Dholavira is one of the places where the Harappans had settled down and they had built a huge city here. The Dholavira region also has a lot of birds and I was welcomed by a pretty one right in the morning.
I met a kid on the way to the city and he told me that he knows me and he also has subscribed to my YouTube channel. He said my bike is really good. I don’t have a YouTube channel and he might have subscribed to some YouTuber with an RE bike. He wanted a selfie with me and I promised to post it online. Fulfilling my promise here. 🤣
I reached the Dholavira site and went to the museum. The museum was very informative and was also very useful in setting us up for what we are about to see.
While all archeological sites need good guides having a good guide really elevates the entire experience. In all the places in India that I have visited the guides do a shallow job. Either they are ill informed or they halfheartedly explain.
The guide we had here was also bad. He was showing us a water storage tank and when we asked where the water came from he said that it came from the dam. Overhearing it, a visitor said “don’t blabber something. The dam was below. This is at a higher elevation. How can water come up the dam? ”. It was clear the guide knew very little. Anyways it is what it is and we continued with the guide. Most places shown were about the water conservation methods used by the Harappans.
We later visited the houses and other areas in the ruins. The whole city has not been excavated due to lack of funds. Though the boundaries of the city is known and marked only 10% of it has been excavated. The remaining are still buried underground. Hopefully the the coming decades we will get the money, excavate and understand the Harappans better.
Next was a Fossil park. There were wood fossils from more than 65 milllion years ago. More than fossils there were birds. Not one not two. Thousands of them. And various species. I got to see White ear Bulbuls, Red vented bulbuls, Lesser Flamingos, Greater flamingos, Black winged stilts, Red Shanks, Gulls, House sparrows, Brown rock Chat, Bee eater, Shikra and many more.
How do I know so many birds species names? I had a bird enthusiast family along with me. Mother (Neha) Father (Himesh) and daughter (Kiara) all knew about birds. The 10yr old Kiara knew so much about birds that she was not only able to spot them but also explain about them. And when I saw the birds through the binoculars, it was a different world altogether. It was a very new experience for me.
I went to a place called Chippars point. It’s a cliff with some rocks jetting out of the cliff. Below the cliff is the white Rann. You could stand on one of the rocks jetting out for a nice picture above the Rann. The place looks magical. And whatever land you can see (if you can see) beyond the Rann is Pakistan.
There was no one at the place and so I had to do a selfie session. After the photo session, I went to the white desert for sunset where I started hallucinating covered in this post.
Endless thoughts 