By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
My guide at Bharatpur National Park was incredible. After 4 hours of cycling along the hot dusty tracks we got to know each other. I felt very sympathetic to the manual labour of his job and also curious about who he was and how he lived. He said he used to live in the park but then they changed the boundaries. I pushed him to tell me how he felt about that and he went on to explain that it was better not to live in the park because there were less farming restrictions. In my time in India it was rare for anyone to speak critically about their job or country to tourists and when they did, they chose their words carefully. However, this guide was made of different stuff. I always liked to pick a rebel. In the hours we spent together he must have found me every single different species of animal there was in the park; boa, jackal, porcupine, grey hornbill, pied kingfisher… All of which we got off on foot to see up close. I hid my fear and put my trust in him. Around lunchtime, he mentioned that just outside the park were Egyptian Vultures and asked me if i knew what they were. I said of course they've got that cute yellow face. He offered to take me to see them and I agreed. He then added that they are vultures and we would be seeing some carcasses… I said I was cool with that. He tactfully mentioned we'd also have to climb a 10ft wall and that he hadn't eaten today so we'd just nip to his house and get some. Again, I agreed although in the back of my mind I was thinking 'i'm never telling my mother about this.' A few minutes later we hopped the wall, well, I say hopped. Much to my guides amusement he actually had to give me a leg up and proceeded to boast how his wife nimbly nipped over it twice a day. I was not amused. At his house I petted a buffalo calf tied up in his from garden and had chai with his family on the roof whilst they chatted and he ate masala sandwiches made by said wife. Once refreshed we started walking towards what appeared to be empty fields. As we started picking our way through the vegetation I began to notice body parts and what looked like aborted calves. My stomach began to feel uneasy and l could feel the heavy chai slosh. He pointed upwards signaling the vultures would usually be circling above but the sky was a featureless blue. He led me to where the pit was and carefully avoided the packs of dogs gnawing and tearing at bones. There weren't limbs of cows and horses anymore but huge carcasses. I hadn't really thought about the warning too much and I was clearly shocked. My guide explained that because beef is banned the dead bodies of cows must be disposed of somewhere and this was it. As we turned a corner the sound of the engine got louder and I could hear men shouting. This was the reason there were no vultures. Three men were unloading dead cows they had picked up from the streets and throwing the corpses from the pick up truck into a pit. I raised my camera and started shooting but the stare they gave me made me stay my hand quickly. There are many restrictions on photography in India and I knew they definitely did not want me poking around there with a camera. We turned back to go home, I would have felt disappointed not to see the vultures but the whole experience showed me the (literal) underbelly of Rajasthan and glimpse in to the lives of the untouchables.