Bhadrawati Palace (click to visit their web page).
N26 53 00.2 E76 25 27.0
This is where the camel safari ended.. It was quite a surprise to pull into the courtyard and see all of this. The owner acted very regal and just as you would expect a Raja to act. Except that he no longer had his ownership of the surrounding cities. However, he commanded a lot of respect and was involved heavily in the community. For example, a portion of the fees we payed went to purchasing clothes for needy children which he asked if we wanted to present to them (we did). There was great entertainment for New Years. There was Indian dancing and firebreathing. There was also a 'Disco' with a tape deck of popular music and a ball that projected colored lights. We had a great time until, at midnight, when the fireworks were lit, something went wrong and some rockets fell over and shot into the audience. Fortunately, they weren't too big and nobody was hurt, but it was quite exciting.
Another interesting thing about the city in which the palace was located was that we saw kites flying everywhere. There were many kites for sale in the city. We bought some. Turns out that kids and adults would send up their fighter kites to do battle with each other. The string was made of spun glass and if the kite came from underneath it would slice through the string of the other kite. Nathan did some kite warfare but lost his kite to some more experienced kid somewhere else in town.
You can see us sitting down to New Years' dinner above, entertained by the minstrils. They were great! They were spirited, fun and had a lot of character. We went outside to one of the court yards where there was dancing.
After New Years at the Palace, we went on another long bus ride to Kaledeo Bird Sanctuary. It is quite famous and has the last two Siberean Cranes. We must have seen over 50 different kinds of birds. Although I was never very interested in birds before this visit, I must say that I don't look at birds the same way anymore. Now I look for identifying features. We had fun using a birding book trying to identify all the different kinds of birds we saw. The bird sanctuary used to be a hunting ground. The Raja owner flooded the fields and royalty would come and shoot birds. In the picture below you can see that Lord Linlithgow killed 4273 birds with 39 guns in 1938. Fortunately, this is past history and the land was converted to a sanctuary for birds to nest. There is however, an occassional python and cobra which go after the birds. Below you can see a collared parrot (of which there were many), an owl, and my personal favorite for both their varied colors and their mohawk haircut, the Kingfisher. The python we saw by the side of the road was 7 feed long...just a baby (adults are 20 ft).
That's wraps up our trip. From the sanctuary, back to Dehli, then Bankok, Osaka, LA, and back to home in San Jose, California, where a nice warm shower awaited us (and our two cats who were wondering where the heck we had gone). |
