Today like most I began with a stroll as sunrise for birds and to listen to the town wake up. After breakfast the driver that I was out with the day before picked me up for a 3 hour drive to Kalimpong in West Bengal. The place I am staying here is The Orchid Retreat, http://theorchidretreat.com/home.html The Pradhan family run a Nursery http://www.ganeshvilla.com/. Mr Ganesh Mani Pradhan is an avid Bird and Butterfly Photographer and showed me around the forested area of his property and pointed out some of the resident birds. Later in the evening I sat with him to view his collection of bird photographs. The organization of the pictures into bird types alone was phenomenal and caused me to reflect on the sad state of affairs in terms of my own pictures. He has some amazing photographs, the variations and bright colouration of some of the birds in this area equal any that I have seen. As an added bonus, a highly interesting coincidence, a while ago he had created a poster of a Himalayan Griffon in flight, with the added text " not all who wander are lost ". this blog title phrase.
Dinner was fantastic assortment of traditional foods, who said I was going to have difficulty finding food I would enjoy? Oh that was me, anyway the key is to simply ask for food to be not spicy. Duh.
Mrs Pradhan told me that she generally does not cook spicy anyway.
My cabin is low down on the property and the balcony overlooks the forested area so I have great birding right from my room. I just love this place, mostly all I see are trees even though were are just outside the city.
