Tuesday 12 November 2013
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Well, that is the
last my travels abroad for this year,
and I have to say I am not sorry!! Ever since I got back to Newent, and
understood finally what it was I had nearly lost, I am much happier at home
than travelling. I guess that makes me a sedentary bird,
rather than a migratory bird!
The trip was good,
although started off a little poorly, my train from Ledbury to Paddington was
an hour and a half late, so my plans to meet Ian Newton and Rhys Green at the
check in were scuppered. I have to say that BA did not get good points for
their helpfulness at check in, so as well as being stressed because I was late,
I was annoyed before even getting on the plane. However things improved then
because as I had to check in alone, and so because they were over booked and I
was travelling alone – I got upgraded!!
On arrival at
Delhi we got on a bus to the domestic
terminal and eventually caught the plane to Bagdogra in West Bengal. Most of
the trip from Bagdogra to Alipurduar was done in the dark, but it was on much
better roads than we travelled last time I went there. The hotel was OK, there
were 88 steps from my room to the meeting room which sadly was in the basement
. As I am not keen on Indian food, that part of the trip I did not particularly
enjoy. The meeting was good and we had good representation from several new
countries that were within the vultures range. There were good papers and
plenty of good discussion. All in all I
think the SAVE Meeting went well and we seemed to achieve a good amount of work
and decisions.
On the first day
there we went bird watching, sadly for me we saw mainly LBJ’s which pleased all
the rest of the twitchers!!!! But I wanted to see more raptors – they were
hiding!! We did however walk across a river bed with a little water (that was
fun) and crossed into Butan for about two minutes – which we did because we
could!! We went into the forest but did not see a great deal apart from some
lovely trees, but some of us did manage to pick up leaches, I had one on each
foot, and Toby was bleeding dramatically from his leg. Of course we had to make
up for lost blood later on, Toby and Chris replaced it with beer and I worked
on Gin and sweet lime soda (no tonic). I have to say that the gin left a great
deal to be desired, but if you drowned it it was bearable.
The meeting was held
in the basement of the hotel and after three days it got extremely depressing
as by the time we had finished each afternoon, it was already dark. So we
rarely even saw the daylight, let alone anything else. We did have one short
trip to the Centre and on the way back one of the other cars saw an elephant,
and some pied falconets, did I – NO!
The
trip back was extremely long, we left the hotel at 7.00am, with a short stop
for a cup of tea we got to Bagdogra by about 12.00 noon, our plane to Delhi
left at 2.30pm and the flight back to London did not leave until 3.40am! The
flight was uneventful apart from the fact that there were four squalling
children in our compartment, roll on child free planes. However when we got to
Heathrow things started to fall apart, it took ages to get off the damn plane
because some idiot decided that it was nice to let his small child walk rather
than carrying the damn thing. There was a huge queue at the immigration and
then I got to the Heathrow Express with just enough time to get the 7.58 train,
which would have got me to Paddington just in time, but it was cancelled, the
next one finally left at 8.20 and my train at Paddington happily left at 8.22
without me. I bought a new ticket (the bill for which I intend to send to the
Heathrow Express) and got on the next train to Gloucester, which was then
delayed because the doors would not
lock. So until my trip back from Argentina which was great and seamless
was not replicated on this one!! It
appears that all of us on that trip had the same problems and we all missed our
trains!!
It
is lovely lovely to be home, its quiet (Alipurduara was incredibly noisy at
night) my bed is blissfully comfortable (the one in India was rock hard, which
they all are), the gin is great and the dogs were really pleased to see me home
again. The Hospital is nearly done, the new smart hospital boxes arrived today
and very smart they are too, I can’t wait to get the whole thing finished!! It
will make a huge difference to us all and the injured wild birds that come in.
Our
new lawn mower is coming next week, I chickened out of collecting it and so
have got it delivered, it is coming from Carters of Swanwick who I have to say
have been wonderful so far in all they have done. I am looking forward to
trying it out!!
My
Hobby is flying really well, I am very excited about her, particularly as it
has not been great weather, she is called Killigrey. I want to be able to get her flying strongly in
case we do get very cold weather when I will have to stop flying and feed her
up. But so far the possible forecast worse winter for 100 years has not appeared,
although admittedly it is early days.
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