Cover Story Issue 91 · November 2026
Birding Season
Bharatpur, Chilika
& Winter Migrants
Dawn over the wetlands at Bharatpur, boats that know the channels of Chilika, and the quiet work of watching winter birds arrive. This month, we follow India’s migrants from famous sanctuaries to a village on the edge of the water.
12
stories this issue
4
sanctuaries
1
season, in depth
Inside this issue
- Bharatpur at dawn, not at noon
- Chilika and the boats that know the birds
- What November migrants actually do
- A village on the edge of the water
This Month · Birding Season
Inside the Birding Issue
01Sanctuary rules and the gates
Wetland travel gathers bad advice the way mud gathers footprints—old ticket prices, forgotten boats, and outdated blogs about driving into Bharatpur. This…
02A village on the edge of the water
Mangalajodi sits on the northern edge of Chilika, where the lagoon frays into marsh, channels and village land in Odisha. It is…
03A guest’s first pelican
Guest letter — a composite visitor voice from a first winter trip to Chilika’s marshes. Not the editors’ own travel. I thought…
04A hide, a notebook, no checklist boast
Somewhere between the first pair of binoculars and the tenth birding group chat, many of us learn the wrong ambition. We learn…
05One wetland that is not famous yet
Fame is a poor map of India’s wetlands. Bharatpur and Chilika deserve their reputations, yet November also fills quieter floodplain waters that…
06What November migrants actually do
In November, Indian wetlands look suddenly busier. The temptation is to narrate that busyness as spectacle — “thousands arrive,” “rare visitors grace…
07Chilika and the boats that know the birds
Chilika does not introduce itself as a single lake. It is a brackish lagoon on Odisha’s coast, wide enough that weather can…
08Bharatpur at dawn, not at noon
There is a version of Bharatpur that exists mainly in photographs taken after breakfast. The light is hard, the paths are busy,…
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From the Editor’s Desk
November taught us that the best hour with birds is the one before the gates fill, when the water is still and the wetland still belongs to them.
Every month, Travel Viewpoint goes deep rather than skimming the surface. This November, we follow winter migrants from Bharatpur at dawn to the boats of Chilika, and to Mangalajodi, a village that shares its shoreline with the birds.
Khushi Anand
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
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