India 2014 - Western Rajasthan & Gujarat

Birds and Wildlife of Western Rajasthan and Gujarat

November 12 to November 25

Photos by Kelly Sekhon

Twelve of us spent 15 days travelling through Western Rajasthan and Gujarat and visited various wildlife reserves and birding areas. We started on Nov 12 from New Delhi and took a short flight to Jodhpur.

Next day we traveled by bus to Jaisalmer via Keechan village, well known for thousands of Demoiselle Cranes that migrate every winter to this area and feed on the grains provided by villagers in the middle of the village.

We spent next three days in and around Jaisalmer and visited Desert National Park. We were unable to find the Great Indian Bustard, a rare and endangered bird, but we managed to see some other interesting and hard to find species such as Desert and Variable Wheatears and Desert Lark. We had many sightings of Chinkara, a very elegant and fast moving gazelle and a quick glimpse of a Desert Fox.

From Jaisalmer we traveled south to Little Rann of Kutch where we manged to get a good view of McQueen's Bustard and saw a herd of Asiatic Wild Ass.

We next traveled to Jamnagar, a coastal town on the Saurashtra Pennisula and visited two seaside birding areas. On the way to Gir National Forest we stopped at Porbander and visited the house (now a museum) where Mahatma Gandhi was born.

In Gir National Forest we had four jeep safaris to look for the Asiatic Lion. We also saw other wild life such as Spotted Deer, Swamp Deer and three of us were lucky to see a Leopard as it ran across the road in front of our jeep.

Our last stop was Blackbuck National Park at Velavadar where apart from herds of Blackbuck we saw many species of interesting birds.

Here are some photos from the trip: