Bharatpur, Chambal & Ranthambore Birding Tour (6N/7D)

Description

North India's winter is the single best birding window on the subcontinent, and this seven-day itinerary strings together the three habitats that make it so productive: a managed freshwater wetland, a clean river system, and dry deciduous tiger forest. It is designed for travellers who want a serious species list without the punishing pace that specialist birding tours often demand, and it works equally well for photographers and for couples where only one partner carries binoculars.

Keoladeo National Park at Bharatpur is the anchor. Created in the 1850s as a duck shooting preserve for the Maharaja of Bharatpur and declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985, its 29 square kilometres of shallow marsh, scrub and woodland have recorded more than 370 bird species. Between November and February the wetland fills with painted storks, bar-headed geese, gadwall, northern shoveler, spoonbills and a dozen heron and egret species, while the surrounding woodland holds owls, painted francolin and wintering warblers. Vehicles are not permitted beyond the entrance, so the park is birded on foot or by cycle rickshaw with drivers who are, unusually, trained naturalists in their own right.

The National Chambal Sanctuary provides the tour's most distinctive morning. A boat safari on this remarkably clear river reaches breeding colonies of the Indian skimmer, one of South Asia's most threatened and most photogenic birds, alongside sarus cranes on the adjoining fields, black-bellied terns, river lapwings, gharial, mugger crocodile and the Gangetic river dolphin. Very few India itineraries include Chambal, and it is a serious omission on those that do not.

Ranthambore closes the tour. It is known internationally for tigers, but it is also a genuinely rewarding birding reserve, with over 300 species recorded across its lake edges, ravines and dry forest. Padam Talao and Malik Talao hold waterfowl and waders, the ravines produce Indian  eagle-owl, painted spurfowl and the striking rufous-tailed lark, and raptors are conspicuous throughout. Two safaris give you a realistic tiger chance while your birding list continues to build.