Rolly-polly Roy with his potbelly looks a bit like Ganesh, the elephant-headed Hindu diety with the “hang-loose” attitude. He went out of his way to make our stay at Hospedaria Abrigo de Botelho in Panaji a memorable one, even going so far as to carry me on his scooter to buy bus tickets.
Even so, we resisted his pitch to visit Goa’s famous beaches, opting instead for Bagwhan Mahaveer National Park, about 85 km from Panaji, so Roy arranged for a 6AM pickup. Backwoods Camp is a rustic tented lodge and one of Goa’s premier birding destinations. We planned to just wander around for the morning, seeing what species we could find, but we happened upon Loveng, Backwoods’ owner, guiding five UK twitchers. When they invited us to join them we just couldn’t say “no.”
Joining in
Loveng really knows the area and the birds and the Brits had birded India before so all we had to do was look where the others were pointing. The light was terrible for photos but so many of the birds were new to us that we added more than two-dozen species to our list before lunchtime, when we returned to Hospedaria Abrigo for a siesta.
This morning we ferried across to Dr. Salim Ali Sanctuary, just across the causeway from town. We shared a boat with a couple from Bombay out for a birding weekend. The sanctuary’s protected mangroves are a haven for herons, gulls, kingfishers and waders of all kinds. Most of the birds were familiar to us but we saw four new species before we had to snag a bus back to Panaji to check out of the hotel.
