I was increasingly getting jittery as my railway ticket was not yet confirmed. I was checking it online everyfew minutes. Finally, my ordeal was over at 8.15 pm barely three hours to go before the schedule departure time of the train.

To make the matters worse, I was thinking that the ticket wont get confirmed, so hadn’t packed. Naturally, something or the other would be missed. However, I had never imagined that I will miss my tripod. I had packed the tripod in its cloth bag, but while rushing from the room, I forgot to pick it up. What a costly mistake.

On 1st of November 2008, I got down at Naupara junction. It is a small junction with hardly any construction. I got into an auto rickshaw. And what a drive it turned out to be!

I don’t know whether the driver would have ever seen F1 in TV. Being in a remote corner of India, this seems to be impossible. However, the way the auto driver started driving his auto at breckneck speed, dodging the pot holes, he would have put aspiring formula one drivers to shame.

I had a tough time understanding the language as I don’t follow Telugu. I reached the forest guest house. I could see pelicans and painted storks flying by. I could see a watch tower constructed within the premises. Without waiting for the watchman to open the door of the Forest Rest House, I climbed up the tower and could see a small colony of pelicans nesting in a nearby tree. The sun was setting and I took some record shots of pelicans. Normally, I am not so keen in photographing Pelicans and Painted storks nesting. The background comes out pretty clumsy. I tried photographing them against the setting sun to make it slightly different than the run of the mill pelican shots.

I came back to the room and unpacked. I had a chat about Mr. Mrutyunjaya Rao – a man whom I had come to support in the fight to save the Telineelapuram wetlands – to understand the area. I asked the watchman to get some food from a nearby hotel. In the meanwhile, a few local guys arrived and striked a conversation. Initially I was polite with them till the time one of them offered to arrange someone to remove my loneliness. I had to show them the door and then retired for the night.

Lets see what is in store tomorrow.

It was tough sleeping in the forest rest house. The building is hardly maintained as this is not a regular tourist spot. There is a watchman who hasn’t got his salary for a long long time. Naturally, he felt very good when I tipped him yesterday. It was a difficult night and I woke up feeling uneasy.

I finished my morning chores and then slept for half an hour. I was woken up by a local guy whom I had met earlier. He was from Orissa and had settled in the village. I went out to photograph the pelicans and painted storks. I was urged by the locals to shoot the painted stork and I realized that they feel painted stork is better. On questioning, I was told that every year they wait for the arrival of painted storks and consider the day of their arrival as an auspicious day.

The forest watchman brought tea and breakfast for me. After having breakfast, I took an autorickshaw. There were confusions galore, as I could not understand their language. The auto rickshaw driver and the forest rest house watchman took me to the sea thinking that I am a normal tourist. I could not even convey it to them that the extremely bumpy ride was a waste of time. I had lunch in a small thatched roof restaurant. In such kinds of places, there is no point in asking for the menu. You eat whatever is given. Surprisingly, the hotel owner knew a smattering of hindi and provided me with some piping hot vegeteraian meals.

A Pelican builds its nest in Telineelapuram

A pelican flys by with Painted Storks in the background

I then went to another place and could find lots of Open billed storks in the fields. I could find a pair of pied kingfishers perched on an electric pole. Black wing stilts, cattle egrets, median egrets, Indian roller, common rail, water hen, coots, shoveller, kite, harrier….

It was tough trying to photograph using only my 300mm lens as it was difficult to handhold my 400mm lens that weighs 5.3 kgs. All the time I was cusing myself for forgetting my tripod without which the 400mm lens was difficult to use.

Will this be the sunset for the beautiful wetlands

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