Decided to harvest the two beds of Chillies in the garden, as the evenings are starting to get quite cool and it is a good time to cut the plants back before mulching them in for the winter. Had a really good crop this year, with over six Kilos of Red Chillies and about […]
Just another sunny November day at Basunti – Poinsettia and Bougainvillea coming into full bloom and Black Redstart, Great Tit, Oriental White-eye and Himalayan Bulbul taking a bath.
Andy Fish and Andy arrived after a very successful fishing trip in the Barot and Tirthan valleys, Himachal Pradesh. A tally of over eighty wild Brown and Rainbow Trout, caught in five days, made for two very happy fishermen. As the water levels have started to drop in the lake, they decided to try […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Having noticed over the past few weeks a distinct reduction in the number of Golden Mahseer in this part of the Maharana Pratap waters, we have decided that from now on all Mahseer will be on a strict CPR (Catch, Photograph and Release) basis at Basunti.
This decision made, we decided to spend the […]
