Indian Wildlife
We've been on a journey friends. And I don't mean figuratively, I'm referring to our 47 hours of mostly being awake with a few hours of airplane sleep thrown in the middle. To complete our year around the world, we flew from Bengaluru to Frankfurt to Seattle. Given we were meant to take a year, circumnavigating the globe in a month seems like we should get some sort of prize. Anyone know anyone giving away Nobel Travel Prizes? I think we deserve one.
Bad jokes aside, we had a couple 10+ hour flights, which started with a 3:30am flight that got delayed a few hours, ensuring our 1.5 hour connection time in Frankfurt would fail. For multiple reasons we were very fortunate to be on Lufthansa, because 1. we were not the tourists trapped with now-canceled flights through the Middle East and 2. only a German airline would rebook you in the middle of your flight, on another airline, for the only other direct flight to Seattle from Frankfurt that day. So we landed expecting to have to negotiate and beg our way into getting home on a non-terrible itinerary, imagining 3+ layovers, and instead they booked us a direct flight automatically and gave us a number to call if we wished to discuss changes. Nope, nothing to discuss, thanks Lufthansa!
But none of that has anything to do with the point of this post! This post is about the stunning wildlife we encountered, and some photos!
A lizard that is green. Maybe a Green Lizard?
I had previously told you Bee Eaters were super cool. Well I was fortunate enough to capture some photo evidence!
I mean look at these guys! These are Chestnut-Headed Bee Eaters. And one of them was super excited because it caught a bee! The one kept buzzing around the other one showing off its bee. Incredible. Bee Eaters eating bees.
I have heard rumor that not everyone loves birds, and I'm not sure I can comprehend, but I can at least offer you some wild elephants.
We were very fortunate to have a taxi driver that we coopted into becoming our tour guide because he was very kind, spoke great English, and was very good at driving in India. I really couldn't ask for anything else in a driver, thank you Renjith! So we told them we really, really wanted to see wild elephants, and we'd heard rumor of a spot they like to come to drink in the evening. So Renjith plotted out a great tour for us starting at noon on a spice plantation (very cool, these farms are incredibly biodiverse compared to North American agriculture). He told us that the elephants show up at this spot between 5pm and 11pm. It was also a 1.5 hour drive back to the hotel, but he said the cost of the tour included waiting as long as we wanted for the elephants to show up.
Fortunately for us, we only had to wait an hour and the elephants showed up in the daylight! Apparently this section of river has some minerals the elephants love, and almost every single day some group of elephants will show up. Well three females and a baby showed up for us! I think I doubled the amount of photos I've taken photographing these guys. Mostly because it was almost surreal to see these giant creatures come lumbering out of the jungle and bathe and drink while we sat not even 100 yards away. And then the baby. Oh my, the baby. If the females looked majestic and regal, the baby was there to remind them that they were once absolutely ridiculous cartoon-like baby elephant children once. First we were incredulous none of the adults just smashed the little one, because it bounced around in the water like a toddler in floaty wings. Its trunk would flail and it appeared to be a bit floaty like a beach ball and kept rolling over and popping up underneath its elders, who mostly ignored it except to ensure it was protected on all sides at any given time.
I don't even know how to describe it, but just look:
And we heard y'all like owls, so we found and photographed this guy for you:
Obviously this is a White-throated Kingfisher
Wild boars
Indian Gaur. The males are like bulls on steroids.
A Spotted Dove
Lastly, lest you think we were peacefully watching all these animals, you would be wrong. We had a guide, with a shotgun, to protect us from tigers. I had very few to zero concerns about the tigers, but I was quite sure someone was going to get shot. I guess gun safety is just not a thing.
Forced march of the tourists. Featuring our guide that I would like to sponsor for a gun-safety course.
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