Breakfast at 8am - very "toasted" toast, probably over a clay oven and masala omelette with orange juice, chai and bananas. The camp puppy kept wanting to play with us. M was irritated by the doggy biting her shoes :) I had to distract the puppy and bring it outside to play, but I guess it has more energy than me.
We were packed to go by 8.45am and with Mr Singh's jeep we met our driver back at Harlai at 9am to Kichan for Demoselle cranes watching.
About 45min drive, though the driver seemed unsure about the exact watching place, we spent 5-10min going around Kichan. Finally a turn into a small alley, we saw birds flying above us, and then more cranes! There was a dog blocking the driver's path and he sounded the horn and that scared the birds as we saw many took to the sky.
There was a watching platform above Bird View Guesthouse and our driver communicated with a teenager boy and he invited up to watch. There were some seats and a European lady was watching. Below about 10 meters away, within a fenced compound, there were hundreds of cranes feeding on grains. On and off one or a couple or a small group would take flight and some others would join the others extending their necks picking up the grains. It's pure joy watching them. M went down stairs along the perimeter to an inner area where another big group was feeding. A dog seemed to be guarding the access to the birds, first chasing off a cow and then his wary eyes on M. Our driver "talked" to the dog and asked M to go ahead, "no problem" he said. The european lady then commented "if the distance get too close, it's a problem". Well, M is aiming for a great shot :) The lady begun her wary eyes on M, while I was busy catching the cranes taking off and landing. M is out of my sight and probably 300m away. Next thing I knew the lady was running to M, I guess M had gone too close. The lady must be an experienced biologist or something, looking at her gears and she stayed at the guesthouse, I realized later. M told me the lady said the cranes will get stressed and disturbed if M get too close. M was truly apologetic, she never thought of it that way. At the moment I saw the lady "lecturing" M, I thought about the comment the french lady at Dera Eco made about environment protection needs a lot of money to put in place, especially when people are struggling for basic survival, villagers collecting firewood everyday for warmth at night, without burning or electricity, will someone give them solar panels to generate power from the plentiful sunshine.
Back to the birds, I took some shots, nice but limited by the zoom. With the motor drive, I'm happy with what I captured. As we learned from the teenager boy through our driver, there is a trust that provide the financial resources to feed the birds which visiting population has grown tremendously. I also thought about where these birds fit in the food chain, do they not fit a purpose than migration and feeding.
We donated 200rs to the trust, the driver insisted the teenager boy went to the office for the receipt. From the driver, it was said it takes 1000rs to feed the cranes daily. The teenager even made us some chai which I forgot about paying for or maybe the driver did.
After we have our receipt, about 11am we set off for Jaisalmer. We reached at close to 2pm and went to checked out Shahi Palace and it's related Oasis Haveli, only small rooms are available which is rather really small which we did not take. The fort view fork the terrace is very nice thought. The driver took us around to Green Hotel which rooms do not look very clean and there were flies around. We then looked at Hotel Royal which is about one year old, 5 min walk from the fort entrance. They are supposely working mainly with larger tour groups. We were shown 2500rs heritage room and 3000rs suite. After some bargaining we took the heritage room without breakfast. While we were checking in, the lady manager or boss told us they would give us the suite room at no additonal cost as they have a cancellation. We were more than delighted.
The room was very nice and spacious. There were 3 sort of sitting balconies with one of them in the very big bathroom.
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