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Published: January 4th 2007
We set off from Agra after first stopping off at the Post Office to register a complaint about stuff going missing from the parcel we had collected when we arrived. I don’t know why we thought it was important to do this as I’m certain it will make no difference to anything, but we felt we should report it all the same.
The ride out of Agra was manic but better then the ride in as we managed to stay on main roads and out of the bazaars. We did have to cross several railway level crossings, however, which provide an excellent example of the chaos Indians create for themselves. The barrier comes down across the road as a train is on its way, maybe in 10 minutes or so. In the meantime enormous crowds of people and traffic pile up behind the barrier, spreading out to fill the entire road as everyone tries to edge forward to get pole position for when the barrier is finally lifted. It is a seething mass of rickshaws, motorbikes, the odd car and larger truck, bicycles and people. The air is thick with dust and fumes as the motorized vehicles rev their engines
Agra Traffic
We watched for over 20 minutes while the bus tried to get everyone else to back up and let him out. They are probably still stuck there.....in anticipation of the barrier coming up, and there is still no train in sight yet. By the time the train does arrive the mass of traffic has spread right across the road on both sides of the crossing, so that when the train passes and the barriers lift there is a solid wall of people and traffic surging forward from both sides straight at each other. Horns blare and tempers flare. And this happens several times every hour of the day. In their eagerness to cut in front of everyone else they actually cause more problems.
I guess this is just the Indian way of doing things, but it highlights the fact that people seem to care more about themselves than others here in a much more noticeable way than in previous countries we have visited. Another traveller would later sum this up well by saying that Indians generally have less compassion than other people. He believed this was because of Hindu philosophy leading people to believe that those less fortunate are merely serving their just rewards for past life actions, and thus do not deserve help from others. Or perhaps it is simply that in a country
Fatehpur Sikri
Part of the sprawling ruins outside the main tourist enclosure. of 1.3 Billion people if you stop to let others go before you then you will never mange to move anywhere yourself. We certainly quickly adapt to the Indian system of cutting people up and dropping all form of polite behaviour on the road.
While waiting at one such crossing we see an enormous plane taking off nearby - we must be close to Agra airport. The plane is massive and really close but barely visible through the haze of smog and pollution as its fuselage is white. We also cannot hear the roar of the planes engines over the complete din around us at street level. I actually think cycling in India is officially bad for your hearing.
But despite the noise, dust, fumes, heat and crazy traffic we were happy and excited today. We had an easy ride from Agra passing the ‘ghost city’ of Fatehpur Sikri to Bharatpur and Keoladeo Ghana National Park. This is one of Asia’s most important wetlands and is home to hundreds of thousands of birds as well as deer, jackals, the occasional big cat and a host of other animals. It is both a Ramsar site and a UNESCO site,
Last of the Water
The one remaining pool of water at Bharatpur. It is small and shallow and has no fish and no birds. and is one of the only parks in India where no vehicles are allowed. We were therefore looking to forward to several quiet days and an amazing number and variety of wildlife. In fact this was one the places I had most wanted to visit when we reached India, and the imagination of the place helped to keep me motivated whenever the going got hard on the way across Iran and Pakistan. We were half planning to spend Christmas there.
The ride was easy enough once we left the last of Agra behind us; the road was flat, smooth and quiet and lined with shady trees. Every 2-3 miles a small brick tower and dome would mark our route. These were markers for the ancient pilgrimage route from the Mughal capital in Agra to the shrine of the Sufi Saint Muin’uddin Al-Chisti in Ajmer. Even Mughal Emperors would walk the several hundred km along this route each year to pay homage to the shrine of the most important and powerful Sufi in India.
At Fatehpur Sikri we encountered lines of touts trying to get us to stop, presumably so we could visit their shops or pay to park
Next Life?
In 2002, the last two Siberian cranes of the central flock failed to return to India. Their winter home, Keoladeo National Park, reeled under a drought and there was no water to house the birds. They were not reported from anywhere else in the country. Two more winters passed, and the birds still did not show up. It is now suspected that they are extinct. (info from Wildlife Protection Society of India) our bicycles under their watch. We ignore them all, though several made daring attempts to gain our business by jumping out in front of us and starting games of chicken. We won them all.
We were unsure if we wanted to pay another $5 each to visit this site - another Mughal capital complete with red sandstone forts, palaces and mosques etc. This was all built on a whim from the Emperor Akbar who moved the capital city from Agra to here, only to abandon the city completely a few years later. He then moved the capital to Delhi, then Lahore, and then back to Agra!
The walls were certainly impressive enough and enclosed a huge area of scrubland that had many old domes and towers scattered across it. Exploring these for free could have been fun. We follow our noses and instead of finding the main entrance we find a huge Iwan-style portal to the tomb and shrine of another Sufi from the Chisti order. Apparently entry to this is free but we don’t trust leaving our bikes with any of the guards (i.e. touts) outside and there is nowhere to buy nice looking food so we decide
Water Source
Park staff pump groundwater to the surface to preserve some shallow pools of water. to skip the whole thing and cycle on towards Bharatpur. Maybe we will make a day trip back from there anyway.
An hour later the farmland has been replaced by dense looking woodland and forest to our south and we know we are close to Bharatpur and the National Park. We check into a cheap hotel, doing a deal as we plan to stay for at least 4 nights, and explore the area around the edge of the park. A day ticket is quite pricey so we decide not to enter the park this afternoon but wait until tomorrow morning.
We spend the whole of the next day in the park, taking our bikes in and hoping to be amazed by huge numbers of herons, storks, cranes, ducks, geese, eagles and other birds on the marshes. It is instead one of the most depressing days of our trip. There is no water in the park and hardly any birds. The place is tinder-dry and the lakebeds are cracked, dry mud. In the height of summer before the monsoon rains this would be normal, it is now mid-winter and following the monsoon the water levels should be high and
New Well
Park Staff dug this in a single day, but had to dig down 6m below the surface of what should be a lake before they hit water. Presumably theuy will now pump this to the surface so it can evaporate quickly..... there should be literally millions of birds here. We spend hours cycling through dry grassland and woodland, where we do find plenty of jackals and Nilgai, a type of antelope. We also see a lot of domestic cows and local people inside the park, herding their cows and blatantly cutting down firewood and harvesting fruit trees.
I am convinced there will be some water somewhere and eventually we find the 2 tiny, shallow pools which are left, surrounded by cracked dry desert and hundreds of cows. The water in these pools is being pumped out of the ground to maintain their pathetically low levels. Instead of the millions of waterbirds there are 6 ducks, 2 herons and a couple of greylag geese that have flown here all the way from arctic Siberia to spend the winter. They look as depressed as we do.
We reflect that part of the reason we chose to cycle was that we didn’t want to add to global warming by flying all over the place for our own pleasure. We pat ourselves on the back but lament that it is probably too late already for this park to be saved. Meanwhile extremely pale European
tourists are pedaled past us: they have flown and taken buses and taxis to get here and seem completely oblivious to the dire state of the park and the fact that they have contributed to its destruction.
The reason for the poor condition of the park is easily explained by the guides and park staff who tell us that the monsoon was poor this year. They don’t add that that the monsoon has been poor for several years and gets worse each year, almost certainly as the result of global warming. More alarmingly other tourists in the park seem to have been told that it is normal for the park to be dry at this time of year, even though all the free leaflets and information boards contradict this. We ask if there was water last winter and are told that everything was fine last winter, and that the park will be fine again if there is good monsoon next year. I am more suspicious.
I have subsequently found out that in 2000/2001 there were good water levels and lots of birds. The following year in 2002 there was no water, the park was dry and they were
A Paradise for Birds
Becomes a last resort for the cows. pumping up groundwater as an emergency measure. It was the same situation in 2003 and 2004. In 2004/2005 there was indeed some water, and birds, in the park but in 2006/2007 it is back to being dry and deserted. It is also not as simple as just being a ‘bad monsoon’. Admittedly the monsoon was poor this year but that could have been predicted, this part of India is getting progressively drier each year. There is no shortage of water outside the park however, where miles and miles of irrigated crops grow well. People do complain that they have had to dig deeper wells in recent years.
The water levels in the park are controlled artificially and sluices and dams have to be opened to allow water to flow into the park from storage reservoirs after the monsoons have filled them. This did not happen this year or in several previous years. The only reason for there being water in the park during 2005/2006 was due to pressure groups taking the state government to the Indian Supreme Court. They were opposed by local farmers who demanded that the water should all be reserved for irrigation of farmland and not
Water shortage?
Immediately outside the park there is not much sign of drought. allowed into the park. The farmers lost principally because the dams were so full they had to release the water somewhere!
I wonder how full these dams are this year. Even if water is released now it will be too late for any breeding species to raise young this season, and most winter migrants will have been forced to find somewhere else to go after their long flights south.
The ability of the park and its wildlife to recover “if there is good monsoon” is doubtful. Firstly it will not simply require a good monsoon but for the powers-that-be to allow sufficient water into the park. Even then several years of drought have changed the parks’ ecology, with changes in species composition and diversity from plants right up to birds and mammals. This has been documented after previous drought sessions.
The park may survive as a dry grassland habitat but the obvious presence of local people cutting wood from the park and bringing in more and more cows endangers even this. The park is being slowly burned for firewood, even by the park staff who huddle around bonfires in the early mornings and at the end of the
Lone Goose
A single bar-headed goose surveys the demise of the park and, like us, ponders where to go now. Having crossed the Himalaya to spend winter here, this goose must be even more depressed than us. day to keep warm, using wood cut from the nearest tree. It is also being grazed by thousands of cattle which adds further pressure to the ecosystems already under threat. This is supposed to be a globally important wetland under the Ramsar convention.
On a more positive note we do get excellent views of wild boar, jackals, nilgai, chital (spotted deer) and even the rarer Sambar deer - no doubt all forced out into open ground to find water to drink. We leave the park that night with the eerie sounds of 2 sarus cranes calling. The sound is amazing but there should be hundreds of them, not just 2.
We are unsure if it is worth returning to the park at all, but decide to go in at dawn the next day and concentrate on the forest areas. This also proves no good due to thick fog reducing visibility to only a few metres. The park wardens and guides huddle around their fires to keep warm. When it opens we go to the visitor centre and see pictures of what the park used to (and still should) look like. There is no information about what management works are being carried out or about the obvious threats to the entire park and its wildlife.
Outside Erika corners the information officer and we try to ask him about the state of the park. He begins by trying to tell us it is dry season and there is nothing wrong! He then admits there was poor monsoon but is clearly vexed by being asked such questions. He asks if we want to make a complaint - “no are we just interested in what sort of work you are doing in the park?” we ask. He tells us he protects the park, but gets very vague about how he does so. “What sort of management would you like us to do?” he asks us; “you tell me what you want and I will do it” !! I hope this is not really the parks’ management policy.
He does tell us they are trying to get water brought into the park and admits there is a problem with human pressure on the park, but only when we ask him leading questions. We try to ask if they have the power to stop encroachment form villagers, to arrest people illegally cutting wood and grazing cattle. He says yes but denies it is a big problem. We tell him where he can easily find it happening. He also tells us the cattle in the park are “feral cattle, they are here since ancient times”. We have previously been told that “every cow in India has an owner and that every cow knows where is his house, and every owner knows where is his cow”. I believe this version more somehow.
Groundwater levels are obviously getting lower and pumping this to preserve to the last few pools is clearly not a long-term sustainable option. There is no easy quick-fix and it seems a lot of the damage has already been done, but that without more will to first acknowledge the problem and do something about it from the government, Bharatpur wetlands will soon be a thing of the past.
On our second afternoon we meet two local students inside the park, they are studying botany and ask us if there is any water in the direction from which we have come. They are the only other people we meet who seem concerned, saying that it makes them feel very sad to see it turning into a desert.
We decide not to hang around any longer and our hotel guy doesn’t seem surprised when we tell him we won’t be staying for 4 nights after all. There must also be economic impacts to the demise of the park. It is 2 days before Christmas and our plan to spend it in a “wildlife paradise” are no longer looking likely. We decide to speed off to Jaipur where we hope we can at least find some other travelers and a party to cheer us up.
Sorry if this blog has become more of an eco-political essay, but as an ecologist I was deeply disturbed by the state of Bharatpur. If you want to do something to help put pressure on those who run the park then please visit
TakeAction and also think about your own daily actions and the effect they have on the global environment and far flung places like this.
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Kate
non-member comment
Depressing :(
How depressing, most especially the attitude of the park staff. I totoally agree with your assessment of all the people visiting who have flown to India for their holiday and don't seem to connect the change in monsoon pattern with global warming. I'm doing my bit here and still trying to make people feel as guilty as possible for flying off as and when they feel like it. I'm getting a bit of a reputation as a mad flying-hating environmentalist - and depressingly this is amongst people who work in the environmental sector. There is such a huge disconnect between what people say they believe and what they actually do. Right, I will stop ranting now! Happy New Year to both of you, love Kate