Bharatpur bird sanctuary (the Keoladeo Reserve) this year is dry as a bone. Part of this is due to last year’s poor monsoon, the other part of the story is - as often turns out in India - a political issue. Agitating farmers have ensured that the water from the Ajan Bund resevoir, fed by the Ghambir and the Banganga rivers, has not been released to the sanctuary. A couple of lonely pumps thud inside the sanctuary, splashing feeble gulps of groundwater in the reduced wetlands. The Siberian Cranes left a long time ago, and Sarus Crane numbers can be counted on two hands - once they created huge clouds of birds when they took to the air.

With the rapid drying after the monsoon ended, early breeders like the Ibis abandoned their nests, their eggs shrivelled up and were eaten by crows and eagles.

I’d noticed wood collectors going about in the park, and asked my guide Primod about it. Another typical Indian paradox: wood collection is forbidden, yet it goes on. There are estimated to be 5000 cattle foraging in the dust-dry grasslands - I saw Nilgai and cows together, as though the latter were part of the scenery. In fact, cattle are also forbidden: a wall encircling the park, built to prevent cattle from entering has developed breaches in several places, and has not been repaired for years.

I only hope that the resultant downturn in tourism in Bharatpur speaks most loudly in the way that Indian politicians understand - with money.

There’s nothing like Christmas day in the Indian capital. And today is nothing like that - it’s more like Guru Nanak’s birthday celebration, with processions of sturdy Sikh gentlemen on horses and Sikh schoolchildren dressed in tartan and marching to brass bands.

It wasn’t a planned stop here; I’d intended to skip any overnight Delhi stop on this trip by connecting my morning arrival from Ramnagar with an afternoon departure to Bharatpur. Shivers and a high fever set in while I was in Corbett, though, and although I could have reached Bharatpur the same day, the torture seemed not worth the gain. The fever passed in a day, so I’m prepared for an early start to Keoladeo Sanctuary, parched from water scarcity that it probably is, tomorrow.

An early start for the trip into Corbett Park by jeep. We went in by the Jhirna gate, with driver Mannu, sensibly wrapped up in his hooded, fur-lined jacket against the cold of the morning air.

Almost immediately I was rewarded with the sight of a Crested Serpent Eagle, not at all a rare bird, but a fine, hulking raptor, perched high in the branches of a Red Cotton Silk tree. Earlier, in the reserved forest area before the protected zone, I’d spotted two Oriental Pied Hornbills, and was to see three more, quite closely before the day was over. The list of birds might look unimpressive to serious ornitholigists, but I was delighted with my thirty-five plus (how do Changeable Hawk Eagle, Yellow-Footed Green Pigeon and Grey-Breasted Prinea sound?)

This was the closest I got to a tiger today - a fresh pug mark in the fine sand with my pen for a size comparison:

There were a couple of jackals down by one of the dry washes, and plenty of peafowl strutting around in the late afternoon.

As for larger animals, this is Lakshmi, a twenty-five year-old beauty who works in the Jhirna area carrying tourists on her back:

The guidebooks are wrong about Ramnagar - it’s a decent place, a little bit of plains India at the edge of the Shivalik hills. Just about everyone who comes here heads for Dhikala in the Corbett Tiger Reserve, justly famous as India’s first national park.

I’d had an exciting ride here from Ranikhet - legs jammed into a space a spaniel might find cramped, I was reminded of similar short wheelbase bus trips to Nepalese trek starts.

Ramnagar is beside the wide Kosi river, something that attracted me as the bus came through the “jungle resorts” (expensive place to pretend you are in thick of the forest, but outside the National Park proper and many just hundreds of metres from the main road) clustered close to the river bank. I’d decided that bird-spotting would be the main reason to be here - any other wildlife could be a bonus.

I set off the next morning up the river bank on foot. Fortified with a samosa and chole breakfast, I was surprised how delightfully calm life down by the river was. Some visitors have written that taking a bus north to beyond Mohan gives the best setting for watching wildlife at the river, but just wandering a couple of kilometres beyond the edge of town was fine for me. It also gave me a chance to interact with the local people, as I bumbled through their backyards trying to find a route along the bank of the river:

I quickly stumbled across a group of Sambar deer browsing on the fine grass near the water’s edge. Plenty of Jungle Babblers, Long-tailed Shrikes, Red-vented Bulbuls, and Black Kites here as well.

Paul and Bruce had told me the hotel in Ranikhet’s bazaar was “a bit noisy,” but left before I’d thought to ask them what the problem was. In the area for a prolonged stay, Paul and Bruce were both Kasar Devi veterans. I’d intended to stay for some days on the Papar Sali ridge near Almora myself, but rushed through quickly to get onto new ground. Bruce was delighted with his motorbike purchase, and having just suffered a couple of hours stuffed in a share-taxi like a pimento in a jar of olives, I could see the value in having your own transport on these often quiet roads of Uttaranchal.

Morning noise in the hotel ensured an early start - Chandra Cassettes opposite began playing selections from their film songs at first light. The monkeys on the roof - possibly inspired by memories of the filmi dance routines - began bouncing on the hotel’s corrugated steel roof soon after. From below, lying in the bed, this sounded like multiple attempts to break down doors all around.

A cheerful man known to everyone as Bhandari (although he introduced himself as Mister Bhandari to me) ran errands and sorted out problems in the rooms . Aside from the monkey mischief (and who could have any reasonable grounds for complaint over noise in an Indian budget hotel?) my next problem soon became the hot water. A family who’d moved into the next room soon took advantage of the 24-hour geyser hot water and did their weekly wash. This quickly lowered the water pressure so that my hot water failed to flow at all. When the power went off later in the morning Bhandari told me that he couldn’t use the pump to raise more water to the roof tank until later in the day.

I took a long walk out to Holm Farm - formerly built by Norman Troupe in 1869, and now a heritage hotel in wonderful bushland surroundings - and came back for a hot shower in early evening.
“Bhandari - where’s the water?” I called when the same feeble burble of air as in the morning came from the tap.
“I have a big problem, sir,” Bhandari told me. He came into the room and tuned on all of the cold water taps first. Air sucked back into the system. Then he closed the highest-situated tap, and water began to flow again. He turned on the hot tap, put his lips to the opening and blew air into the tank. Slowly, and with lots of gurgles and splutters, the hot water began to flow.
“You’re a magic man, Bhandari!” I congratulated.
“No, you’re magic man, sir, I’m a room boy.”

Ranikhet is a great place for walks, and most days saw me taking between ten and twenty kilometres of strolls on local paths and roads. It’s just big enough to have the facilities, yet small enough to be able to walk through in a short time. The local people are friendly and helpful - a quality I’ve come across again and again in Kumaon. These two young boys were on the back of their Dad’s scooter in the bazaar:

I couldn’t resist this sign, probably the best warning that chewing pan is bad for your health