After the few bananas for lunch we drive towards the Chambal passing through the badlands where our guide stops a while to look for foxes. Unfortunately none are visible so we move on to the last village before the protected area which is quite chaotic and then we are in.
“In” in the visitor center actually that is where we have to pay for entrance and use the restrooms while visiting the actually interesting exhibits.
We are surprised that we are the only people inside the center, but it seems it is open only when “Britishers” are visiting and that otherwise it might be kept closed.
Inside we stop at a ruined building which our guide explains has been used by dacoits. The dacoits are bandits that lived (or live?) in the Chambal area hiding in the badlands while robbing rich people including tourists. So we are happy to hear that they are likely gone for a couple decades and we are safe. And maybe the ruin is not really related to dacoits who knows? But the guide links it to a specific dacoit, Paan Singh Tomar, so famous that even a movie was made, a movie that we watched after we returned from our trip.
From here we can also see the new bridge that is built across the Chambal, the ruined house really had a good view of the surrounding area, great for bandits or the army that was looking for them. And around here we also find our first River Lapwing, lots of new lapwings in this trip.
When we reach the river edge our guide takes us on a walk to look for birds. We pass below the bridge and see an agglomeration of people on the other side, it seems like it is a mortuary procession with the corpse likely released on the river at the end of the ceremony.
We look here mostly for Indian Skimmers but they are really far away and we hope that we will get better views from the cruise. And then it is time to move in the other direction, to reach the launching spot for our boat cruise.
The boat is small but seems river-worthy and even has flotation vests so on we hop and on the river we go. Right at the start are some weird huge metal balls that look like mines, hopefully they are not…and we pass them safely so not, phew.
We start on the edge of the river following the coastline to look for birds, turtles and crocodiles. We find a few turtles and some birds but nothing that special yet, still it is a three hour cruise so we hope that will change as we go further upriver.
And then we see our first Mugger crocodile, first in a row of many mugger crocodiles on the river. However surprisingly this one sits on a perch like a bird, quite fun. Above it is a Pied Kingfisher which is quite common here, we still remember how difficult it was for us to see one in Keoladeo a couple days prior.
And of course there are a lot of whistling ducks, always fun to see them even though here they are even more flighty than in the previous locations we saw them. And then there it is, our first gharial and one of the major reasons to take this cruise. And when we see one gharial there are many more of course on the shore and in the water.
There are also many interesting birds on the shore like a beautiful Great Stone Curlew and many Bar Headed Geese just enjoying the great weather and the huge river full of food and crocodiles nearby.
And it is a huge river, at least a few hundred meters wide in our opinion. It is also the border between two Indian states that we now pass a few times as we move from shore to shore.
As our guides know we want to see gharials they do show us gharials and lots of them. Surprisingly most of them are female with the first male only about an hour in. They are easy to distinguish from the females due to the large knob at the end of their snout.
The second major target here is the Indian Skimmer and boy did the guides deliver. After a brief view from distance from the shore the boat guide is able to land the boat near a colony of Skimmers that really do not seem perturbed and continue enjoying their siesta with one actually just fishing around the colony. We spend almost half an hour just watching them before slowly moving out.
We spend some time watching the cliffs for birds of prey but nothing special unfortunately. And then we start on our way back towards the bridge and the landing location.
On the way back we notice one more beautiful Indian Roller and then suddenly some birds starts flying past the boat. The guide shouts Pratincoles so we start taking photos and watching them pass by. They are very beautiful and we are happy we were able to enjoy the spectacle.
And then we pass by the remains of the old bridge and are back at the landing site where we safely get out of the boat after a beautiful tour, now it is time to return to the lodge.
Of course we still stop a few times on the way watching green pigeons gather on a tree and a Nilgai mother with two cubs climbing the Chambal mountainside.
And then we cross the villages along the way watching the Indian country life pass by and soon are back at the lodge. We are quite tired and not that hungry so we decide to not eat dinner for lots of money and just look for civets outside and eat from our provisions. We find our civets relatively easy and the provisions are still good and we even got some cookies over the day that are quite filling so we are happy with the decision to not go to dinner. Even though they come three times to ask us if we really do not want to it – no we don’t because we want to sleep as we are quite tired and tomorrow we have some sightseeing planned in Agra.
