It's a bird, it's a plane...it's a beer???

A Kingfisher is a type of bird. It is also the name of an airline here in India, and the name of a beer. The joke is that since you can't advertise for alcohol in India that the Kingfisher company just bought an airline instead...although I did see ads for the beer in the south.

So what does this have to do with anything? Well the day after visiting the Taj, etc., we went back to nature on a visit to the Keoladeo Ghana (KG) National Park about an hour outside of Agra (on the road to Jaipur, our next stop). KG is a bird sanctuary and according to my guide books the "best" in India. I wasn't sure what to expect but I figured that a bit of nature would be welcome after a few days of monuments.

Well, it was a wonderful experience. We hired a guide (as had been recommended) and two bicycle rickshaws and spent over 3 hours in the park. About 10 minutes into the park a stork flew overhead and we were so excited, our guide said that he would show us tons of storks up close, and he was right!

Once we got into the watery part of the park, a sort of swampish land, there were hundreds of birds, including a few kingfishers. The first one we saw was super small, but they are a bright bright blue and our guide with eyes like a hawk (no pun intended) was able to spot him from afar; then suddenly another one was super close.

My favorite birds were the "snake birds" (I forget their real names); they are called that because their necks look like snakes and when they go in the water and are swimming their bodies are under water and it looks exactly like a snake...kind of creepy, but definitely cool.

There was also this really cool red algae on the water that gave an almost surreal element to the park.

The birds weren't the only wildlife, there was a lizard that looked like a log, it blended in so well that it took me a few minutes to see it even though it was right in front of me; an antelope that I got a super fuzzy picture of that looks like one of those pretend big foot pictures; and, of course, cows, including one "mad cow". At one point when we stopped to explore by foot we heard this noise and saw a cow running to our area and some men running after it. I don't understand what was happening but they grabbed him and after much struggling took him away. It looked like he wanted to charge at us (or anyone for that matter) but it is also possible that he was in a special bird area and they were trying to get him to move. It was weird and slightly scary, I'm so used to having cows just walking down the street that it is very odd to see one being aggressive.

Anyway, even with a mad cow and even if you aren't a bird person, if you happen to be in Agra and have the time, I highly recommend going to this national park, it is amazing seeing all the birds and it is also nice to see so much nature being preserved after the craziness of the cities. And if you are a bird person, definitely come, you will go crazy!

And after all that birdwatching you can enjoy a Kingfisher beer with your dinner and think about the kingfisher birdies you saw.

Aside: whenever I have Indian food back home if I order an Indian beer they usually have Taj Mahal beer; I have never seen that here; here Kingfisher is The Beer yet for some reason I have never seen it at an Indian restaurant back home. I wonder why?

Picture time! Sadly the picture of the Kingfisher isn't very clear so here we have one stork (looking away) with some ducks with some of the super cool red algae.
Enjoy!