India you can't enter the airport without an actual printed ticket (or able to show them the ticket on your phone), and while I can book the tickets on my laptop - if I can find WIFI - I can't print them off myself. My destination after Gujarat is the town of Dalhousie in the state of Himachal Pradesh, up in the foothills of the Himalayas. I was supposed to go here earlier in the trip, after Ladakh, to look for the Chamba sacred langur, but had to skip it because of the demonetisation and go to Sri Lanka instead. It's quite a long way from Ahmedabad to Delhi to Dalhousie, so rather than enduring days of road or rail travel I just bought a SpiceJet flight from Ahmedabad to Dharamshala which is the closest airport to Dalhousie (about 130km). That's on the tenth of January.

Once that was all done I rang up Desert Coursers (aka Camp Zainabad, at the Little Rann of Kutch) to see if I could stay there, which I could, and to see if they could help arrange my stay at the government's Forest Lodge at Velavadar National Park, which they also could. Sorted. It was a bit late in the day to bother going to Dasada, the town nearest Desert Coursers, so I stayed a second night at the Hotel Mumak.

My intentions to leave early the next morning were thwarted by needing to get out another lot of cash to make sure I had enough for the next several days. Not unexpectedly the ATM I had used the day before now no longer worked. I made my way around the others I knew of. None worked. I usually walk a couple of kilometres at least whenever needing to get out money due to the way the ATMs here stop working at random. You have a mental map of ten or so ATMs which you've found, and just go round all of them until you strike it lucky. Or not. I went round them all a second time, and this time found a good one. Back at the hotel their EFTPOS machine wasn't working, so I had to use some of the cash to pay for the room which was a bit annoying. Basically don't expect any sort of machine to work when in India, or at least not when you actually need it to work. I didn't get onto a bus to Dasada until 11am.

 

participants on organised tours would escape a lot of the issues - they would still happen but the tourist wouldn't be having to deal with it except in that there might be plan changes. But the guides and drivers would be handling all the problems.

Pangolins are still more common here than in southeast Asia, but also nocturnal, and looking for night animals in India has its own sets of issues.

 

I haven't yet written the Little Rann of Kutch piece, but Desert Coursers was a great place to stay and I have thoroughly enjoyed my time here. In fact my entire stay in Gujarat was there (apart for the first two nights in Ahmedabad).

My original three choices for destinations in Gujarat were Gir National Park which has lions and chousingha; Velavadar National Park which has blackbuck, wolves and hyaenas; and the Little Rann which has wild asses.

However I had more or less already decided to drop Gir, despite that being the only place in the world to see wild Indian lions, because it was just far too expensive. The camera fee alone is US$30. The jeep safaris need to be booked months (or longer) ahead of time, or you can stand in line from 2am in the slim hope of getting one on the day. You can't join in on other peoples' booked jeeps because the jeep permit is made out to specific people (so if I had booked from NZ, for example, I would have only been able to book it for myself because I'm travelling alone). It is a really weird rule - on the face of it you'd assume it was to make more money because there would be more people in more jeeps, but the number of jeeps per day is set so they are actually losing money (by not getting any extra entry fees on half-empty jeeps). There were also some ethical concerns because I had read several accounts of how the guards "herd" the lions away from the roads each morning so that they can then extract more money by saying they know where to see the lions in another spot but it costs extra to take you on that road.

So with Gir out, I was going to spend three nights at the Little Rann and three nights at Velavadar. There are two places to stay at Velavadar. The expensive option is Blackbuck Lodge which when I was researching all this cost 7500 to 8500 rupees per night (roughly NZ$160). The cheaper option, which I was going for, was the government-run Forest Lodge which I had found (in an account by a foreigner as what he paid) was 500 rupees for a non-A/C room or 1200 for A/C. Dhanraj, the owner of Desert Coursers, had said he could arrange the stay at the Forest Lodge because it is quite complicated for a foreigner - you can only book it by phoning the head-office in the nearby town of Bhavnagar, but they only speak Gujarati, and then you need to pay in advance by posting them a Direct Debit cheque.

However the costs I had were now wildly wrong. Blackbuck Lodge has gone up considerably in price in the last year, to (minimum for a single) 12,000 rupees per night. And the Forest Lodge now has rates of 1000 rupees non-A/C for an Indian or US$100 for a foreigner (and 3000 rupees and US$150 respectively for an A/C room). Those are all the costs of just the room, no food, no park entry fees. There was no way I could afford those prices, so the secondary option was to stay in Bhavnagar and go for a day-trip. This wouldn't be ideal - the town is about two hours by bus from the park - but it could work, except that the entry fee for a foreigner comes to US$70. I figured there was little chance of seeing wolves on a one-day excursion and zero chance of hyaenas (and someone at Desert Coursers who had been to Velavadar a few weeks previously told me there were no hyaenas left there now). So that just left the blackbuck from my main three, and I knew there was a blackbuck reserve near Ahmedabad which was relatively close to the Little Rann.

So I stayed at Desert Coursers for the whole time, and made one trip out just for the blackbuck. Tomorrow I leave here to look for eagle owls at a site a few hours away, and then head into Ahmedabad to catch a plane early the next morning to Himachal Pradesh.