Trace Tagore’s footsteps in Santiniketan
Rabindranath Tagore’s famed address is India’s newest UNESCO World Heritage site. The ashram built by Tagore’s father, Debendranath “Maharshi” Tagore, Santiniketan was later developed into the Viswa Bharati university by the Nobel laureate. The campus is open for visitors, as are the library and museum at Bichitra, one of the many houses in the town that has Tagore’s manuscripts, title deeds, letters, pictures, and paintings. Winter is the best time to visit this charming town’s quiet bookstores, cafés, bazaars, and forests.
Search for snakes on a nocturnal herping expedition
Walking through a rainforest at night, wading through a knee deep stream in the dark, and sliding down desert dunes by torchlight are just some of the adventures on a herping expedition. Herping is an activity that involves searching for reptiles and amphibians in the wild. In recent times, herping has picked up in India. As home to a vast array of herpetofauna, herpetology trips are a great way to explore India’s unique microhabitats.
On a guided herping trip, an expert will lead you by torchlight (herps are usually nocturnal creatures) into habitats like the barren hillocks and scrub around Bengaluru, the grasslands and fields around Chennai, the dunes of Jaisalmer, the eastern Himalaya of Arunachal Pradesh, or the forests of the Western Ghats. Look in bushes and under rocks and into streams to find frogs, snakes, and species like king cobras, tiny resplendent bush frogs, and the limbless skinks of the desert dunes. These trips serve as a window into a different world, one of microfauna that comes alive after dark.
