Final Analysis
When you don’t really know what to expect, all you have are high hopes and that belief in the dream. India clearly offers so much to so many people that I’m not sure I fit into the demographic very well.
Like all our previous trips to Africa together, this one turned into a bit of a bird-hunt. I’d often be bound to say that I hate this, but as should be well known, what I actually hate is the waiting around hoping for a sighting and this doesn’t just apply to looking for birds.
Let us start with the birds first. We saw a little over 300 species in less than four weeks. That’s pretty good by any account and both Fred and Chris saw many that they had never seen before – this is a great thing for someone like Chris who has seen over 4000 species in his lifetime. As for me, I thought that they were spectacular. I’d always thought of magpies as those curious monochromatic things and, while those same Eurasian ones are here in India as well, some of the others are truly spectacular.
What I found most gratifying was to see birds that I should really have already on the list, as they are fairly readily seen at home. So, I’m delighted to add common kingfisher and red-billed chough to my list. With a little analysis, it’s easy to see that I’ve added as many as 250 to my personal list which must now be approaching 1000 species. Bloody good job I’m not a birder!
But, of course, what really brings me to India is the chance to see mammals and, in particular, some of the cats. In that regard, this trip has very much been a mixed bag for us all. As I hope this book makes very clear, seeing a tiger was – and still is – one of my most emotional wildlife moments ever. Seeing a total of four different ones and finally getting a few good photos is all I need for the trip to be considered a resounding success.
Second, are the failures. Both the snow leopard and Pallas’s cat have to be considered failures, as I didn’t get a photograph of either. You do, however, have to consider just how hard they are to see and the circumstances of our time in Ladakh.
Finally, there are the unexpected wins. Our momentary sighting of a jungle cat, running across the road and then being visible in the long grass in Dhikala was almost as good as seeing a tiger. There was little chance to get a photo and I’m happy to let a sighting be enough. Seeing a sloth bear was wonderful. I’ve never seen a bear of any sort and this one is considered hard to see anywhere. Even JP, our stalwart guide was delighted with the sighting. Then there were the yellow-throated martens who came to raid the bird-feeding station at Sattal. Their proximity and lack of fear made them formidable photography targets and I’m delighted to have added them to my list.
Beyond the wildlife, there are the people and the places, the food and the culture. I have to admit that we didn’t really delve into the culture very much, beyond our obligatory trip to Agra to see the fort and the Taj Mahal. I’m pleased to say that I’m glad that I went, even if the crowds quickly proved to be a little much for me. Still, a couple of nice photographs that I can say are my own.
All the people who we had any dealings with were uniformly helpful and friendly, but even those dealing with tourist on a daily basis can have very variable English. Outsiders like myself just assume that in a country of so many languages where English is used as a lingua-franca, knowledge and ability would be widely good. It is not. We could always make ourselves mutually understood, but it did take a little effort at times.
The varied scenery, an inevitable consequence of such a long and varied journey, was the highlight of my time in the sub-continent. From the openness of the Gangetic plains, through the river valleys and steep hills of Corbett National Park and then on into the foothills of the Himalayas, each location was more impressive than the last. Spending time at Manila and then catching a misty glimpse of Nanda Devi would have been enough for me if it was not for Ladakh.
I may not have seen my target wildlife in the high mountain valleys of the Indus, but it really didn’t matter because I was surrounded by endless vistas of the high Himalaya and the Karakoram. Clear blue skies and endless snow-capped peaks brought with them the opportunity to take thousands of wonderful photographs.
Winter conditions made our visit there a hard and testing one, but it was worth the shortness of breath and difficulty eating and sleeping to have experienced such scenes of wonder.
Food was something I had been looking forward to for some time – who doesn’t like a good curry. Real life isn’t quite as enjoyable as it might have been. In the two or three high-class lodges we stayed at, the food was excellent; varied and flavourful. Elsewhere, I was quickly overwhelmed by the sameness of it all and the unexpected lack of spicing and flavour. Maybe this is more to do with using relatively inexpensive home-stays and smaller hotels.
As discussed, only one of the places was so bad that we would have left if we had a choice. At least it was for only one night.
So, in this final analysis of India 2025, I’m going to sound so much like Fred has always sounded. I really liked it, but I don’t think I’m ever going back.
Author’s Note
I’ve written enough of these texts now to at least feel that I have a bit of a handle on what I’m doing. Sometimes I need to write as I go along and for others, I’m content to rely on memory and write it all up at the end. This volume has, for the most part, been of the former variety. I’ve written it up when I’ve had decent power and a little time. So, that’s a few hundred words in one location and perhaps as many as several thousand in another.
The same is true for a title. Sometimes a title is obvious long before I leave for the trip and other times a suitable title comes to me along the way. On yet other occasions, that title might not present itself until we return and the book comes together.
Like any adventure to a distant place, one goes into it with unreasonably high hopes and expectations that are tempered quickly by circumstance and luck. Sometimes, like our last trip, there are trials and tribulations to even get the trip started. These can be enough to sour the experience badly, if not quite beyond repair.
And, being honest, I’m pretty sure that that last trip, along the southern shore of Lake Victoria in Rwanda and Tanzania was my least favourite of ten safaris to Africa. Even though I found a place that I could have been happy to never leave, the trip as a whole just fell flat because our flight was cancelled and we lost a day on the way out.
For this one, all the difficulties are entirely personal and occupy my time for the three months before we are due to leave.
In early December of 2024 I took Dad to see the doctor, as my brother and I both agreed that his breathing had become a little more wheezy than normal and perhaps he needed a course of antibiotics. At the repeat appointment a week later, he was deemed to not have made any significant improvement and we were immediately referred to the hospital – told to drive to A&E and report to them.
I hung around for the rest of the day while they conducted various tests and determined that he needed to be admitted. My sister took over when she finished work and we fell into a visiting routine while, in the run-up to Christmas the doctors treated him for an infection than appeared to be responsible for some fluid on his lungs and conducted various other tests.
Dad came home just before Christmas and we had a pretty good Christmas Day with the whole family out to visit him. He was his usual self, annoying his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, even though seeming very tired. By the time myself, Dad and my brother settled down to eat, he was clearly struggling. We put him to bed, but he was unable to settle and, in the end, shortly before midnight, we called an ambulance and he was readmitted.
Clearly, this wasn’t still a chest infection and the doctors were quick to spot that he had enlarged lymph nodes, a sure sign of something more serious that could be responsible for the build-up of fluid. A week into the New Year and we had the biopsy results that confirmed our worst fears. Cancer had spread throughout his body and his vital systems were shutting down.
His decline was stunning in its rapidity. Within a week or so, with his pain levels rising beyond those that a hospital normally manages, the decision was taken to move him to the hospice. While I’m sure that most of us would like to leave this life suddenly, or at least while we sleep, it is a comfort to know that, where I live at least, end-of-life care is available to all and provided with dignity, compassion and common sense. Let’s be honest here: If you are going to die and you are in pain, then there really shouldn’t be any limit to how much pain relief you can have. You can, and should, be given as much as you need.
The final few days of a loved one’s life can be the longest days of your life. When the end comes there is a seemingly unreasonable sense of relief. In fact, of course, that relief is both reasonable and understandable. The relief is shared equally between us all. How can we not be relieved that Dad’s suffering and pain is at an end? How can it not also be a relief that we no longer have to see that suffering? Put simply, it can’t be wrong.
With less than a month to go until our scheduled trip, I made sure to keep Fred in the loop and reassure him that I was still coming to India. Sometimes, practicality outweighs common sense and I’m now learning that the hard way.
There’s a very real possibility that, as I sit writing this half-way through an epic Indian adventure, I made the wrong decision. I perhaps should have stayed at home, giving myself more of a chance to process latent grief where I could be surrounded by familiar faces in familiar places. Instead, I find myself struck down with almost unbearable sorrow in a strange place in an even stranger country where communications are limited. At least I have a laptop and a working keyboard.
The fact that I’ve been to see and photograph the most famous monument to a lost loved-one in the world isn’t lost on me at this point. If the Taj Mahal is a metaphor for underlying personal grief, then it’s a pretty bloody good one. If not, then it’s a bloody bitter twist of irony to have it on the itinerary in the first place.
Then, to find out at the end of the trip that my long-term major customer had also passed away suddenly was definitely not what I needed to hear before coming home.
This author’s note is a round-about way of explaining that, for perhaps the first time, the title for this book came into being part-way through the trip, but as a replacement for a perfectly good title that I had from the beginning. If the idea for the title makes me burst into uncontrollable sobbing, then it must be the right one.
This book is about so much more than those 51 frames, but they define a thought; a feeling I have about the profound nature of nature and the need to explore the world for oneself.
Don’t let Attenborough take all the fun out of it: get out there and see for yourself.
