“Painted storks and blue bulls…”
Ringed around Jaipur and Agra two protectorates pulsate with wildlife. To the south, Ghana Bird Sanctuary whirs with feathered tribes—painted storks, plume-flaring egrets, and a fantasy of flyers stocked by the Maharajas of Bharatpur who once claimed this preserve for shooting. To the north, at Sariska, herds of blue bulls (antelope with bluish hides) and barking deer that yap like dogs romp ahead of elephants on morning runs. At dusk, watchers spot tigers from towers or race along jungle roads in Jeeps, catching predatory night-prowlers in the flash of spotlights. Spartan and sporting, Sariska Rest House is a concrete block of rooms; the food, a spice of curries, cashews, and fruits.
“Leopards, lake-mirrored marble…”
Jai Samand, a lake-puddled wilderness halfway between Jaipur and Bombay, springs with leopard and wild boar. In country too rocky for elephants, Land-Rovers make the game runs, returning rovers to the world’s most pleasurable dome, the Udaipur Palace, where guests stay in the super splendour of lake-mirrored marble.
Les raj, but game rich, Kanha National Park, a flight east from Bomby in the undulating central highlands, holds herds of uniquely Indian black buck and shy bolting barasingh, branch-antlered swamp deer. In addition to wildlife, India explodes with temples and palaces, a super shot of pleasures explored in thiry-six days on the tour “Beyond the Tag,” flying Air-India starts its new 747 Taj-in-the-sky, a gala of colour, with murals of the love god Krishna and windows stencilled in Mehrab fretwork. On three weekly flights from New York, by way of London, to Bombay, lotus-eyed girls in tie-dyed saris serve dishes both Occidental and Oriental. For very special travellers, heads of state and such, the flight-deck bar, all gold-lighted tables and batik hangings, splits into a double bedroom and private bath, as opulent as a Mogul’s alcove.
JEAN LIEDLOFF
**Four times down the Orinoco **
Jean Liedloff, writer on anthropology and ecology and an intrepid traveller in the best British tradition, has spent months at a time with the Indians in the Venezuelan jungle where the life is strictly Stone Age; hazards ditto. Heavy-duty jeans, shirts with firm snap closings, and Wellingtons act as a shield against mosquitoes. Tins of lentils, rice, meat, and masses of vitamins, especially E, supplement the native cuisine, which is mainly a pancake of roots beaten and thrown on a roof to dry, plus occasional game, bananas, crocodile soup. Medicine kit includes Dioquin, Lomotil, and appropriate antibiotics; has never had dysentery. Would tackle the Orinoco again tomorrow.
