Elephants!

While I would love to write about Carolyn and Todd's visit, they've really been in and out of delhi for just a few waking hours. It's still great to see them and feel like you're touching base with your friends from time to time.

This was a long weekend, and with all the visitors I hadn't made any plans. At the last minute my friend Doug and I decided to try out this "eco-camp" thing near Rajaji National Park. Turns out it's not really a national park, it's been deemed a national park but since there are still people living in it - it doesn't count I guess. Anyways, it was very spur of the moment, didn't really have reservations. The drive was long due to typical traffic jams and the not-quite-as-typical someone killed a doctor, the police didn't arrest them, and so the community protested stopping all traffic in a small town for 2 hours. And when we finally get to the entrance to the park, it's not so much a road as a trail that's been made through a dried up river bed that occasionally means driving through small streams. Glad we weren't in my little Zen and used Doug's much bigger truck/SUV thingy. The goal was to get out of Delhi and into nature and I think we achieved it.

We got there just before sunset and so took a quick walk to see where we were but were quickly warned back because of recent panther sightings. Sadly for me, we didn't see any panthers ourselves. The park is right near Rishikesh (the area where I go rafting) and so the terrain was the same. Took a "hike" that ended up being a stroll around the area the next day and ran into monkeys and goats and people bathing their bullocks (above). I'm torn on the bullock bathing, it seems like they would be capable of it themselves, no? And since they don't jump on the couch, does it really matter how clean they are?

That evening we went for what I'll call a safari-ette. Like a mini safari. Having not been on a full blown african safari, I still don't think this quite counts. The guy who ran the camp we stayed at was a birder and so were many of the guests who joined us on the safari-ette. So every few blocks we'd stop the jeep and everyone would point out a bird of some sort. Not being a birder myself, some of them really just qualified as not-an-elephant. But even I have to admit that some of them were really beautiful. Bright teal kingfishers, peacocks. Saw lots of deer, a running wild boar and thankfully many elephants. We saw baby elephants and what they refer to here as 'tuskers' (males).