“Wake up, wake up, wake up, it’s a beautiful day…” My phone alarm desperately trying to irritate the not so cheerful version of morning me. After snoozing it for the 3rd time in a row, I finally gave in and forced the irritated and grumpy me out of my camp bed. Ugh! Already regretting the “next episode” button on Netflix I ended up clicking the previous night.
Well it was 5:30 am and I have to get dressed, cook my breakfast, pack all my field equipment and be ready before the “Bustard Recovery Program” labelled car arrives in half an hour. It's always a rush and I make a mess, only to get helped by my calm and composed roommate, who always manages to wake up and leave the base camp on her separate field route before me.
My journey starts on the dark hours of the night, with a Rajasthani folk song playing on the car stereo with my driver and my field assistant as my companion. I stay busy fidgeting with the GPS device on one hand and the satellite version of Google Maps opened in my phone on the other. Over the initial days of my stay, my seniors of the research team trained me on how to navigate through the desert landscape, which is of course very different from any other landscape and now I am all on my own to guide and instruct my driver to reach to my study points on time. My study points are 90 wind turbine locations spread across a 3000sq km radius in the Thar Desert of Jaisalmer district of Rajasthan. Our driver Lal Singh, is a man version of GPS, and he never misses a chance to boast about how he is the best and nobody else can know the roads better than him. Well, I will give that to him, he surely never failed me in taking the shortest and the fastest route through the majestic desert.
It’s usually about an hour journey or even longer until I reach my study location of that particular day. Everyday I happen to witness how the sky slowly turns into a pristine blue from the pitch black and then the orange ribbons start fluttering across the sky painting a reddish hue. Gradually the gorgeous red ball of Sun emerges out of the clear horizon and soon you can hear birds chirping all around. People say you get bored with seeing or experiencing the same things everyday. But this so normal daily phenomenon of sunrise, has not bored me yet. I awe at this magical beauty of nature which feels the same yet different every single day.
Our car speeds across the smooth highway, with nothing but infinite sand, shrubs, grass and often trees spreading on both sides of the road and occasionally red or black coloured ancient rocky hills running at lengths along the highway. The landscape keeps changing through the journey. Sometimes, it’s a series of Aak (Calotropis procera), and sometimes it’s the Ker (Capparis decidua) or the leafless Thor (Euphorbia cadusifolia) that waves to us standing on the roadside. Sometimes it’s the vast yellow coloured mustard fields that shines in the golden hours of the day, and sometimes it’s just a maze of extensive grasslands of Lana, Sewan, Bhui, Dhamasa, Kheenp etc. (Haloxylon salicornicum, Lasiurus sindicus, Areva pseudotomentosa, Fagonia arabica, Laptadenia pyrotechnica). Much to our delight, sometimes we come across the Ber trees (Zizyphus jujube) filled with the reddish brown fruits which we feast upon. We drive pass the small villages or the ‘Dhanis’ consisting of small houses all built from the yellow sandstone. The scenery of men wearing white kurta and dhotis with bright coloured turbans and the women in their gaudy ghagra cholis surrounded by a herd of sheep or goats looks just out of a travel catalogue of Rajasthan.
As we reach closer to the study location for that day, the car takes an off-route from the paved main road and enter into the narrow unconstructed dirt lanes of the desert. It’s obviously not a smooth ride but a bumpy rough ride over the desert scrubland, yellow sand and red soil intersected occasionally by rocks and gravels.
My daily journey to my workplace is nothing less than a wildlife safari. Binoculars are always kept ready in front of me on the car dashboard. As the sun rises, the blue clear sky gets dotted by the soaring birds of prey – Vultures, Eagles, Falcons, Hawks, Buzzards etc. One can also spot an individual perching on the tree tops. I keep on practising my birding skills of identifying the species with my driver and field assistant (who might not be well literate, but has a lot of field experience than most wildlife researchers). “Griffons again and another Egyptian Vulture!”, “Is it a Tawny or a Steppe Eagle?”, “Oh look at the huge Cinereous Vulture out there!”. The tiny Larks flutter near the surface and a swarm flies right ahead of our car as if leading our way. The shy Chinkaras grazing idly on the grasslands, looks up to us from a distance, pauses for a while as if thinking whether to strike a pose or escape and then mostly runs away galloping to and fro. The sly Indian fox or the Desert Fox peeps out from the bushes, and then goes a length away and again turns back to look at us for a second before resuming its race. The so threatened species of Spiny Tailed Lizards also hasten across the floor to get inside their burrows as our car approaches.
The journey becomes even more adventurous, when on some days, unable to find even a dirt road, our car just drives over the scrubland on the sea of sand. As our car climbs up the rocky sandy hillocks, I hold on tightly to the handles to maintain my balance. And on one such day, suddenly with a screeching noise our car got stuck at a tilting angle. Well, this was quite a common thing to happen in this landscape. We all thought that like always, it will be a matter of few minutes. Digging the sand from the wheels and pushing the car is the only possible solution. But much to our concern, that wasn’t a lucky day for us and even after digging at the sand for half an hour, the car didn’t move an inch. We were standing on an elevated hill of sand, with no cellular networks in any of our phones, and no human being to be spotted at far lengths. The scorching Sun was right on top of our heads, making us sweat in the arid landscape, and we started panicking a bit. After an hour’s struggle, finally the exhausted us could again manage to get back on the car and resume our journey. Not even 5 mins have passed, that we stopped dead on our tracks. Just behind a rock boulder lying about 100m away from us, there stands a four legged white greyish fellow staring right back at us. We froze. We all were aware of the presence of wolves in this area, but neither me nor my so-experienced companions have ever seen one before. I should be panicking, but why am I feeling a strange thrill? Much to our relief, within seconds, this gorgeous white beast turned its back on us and ran, we kept on staring fixedly at it until it paused again turned back to look at us just before vanishing into the thick horizon of shrubs. I notice a glow on three of our faces, a glow which was not because we were safe, but to experience and see a wolf! Our expressions explained how we felt, a feeling I know will be shared by any wildlife enthusiast. I replayed this scene thousand times over in my head, yet it never lost its charm.
This is how my daily routine of travelling to my workplace never failed to surprise me. A tonic which urges the irritated version of morning me feel happy to start a new day of work.
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