Posts

Showing posts from October, 2012

Featured Post

Seville

Image
SEVILLE Sevilla After living up to some wonderful moments at Granada, the birthplace of the renowned Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, we decided to further our coadventure through the heartland of the southern Iberian Peninsula, composed of lowlands, mountains and valleys. You’ve got it right. To arrive at Seville, we traversed the fascinating Spanish heartland. The landscape presented some vistas composed of rustic plains, lowlands, winding roads through the Sierra and then vast stretches of olive orchards. About 200 years back, a couple of decades after Napoleon’s army plundered and destroyed parts of Alhambra, an American diplomat and writer, Washington Irving and his Russian counterpart traversed the path from Seville to Granada. It was highly adventurous then, because of the fact that the transport system at that time was horse-drawn carriages and muleteers. It was such that they could ‘wander among the romantic mountains of Andalusia’ (Tales of Alhamb...

Where the Cranes fly -----Sultanpur

Image
SULTANPUR BIRD Sanctuary About 15 km from my house in Gurgaon lays the famous Sultanpur bird sanctuary. Before it attained the status of National Wildlife Sanctuary it was known as Sultanpur Jheel. Peter Jackson, a famous ornithologist stumbled upon it in the seventies and decided to pursue the Indian government to convert it into an exclusive reserve for birds. Finally in the eighties the jheel attained the national status of bird sanctuary. The sanctuary is situated on the way to Farruknagar in Haryana. From Gurgaon it is the road which runs almost parallel to the road leading to Pataudi, the princely estate of late Mansoor Ali Khan -- ‘Tiger Pat’ to cricket lovers all over the world. The sanctuary used to be a favorite haunt for late Dr Salim Ali, the greatest ornithologist of all times. Haryana is a state where one gets the chance to see the rarest of birds,compared to all other states in India . Haryana Tourist Lodges  are all  named after birds , like ‘Jungle B...