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Review of Executive Lounges at New Delhi Railway Station (NDLS)

During my recent trip to Uttarakhand , I was faced with a problem I had never encountered before. We were passing through Delhi, but we had hardly any time in the city. On earlier visits when I have had to change trains/flights at Delhi, I have always arrived in the morning and left again at night, visiting relatives in between. This time, I was arriving in the city at night, and leaving again early in the morning. There was hardly any time to visit people. I would only have a couple of hours with them before I’d have to leave again. For the first time, we considered booking a hotel, but there again, we were hesitant about the actual hotels, the costs involved, and the logistics of getting from the airport to the railway station and then back again from the station to the airport.  That’s when we remembered reading something about a corporate-managed lounge at Delhi station. We soon figured out that we could book online and pay by the hour. Besides, we also learnt that there wasn’t ju
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Spot That Bird! White Cheeked Barbet

Sitting on the balcony of my room at the Club Mahindra Kodagu Valley (Coorg), I heard this bird long before I saw it. From this pic, can you guess why?





This is a White Cheeked Barbet, a common bird in these parts, but nevertheless, a lifer for me.


The White Cheeked Barbet is endemic to the Western Ghats, and the hills around it. They are frugivorous, which means, they mostly eat fruits, though they also eat insects at times. Interestingly, Wikipedia tells me that they are arboreal, which means they live on the trees, and rarely visit the ground - not even to drink water, like some other birds. They get most of their water intake through their fruity diet! 


These birds play an important role in the forest as seed dispersal, and, at times, pollination agents. Thankfully, they still seem to be plentiful, and not endangered. 



Capturing one on camera, however, turned out to be a difficult task. I eventually managed to click these pics later in the day when I left my room and went wandering around, looking for it! 


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Location: Kodagu, Karnataka, India

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