My first ever bird watching trip : Bhigwan
My planning had started by the end of 2013, when thanks to my cousin, I came to know about this place, Bhigwan. Bhigwan is about 100 kilometers from Pune on the Solapur road, and is famous for flamingoes that fly 1000s of kilometers from South Africa to the backwaters of Ujani dam.
In an attempt to satisfy my curiosity I started searching more and more information about this place. To my astonishment I found that this place is the host to many migratory birds which come to the backwaters of Ujani Dam. Painted stork, kingfishers, wooly naked stork, herons, sandpiper, spoon bill, sea gulls, black headed gulls, good wits, cormorants, rudy shelduck, pratincole, flamingoes, and white stork are a few birds to be named. Extensively searching the net, I got some necessary information such as the exact place to visit, best time for birding and so on.
The backwaters form a small lake known as “Diskal”. It can be approached from two villages, Khumbargaon and Diskal. The best season to visit is winter, preferably from mid of January to mid February. For birding, you have to take a boat ride into the lake which might last for usually an hour one way to reach the place where birds can be seen. You have to reach the lake by 7 in the morning, or 4 in the evening.
Following some weird instinct of mine, I chose to go via Diskal. Since we had to go in the morning, we planned to leave Hadapsar at 4:30am. However I was supposed to park my bike at a friend’s place, which I wasn’t too sure of, and I lost a handful of time in searching for the place. Finally we left Hadapsar at 5am. The road is a beautiful 4 lane highway that leads towards Solapur. Although some might like it, for riders like me and my friend the road seems to get pretty boring after a while. After you cross the Baramati Chowk, look for the board showing Bhigwan. You will see a board showing Bhigwan 9km and after that within a few minutes you will see a service lane. Right ahead of the service lane is a small “tapri” and a board showing Bhigwan towards north west direction. Take that service lane. Within a few minutes you reach a small bridge over swampy waters. You might have already started noticing beautiful birds by now. Cross the bridge, go straight and you will reach a point where there are bungalows. A tar toad turns to the right near the bungalows. Take that road and go straight, the worst road of the journey is right in front of you. But this is the last part as well. Hardly 1 or 2 kilometers ahead you reach the boatmen and your beautiful journey begins.
I have this habit of doing a bit too much research while planning a trip, and so I had found contact numbers of few boatmen and contacted them. Our boatman was already waiting at the boat. It was 7am by the time we reached and the sun was just rising. We could see a very beautiful horizon in front of us and immediately started clicking. Our boatman, Bharat kaka told us that we should not waste battery now as there were going to be many beautiful birds in the lake. I had already charged my DSLR battery to full and so was least bothered of a battery problem. We quickly kept our helmets and riding gears in Bharat kaka’s house and sat in the boat.
By now we could already spot beautiful birds hovering overhead. As we kept on clicking, Bharat kaka kept on telling us to save battery. We royally ignored his instructions and kept clicking. This guy had awesome knowledge about the birds and told us names which sadly I cannot recollect. Painted stork, kingfishers, wooly naked stork, herons, sandpiper, spoon bill, sea gulls, black headed gulls, good wits, cormorants, rudy shelduck, pratincole, flamingoes, and white stork are the only names I can recollect. After clicking the birds to our hearts’ content we decided to turn around. By now it was already 9:30am and the sun was beautifully doing its job: it burnt our skins perfectly! We reached the shores and started our return journey by 10:15. However, on the same off road, every two minutes we spotted some new beautiful bird and went on clicking. To cover a 5 minutes road we took 45 minutes. Once we touched the highway, reached Pune in not even two hours, thanks to the modified Pulsar 200 NS which could go on at 120 kmph for quite a while with two riders on it.
You can contact the following boatmen to arrange a boat ride for you:
a) At Khumbargaon: Nitin Nagare : +91 9767571734
Sandeep Nagare : +91 9960610615
b) At Diskal : Bharat : +91 9766292989
The boatmen charged us Rs. 200 per person as we were just two people. If you go in a group, the cost of the boat ride may reduce as the number of people goes up.
But do visit this place, and visit now! Because the birds fly off by mid February, and return only a year later!
- Words by Nishi
- Photographs by Nishi and me
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