Blawgg

Made a trip to Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary and Sariska National Park again on the long weekend of Jan 26th ’09. Turned out to be a pretty good trip, and cost effective too.

We didn’t do any bookings prior to the travel, had 3 days and were travelling by car.  We knew we had to be at both parks very early (6 am) to get in early which is the best time to go for, and also avoid missing out the limited gypsies etc available for the rides in the park.

We started off at 3 PM on the Saturday afternoon. Here’s the route we took:

There’s a CCD and Pizza Hut when you are about to enter Mathura, and just before the right you need to take to Dig (or Deeg). This right turn btw is after a junction (there’s a big green signboard on the right road at this X, towards “Govardhan” but that isnt the right right), and after crossing a flyover. It doesn’t show up in googlemaps, so the pink arrow is really a road. (Gmaps just shows a railway line all along – but thankfully we asked directions at the Pizza Hut that saved us from going to Dig in the night). This road was single lane, but newly laid, so while we were driving in the night it was OK. Plus it got us straight to Bharatpur in < 2 hours, which seemed even less since we spent most of the time debating the sum of two sides of a triangle being always greater than the third side axiom.

Bharatpur is an old town but big. You cross most of the city to reach the sanctuary. We arrived at about 8pm and somehow landed up in an area with a lot of hotels that turned out to be close to the sanctuary too.

Just a few hours before, all of Delhi had landed up in the same place too. So there were no rooms. Most of the hotels are lodge-like, with barely any facilities. After some talking we got one hotel owner to put us up in a room in a nearby hostel. There were beds, fresh sheets and a loo with running water, and it was 9pm so it was ok. (Cost – 1050Rs including an additional 3rd bed – you’d never pay that if you had options)

Sun morning we got up at 6 am and reached the sanctuary entrance at abt 6:30. Again most of Delhi had the same bright idea of being there..first. 

The good thing about Bharatpur is that most of the sanctuary is travelled using a single small road.

At the entrance, you need to buy tickets per person, for video cameras and if you want to not go on foot, you can either rent rickshaws (2 per rick) or rent bicycles (of the Atlas type, that only Sunny Deol can lift). You could use your car to enter the sanctuary, but that goes only till about 1 km inside, where you then need to park and ultimately choose foot/rick/bicycle. Also you can rent binoculars, or make sure to carry a good pair.

Tip: It’s the same if you just get a rick from outside – as the ricks are limited, we drove in and luckily found two inside. Don’t park in the general parking – instead park at the Ashoka lodge parking which is to the right after entering, because  when you return the parking will be full and it’ll be a pain to get your car back out.

Every mode of transport beyond this point travels at the same pace. The advantage of a rick is that the rick-driver is able to act as a guide and helps you spot the birds and name them.

Its’ pretty much a Natgeo experience, with all the egrets, herons, storks, kingfishers, treepies, eagles, owls and of course the sambhar and the neelgai by the hundreds. We saw about 35 species that we had never seen before live.

A few kms in, there’s a small resting place – but inadequately stocked so you’re lucky to get tea with milk and absolutely useless loos.

We rode the rick for about 2 hours in, to the point where we got a glimpse of the Siberian crane, and then turned back.

The tickets cost us about Rs. 25 per person, plus car ticket for about 50 or so, and the ricks at 50 bucks an hour with a 100 buck tip each came to 600 bucks.

We then exit the sanctuary and started towards Deeg. This is a very bad road and took us longer than planned. Deeg is supposed to have some good forts to see. There’s some dhabas on the road if you want interesting Rajasthani food.

Sariska has only 2 hotels – a Tiger Den resort owned by the state govt (very good lodge – clean and cheap and good food – abt 1200 Rs a night), and the Sariska Palace, a fancy costlier hotel.  Both are right next to the park. To book Tiger Den you need to go to Bikaner House at Pandara road, Delhi. It’s usually full on holidays. You can call them up at +91 (0) 144 2841342 to ask about vacancies.

We knew it was full, so we decided to stay overnight at Alwar enroute.  Alwar turned out to a great town – good roads, working traffic lights, light traffic and good hotels to stay in. We found a place for about 800 for the night. At Alwar, we managed to see the Siliserh lake and one more thing I forget now.

In Sariska, to properly tour offroad in the park, you need to hire Gypsies. While you can take your own car in, you can’t use it to go off road into the wild. And you can’t risk it to places like Kankwari fort – it’s all rough terrain. Plus in your own car without a guide, there are tough restrictions on getting off your car etc. Now, as the gypsies are limited, it makes sense to reach the counter early. So, from Alwar, we started at 5:45 AM on Monday morning to Sariska. The road turned out to be great – we had tea in the dark at a small dhaba – and with no traffic, made it to Sariska in about 30 mins (even saw Sambhar crossing the road on the way).

There were again people already at the windows, but we did manage to get a gypsy for the full day tour (Rs 2700 – full day means more than 4 hours. Kankwari fort alone takes about 3 hrs in all, so…)

Last time I visited Sariska in the summers – absolutely the worst time with all the heat and dryness. This time, the jungle was cleaner, greener and there was water in all the waterholes.

Again, a lot of neelgai/sambhar, peacocks, monkeys, some birds. The tiger sighting is extremely rare – but apparently just a day before the tiger had appeared on the main road where kids in a school bus got a great sighting. All we saw was a pug mark. :p This time, we did see a croc, langurs and a jackal.

Best of all – we got to see 3 lakes this time – one at the beginning on the left, one next to Kankwari fort, and one on the way out (the biggest). We returned to the first one on the way back to spot a croc basking in the sun. The other two lakes were absolutely stunning – reflecting the blue sheen of the sky – with flocks of birds swooping up and down in the distance – another natgeo moment. Absolutely something you fall in love with.

Lake next to Kankwari fort-

Lake on the way out from Sariska (near Neelam or whatsthatfortsname Fort)

Ancient temple

The temple was the last thing we saw at Sariska, followed by an hour’s journey back to the main gate. We went in for lunch at the Tiger Den, where a buffet is server after noon to about 2 PM. We managed to scrape off whatever food remained there.

Tip: While buying entrance tickets to Sariska, the guy will ask you for more money that the tickets are worth, not pay it back to you, but will adjust the change against the gypsy’s payment (that you’ll pay later) – it’ll be printed on the ticket too. But at the end of the day, you’ll forget that, and still pay the gypsy driver the full amount. So…

And so, after exiting Sariska, we joined the NH-8 and made our way back to Gurgaon. The whole trip came to about Rs 3300 per person, including fuel, hotel, tickets and food.

(Tip: One thing you’ll see absolutely everywhere, even inside the parks, are cell phone towers. So if you have a GPRS enabled phone, download Google maps for mobile application, which shows you your position without having a GPS addon. It’s great. But remember, always ask Pizza Hut for directions )

[Vasant's post on the trip]