In January 2025, Keoladeo National Park in Rajasthan was the venue for Season 10 of Wildclicks, an annual live photo contest. Contest runner-up Raj Desai’s photographs of the park build a narrative of life, poetry, and perspective, highlighting Bharatpur’s biodiversity and challenges
Text by: Swati Singh
Photos by: Raj Desai
In January 2025, Keoladeo National Park in Rajasthan was the venue for Season 10 of Wildclicks, an annual live photo contest. Contest runner-up Raj Desai’s photographs of the park build a narrative of life, poetry, and perspective, highlighting Bharatpur’s biodiversity and challenges
Keoladeo Ghana National Park in Rajasthan (also known as Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary) is a haven for birdwatchers and photographers. Bharatpur’s history is one of transformation, from a site where birds were once hunted for sport to its current position as a bastion of avian protection. This man-made and managed wetland is rich in biodiversity and a “birder’s paradise”, attracting flocks of human visitors. Supported by the water from the Ghana Canal, the park’s landscape is dotted with ponds, lakes, and waterways where countless resident and migrant birds and other small creatures thrive. Although avian wildlife is the park’s biggest attraction, numerous other species, such as monitor lizards, macaques, and nilgai, also live in this protected area.
For photographer Raj Desai, Bharatpur offered an endless canvas of opportunity since the park is navigable on foot. This ease of access means that photographers like Raj can experiment with different camera equipment and immerse themselves deeply in the surroundings. “In most other national parks, movement is restricted, and you cannot get as close to the wildlife as you do in Bharatpur,” he says. Walking through the park, Raj captured images that tell a larger story of the circle of life: of resilience, death, and transformation. Taking a cue from Wildclicks mentor Saurabh Desai’s style, some of the images in this photo story are presented as “visual poetry” in which the photographer presents an abstract or artistic perspective of a landscape or object and allows viewers to interpret the story beyond the frame. In this artistic style, colours may merge into each other like in an oil painting, and the scene evokes an emotional response.
This series of photographs shows that Keoladeo is more than a tourist attraction; it is the protected home for a variety of wild creatures. But having a protected status is not enough. The park faces numerous challenges posed by human intervention, tourist footfall, and its proximity to human settlements. The true task of conservation lies in managing the various threats the birds and animals face while ensuring the park remains a serene and welcoming space for visitors, human and otherwise.
As the morning mist descends on Keoladeo National Park on the eastern edge of Rajasthan, it casts a spell on the mosaic of habitats that spread across the park. Dry grasses and reeds obscure waterways and silhouettes of large trees loom in the distance. Here, you can get a close-up view of nature, and also take a step back and admire the ethereal, expansive wilderness from afar. “It is impossible to tire of this landscape because it is timeless. Even on the tenth visit to this same landscape, I saw something new and unexpected,” Raj says.
“This is a quintessential shot of Bharatpur. With the golden morning sunlight reflecting on a pelican as it swims in the wetland, while the rest of the landscape is covered in mist,” Raj tells me. This image captures the play of dawn light and the calmness of the water — and the serenity one seeks in wild spaces. “I took it at the very last moment, right before the contest submissions were about to close,” Raj adds.
A pair of sarus cranes hails a new dawn. Native to India, these cranes are a common sight in Bharatpur during the winter season. Sarus cranes mate for life and are considered symbols of fidelity and fertility. “This sarus pair had an adolescent with them (just outside the frame). It emphasised to me that when given nourishment and care, life will thrive,” Raj says.
Increasing tourist footfall into the park has led to the introduction of e-rickshaws, replacing the slow-moving cycle rickshaws that existed earlier, which has made the park more accessible for larger groups. Though welcomed for its convenience, this move has also resulted in increased animal (especially reptile) deaths as they become roadkill. This image relates that story — of the accessibility of rickshaws in the park juxtaposed against the death of a monitor lizard, killed by a passing vehicle, its carcass in the foreground.
As Desai walked around the park, he came across the corpse of a painted stork chick. A sign of death amid a landscape teeming with life after the breeding season — a reminder that life and death run parallel to each other. “In a way, it is disorienting to see death up close, so I shot this with a fish-eye lens,” Raj says. News reports from January 2025 indicate that park authorities had detected some instances of bird flu among painted storks in the region, so Raj wondered if that could be related to the death of this bird.
Due to a lack of complete fencing of the park, animals from nearby villages sometimes find their way into the park. When cattle become unviable and can no longer provide milk, some cattle owners tend to get rid of them on roads or release them in wild spaces. Here, a stray dog has foraged a chunk from a bovine carcass.
“Panning out and slowing down the shutter speed of my camera, I saw this scene as the park grieving the loss of life that it witnesses daily,” says Raj. “I felt this scene of the day’s last rays was an abstraction of that grief.” The reflection of the setting sun and the end of the day symbolises the inevitability of death, while still hinting at renewal and the promise of another day.
Watching this baby rhesus macaque was a gentle reminder that the cycle of life continues in the park. Some local guides told Raj that the British colonial administration introduced rhesus macaques into Bharatpur by the truckloads, though this appears to be a myth. Rhesus macaques are a native species in many parts of the Indian subcontinent, and they could have inhabited Keoladeo naturally. However, their growing population is a challenge for the park’s avian wildlife as they disturb nests, eat bird eggs, and threaten their survival.
As they exit the park, visitors often pay their respects to Lord Shiva, considered a protective deity, at a temple at the park’s entrance/exit. Although the park is a protected area, the everyday task of protecting the species that live within it falls to the forest department staff. They clean the park, maintain its routes and waterways, and even manage invasive plant species which may take over native foliage if left unchecked. Tourists may come and go, but their impact is managed by the people outside the limelight, working in the shadows to ensure a pleasant experience for all visitors. However, the primary onus of ensuring these wonderful species do not disappear or die lies on us. We, the visitors, must protect, nurture and conserve the wildlife of this place with hope and optimism.
About the contributors
Raj Desai
is a wildlife photographer with over 20 years of experience. He blends passion, technical precision, and storytelling to capture nature’s beauty—driving conservation, mentoring, and joyful creativity through SevenRhinos.
Swati Singh
is a writer, educator and law student who has worked at institutions like Ashoka University, Unacademy, and Lumiere. When not running behind deadlines, she likes to go on walks, grow mushrooms and make cheese.
