I am actually going to have to produce a wobbly Egret to justify the title today aren't I?
Let's see what we can do.

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And so, we find ourselves at Bangalore. This city is one of the two I.T. hubs of the nation and is responsible for a good part of the country's recent years of financial growth and success. Of course, as even the Lonely Planet can correctly note ;) there is a bit of a problem with this new-found wealth filtering down to anyone, say, below the level of Vice Chairman of a multi-national company already pulling in 6 or 7 figures a year, but hey, that's business!!

Actually it's not, not always, at least. Except in this case it probably is - not that we saw much of the city (a taxi ride, a bus station, a train station, small chunk of an inner-city dual carriageway) but it didn't look strikingly prosperous as compared to anywhere else.
Well it was quite clean.
But they weren't distributing free iPod Nanos on the street corners or anything.

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OKay, as I said we didn't se much, so, your insight into this famous, important and powerful Indian metropolis is limited to the train station and anything muggins here was able to snap along the way.
Speaking of which I got my camera back from the repair shop today - lens works but the shutter button doesn't, so I can't actually take pictures, although I can look at them on a miniature LCD screen instead of going to the bother of lifting my gaze and peering at the real article. I will be wearing my best angry-but-still-civil hat down the same said repair shop tomorrow...

Bangalore train station from the footbridge; it all looks pretty familiar:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture018-1.jpg

The somewhat idiosyncratic/blunt/discriminatory/benevolent (delete as per your own interpratation and cynicism levels) nature of the railway carriage sub-division:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture016-1.jpg

This is only there to prove where I actually was - all I wanted was a picture of the platform sign and a 20-foot platform to stand on to take some nice shots of the station as a whole (and the massed ranks of autorickshaws out the front, must have been over a hundred) but no, I couldn't remember that much. So I settled for a purposeless photograph that I will now, purposelessly, share with you:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture015-1.jpg

You can see things are pretty damned informal despite the guys in the photograph below; if you fancy it you can drive your little 3-wheeler right onto the platform to make unloading easier and everyone croses the tracks at one end of the station by wandering carefree over the rails:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture014-1.jpg

This is very typical of urban houses I've seen in cities, even if it was just a passing shot of a random house. If you can't squeeze the mansion into the city, squueze all the features of a mansion into the space you have got:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture012-1.jpg

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Hampi group photo!

There was a very interesting guy called Dave at Hampi, staying in the same guesthouse. A Yorkshireman who lives half a year over there climbing, and visits his highly adaptive, highly adapted mate who live here pretty much all year round in a cave some miles away!!
That's Dave int he thoroughly ridiculous hat next to Maria, and the two guys on the edges were some of the ever-helfpul staff - I cannot bloody remember their names. The guy on the Left had one you'd think you might remember - Maria, can ye help mae oot, lass?? :

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(Bangalore again)
He he he - this is cool. I suppose with the recent assassinations and stuff I shouldn't have been taking photos of armed security personnel; not that it ocurred to me, mind you, but Maria (seen here harassing ;) them for all their worth) was just about to duck or start running:

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Back in Hampi just briefly...

Another unlikely balanced rock - if anyone knows that they have seen these exact pictures before do let me know please :) :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture005-1.jpg

Rocks, mountains, bloody rocks and mountains...

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture003.jpg

Sodding carvings:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/rory155-1.jpg

F*%†#!± temples! :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/rory148-1.jpg

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And now we must break for some video. It seems I have an absolute shedload of videos - almost the whole last 2 pages of this album - so I'll stick some here and another load more in a video post afterwards to clear them all up, as it were.

Course, we gotta hope I actually still possess the things......

Ahhh. It seems that we don't :**: >:-(

I'm not going to swear, but I will tell you that now none of us will ever get to see a full wraparound shot of Mysore Palace and Gardens; the Waterfalls near Madikeri *fume*; the uber-bumpy bus rides; the - I can't help myself, the fucking bastard fucking shits - Indian traffic dodging films which are worth small lumps of pure gold; the eagles circling the city skyline in Mangalore, from the hotel roof, no less; the waves crashing and throwing up clouds of spray and streaming in rivers over rocks on Mangalore beach; the cats and crows from the same area walking around each other without concern; and of the videos of the huge birds, bats and crocodiles flying at the bird sanctuary near Mysore; the coconut rop spinning from the backwater trip here in Kerala; the view of the valley - it was SOME view believe me - on the ridge of a mountain on the last day of the Madikeri trek (we'd only spent 72 hours getting there, of course I'm not bitter); the local cigarette roller who was making the Indian cigarettes, bedes, at a rate of knots; etc. etc. ad infuriatum.

In lieu of this I'm gonna let Kevin Kline say it for me. Just the first two scenes sum up perfectly how I feel:

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I feel better for that. Gonna have to get A Fish Called Wanda when I get that laptop... right, okay, moving on; the only video that seems to work at all is this tiny, 2-second `film` where you can at least see a croc moving. About 6 inches. Still, better than a slap in the face with a wet disembodied limb:

Soooo... Woohoo!! B) :>> 88| :wave: First dedicated travelling album finished! That's one and a bit albums down, one more to go. many duplications so hopefully I'll be able to clear through them in the 3 days I have left in this country not dedicated to transport and running away (booked my flight to Thailand this afternoon, see).

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And, we have achieved the wildlife sanctuary, at last. This place was called Ranganatthittu.. Ranganananathituu... Rangang...Rananga... *checks* .. Ranganathittu Wildlife Sanctuary (come one now, I was pretty close) and it was wonderful.
Wonderful beyond measure, the guide took us out in a little boat and rowed as almost silently out across a large lake studded with heavily-wooded islets, and, well, the sheer volume and variety of life was incredible.

Night herons, painted storks, cormorants, cranes, egrets, Ibis', spoonbills, even pelicans Kingfishers go without saying, of course, but you lose them in there - you lose anything smaller than a bloody heron in there - because of the size of the biggest birds. There were, among the painted storks (and the colours! Ohhhh!) were another kind of stork even larger and almost as big as the pelicans which were, frankly, almost implausibly large.

There were also, of course, absolutely loads of Marsh Crocodiles as well, they may not be Saltwater or Nile crocs, but they were big enough and thorougly magnificent.
Anyway, enough of that, have a look at some of the stuff:

Night herons:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture187.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture188.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture186.jpg

Painted storks nesting en masse:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture182.jpg

I have to say here that I was too excited to get proper photos; we were in the middle of these guy's flight paths and right next to hudreds of each species nesting, flying in, flying out, repairing nests etc. and it was pretty overwhelming, plus my camera isn't a proper one ;) so I apologise for the fect many photos are quite distant and possibly not very well focused :oops:

Just a bit of lake scenery:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture176.jpg

Nesting Pelicans!! Not easy to see I'm afraiod; they were hard enough to spot as they nested in the very highest of the trees, almost above us by the time they were pointed out (we'd never have spotted them ourselves):

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture169.jpg

Lake scenery with nice glassy water effect:

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Nesting birdies:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture178.jpg

A nice chunk of rock, it seems:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture177.jpg

This, I believe, is a painted stork in its lonesome:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture174.jpg

This definitely is an Egret - the fine feathers in the tail fan out over the eggs in the nest, as seen here. This one was doing so with its back conveneintly to us, right at the edge of the island where we passed:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture173.jpg

That other kind of Stork - not gonna wina ny beauty pagents but my, are they impressive nonetheless (needs a little rotate from ya):

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture172.jpg

This look a lot like another kind of Heron... not sure. Not a stork I don't think, but then, there are anothyer dozen species living there that I couldn't identify for a cash prize! :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture171.jpg

The subtley ominous signs of a crocodile in the water, but at least you can see 'em. It is when you can't that you are in trouble, as any Australian will apparently tell you:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture170.jpg

More storks up in the trees:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture168.jpg

A little culvet that ran through one of the islands, not sure if I got it but the foliage is lovely anyway :D :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture167.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture164.jpg

Storks in both flavours:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture165.jpg

And in neopolitan only :D :

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http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture155.jpg

- And.. *drum roll* no, it's not a plastic prop (I though one on a rock in the middle of the lake, silent, unmoving, was a model to entice the tourists at first!) but is in fact the first proper glimpse of the Marsh Crocodile, or for those not trusting Wikipedia, the Marsh Crocodile ;)

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Plenty more of these guys later, too. Toodle-pip!