In Nature we Rejoice !

Every once in a while, I get this urge to run away from the urban jungle I live in and spend some time in Nature. This time I decided to head out to the Bharatpur Birds Sanctuary. The timing was perfect as this is when our feathered guests from the colder regions of the world pay the sanctuary a visit ! The usual way to see the sanctuary is to take a rickshaw. Some of the rickshaw wallah have actually been trained by Salim Ali and act as fantastic guides. But we decided to do things differently. We decided to walk, to savor the natural surroundings around us at our own pace. 

At first everything seemed to be in different hues of brown and green. The ancient trees with their barks crumbling and brown, the leaves a monochromatic green. The water almost white, translucent and speckled with green moss. 

The surface of the lake seemed like some exotic green and white carpet, the moss breaking to form small emerald islands as the birds swam through it.

After a while, it seemed as if our feathered guests had decided to take a liking to us, because they started to make an appearance, Slowly at first, as if they were shy and reluctant and then in groups once they had decided we were harmless !

And they added such a dash of colour to the brown and green landscape.

I loved this Duck, with a bright orange rim around the eye, the tip of its beak a bright yellow, as if it had dipped it in yellow paint by mistake. 

The spotted brown and white of its plumage livened by a just a daub of blue.

A kingfisher dazzles us with its Spectacular Blue. 

The Painted Storks paint a perfect picture ! 

 We walked on through the woods, giving up the usually followed path to venture into wilder, lesser known trails. We felt almost surreal, as if we had been transported into another world, another time.

We saw some pelicans sit proud and regal on a small island,as if doing us a favor by letting us click them.

A little further down I saw four pelicans take flight over the water. There was something totally enthralling and mesmerizing in the way they seemed to hover above the lake, almost motionless, their pristine white wings stretched taut, their orange  beaks glistening in the sun. 

They made a breathtaking sight framed against the perfect backdrop of green trees and the untarnished blue sky.It seemed as if they were suspended in time – till they decided to soar away in a graceful arc, leaving perfect reflections in water that was as smooth as glass.

I couldn't capture the flight on camera, but the image will stay with me for a long time ! 

The wide expanse of the lake as well the trees and the birds had a very soothing, calming and strangely a very humbling effect on us. There is a lot we can learn from Nature about existing in harmony as also about the impermanence of things, about transformation and change.

But there is also some permanence in the earth and the sun and the water, in the deep rooted trees and the birds that come year after year in a cycle unaltered over ages.

The two days in the sanctuary left me totally rejuvenated. We all have different ways to deal with our turbulent life styles. But it is towards nature that I turn to uplift my spirit!

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 
There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 
There is society, where none intrudes, 
By the deep sea, and music in its roar, 
I love not man the less, but Nature more. 

                                                - Lord Byron