Keoladeo National Park (Ghana Bird Sanctuary)

Spread across roughly 29 sq km on the edge of Bharatpur town, Keoladeo National Park is one of the most remarkable engineered wetlands on earth — a mosaic of shallow lakes, reed beds, grasslands and acacia woodland that draws waterbirds by the tens of thousands.

• Ghana means 'dense', a nod to the tangled forest, while the park takes its name from an ancient Keoladeo (Shiva) temple that still stands at its heart.
• Recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985 and a Ramsar wetland of international importance, it protects more than 370 recorded bird species, making a single morning here feel like leafing through a field guide come to life.
• What sets Keoladeo apart is that its wetland is entirely human-made.
• In the mid-1700s Maharaja Suraj Mal raised the Ajan Bund, an earthen dam, to tame monsoon floodwater from the Gambhir and Banganga rivers; the shallow basin it created became a magnet for migratory birds.
• For much of the last century the marsh was managed as a private preserve, but that era is long over — since being notified as a sanctuary and later a national park in 1982, Keoladeo has been run purely for conservation, its sluices and water levels now carefully managed to keep the wetland alive.
• The birding is spectacular and unhurried.
• Winter brings vast congregations of ducks, geese, spoonbills, painted storks, ibises, herons and the stately sarus crane, while the monsoon (July to September) turns the heronries into noisy nesting colonies of storks and cormorants.
• The park was once the western wintering ground of the critically endangered Siberian crane, though none have been recorded since 2002 — a sobering reminder of how fragile these flyways are.
• Nilgai, spotted deer, jackals, mongoose, pythons and monitor lizards round out the cast.
• No motor vehicles are allowed inside, which is part of the magic.
• You explore the flat, tree-shaded avenues on foot, on a rented bicycle, or aboard a licensed cycle-rickshaw whose driver-naturalists (look for the authorised yellow plate) double as sharp-eyed guides carrying binoculars.
• Trained boatmen and guides can be hired at the gate.
• Vegetarian travellers will find Bharatpur easy going.
• Rajasthan's food culture is overwhelmingly vegetarian, and the town's mithai shops and simple bhojnalayas serve dal, sabzi, kachori and thalis — just confirm dishes are prepared without egg.
• There are no independently verified pure-veg brand names right at the gate, so many birders carry water and snacks in and eat a proper thali in town afterwards; the nearest fully-verified pure-veg names sit in Alwar and Delhi, well over 100 km away.