My World of Food and Travel

This weekend I thought we should visit Nandi Hills. It’s been a while that we visited the place…maybe two months. As usual, Nandi Hills turned out to be a gracious host and we had an amazing birding session, despite a huge crowd and some ear-splitting yodeling by a raucous group. Sigh.  Anyways, let me not digress. The highlights of this trip (Saturday, 21st February) were three sightings: 1. Red Spurfowl We had come across red spurfowls previously in BR Hills but the skittish birds just would not allow us to photograph them. They would suddenly emerge out of bushes, run in front of the vehicle for 5 seconds and before we could focus, they would be gone. I thought we would have to wait for another trip to BR Hills to see them again. But the old adage that extolled the virtues of one’s own backyard proved true. For, the spurfowl appeared right in front of us, on the way to the hilltop at Nandi Hills. For a moment, we thought it was a lone grey francolin or maybe a fema...

The first time I went to Nandi Hills in 2011 I almost swore not to go back again. We had lost our way horribly and reached the top at around 11.30 am. A terrible time to be in Nandi Hills, as we realized later. Picnic parties were in full swing with the area choc-a-bloc with cars parked bumper to bumper. There were monkeys swinging down from every branch and twig, snatching and begging for food. Chaos reigned supreme. Nandi Hills definitely was not my type of place, I surmised.  Imagine my surprise when I read article after article on the thriving bird life there. And not just your usual birds but birds that were found in the Niligiri biosphere. We had gone searching for those birds in far flung places like Coorg and apparently they were there in Nandi Hills itself. Really? Amongst the madding crowd? The pictures on blogs said so. Maybe it was time for us to look at Nandi Hills with different glasses.Or binoculars. That decided, we landed there one morning at 7.30 am with the ...