Flight of the Cranes

We stopped in a small town on our way to Jaipur to see a thousand or so Demoiselle Cranes that migrate south from Siberia to a small town called Khichan (or Khechan or Kheecan depending on which map you read) and winter there for six months. The village raises enough money to feed the birds grain every morning and create a man-made lake for their afternoon retreat (a real feat in the rural desert). It was quite a weird phenomenon, but the town has so much pride for these birds that they have done many environmental initiatives including pesticide reduction to keep these birds healthy and coming back year after year. We were lucky enough to see these beautiful, large, and very noisy birds on their last day in the desert.