The day starts for me at 5:30 with a large mug of tea, which I drink on the Gate House veranda.it starts to get light at about 5:40 and I wait, with mug in hand, for the morning show.
The Basunti Babblers are a troupe of eleven adult birds. They are a bit […]
The monsoon seems to be coming to a close, as we have had no rain for the last five days and every morning starts with bright blue skies and stays hot and sunny. The pool at this time really comes into its own, nothing like an evening swim with a chilled glass of white, while […]
Monsoon rains normally start at Basunti in mid to late June with fairly light rains, developing into heavy downpours in July and possibly early August. By the end of August, the rains would subside, followed by the classic, glorious Indian summer months of Sept/Oct/Nov; Bright, clear sunny days, with cool nights, truly idyllic weather that […]
It is bone dry Himachal Pradesh and most of the day at Basunti is now spent in the garden. The Monsoon is late this year and everything is desperate for water. The Indian Bean Tree though loves the heat and is presently in full bloom.
This is the time the Mango starts ripening and […]
“We need beauty around us. Beauty is like a perfume impalpable yet so very strong. Beauty is the essence of life. Its feeling pushes the artist to create, opens the heart to love, leads the brain to clarify, invites the mind to comprehend and brings the body to participate. You find yourself in Beauty, […]
Within ten days of hatching the Bulbul chicks were fully fledged and had left the nest. I do not know if this is a normal time span for the Himalayan Bulbul, or if it was helped by the fact that they had their own parents, plus the Oriental White-eyes feeding them…
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One of the after effects of the storm is that any birds that had built their nest in an exposed location, found it completely trashed the following morning. The Oriental White-eyes build tiny, delicate, little nests. This one must have taken a direct hit from a very large hailstone as all three eggs were […]
May is the storm season in this part of India, when the plains heat up and the hot air collides with the cool air coming off the Himalaya. Yesterday was hot and sultry with a very hot breeze coming from the Punjab. I knew we were in for something special as what was coming […]
Decided to treat the next few days as a road trip with fishing thrown in. It was with great anticipation that we departed Basunti early in the morning and headed of, driving the back roads to Barot. About an hour from Basunti we were rewarded with the bizarre sight of a man […]
