Taal Chappar: Paradise for Blackbucks and Birdwatchers

Tal Chhapar Sanctuary is a sanctuary located in the Churu district of Bikaner division in Rajasthan. Before independence Tal Chappar sanctuary was a Private Hunting Reserve of the Maharaja of Bikaner. This sanctuary is 210 km from Jaipur on the peripheral of the Great Indian Desert and situated on road from Ratangarh to Sujangarh.

But it’s not just the antelopes that make this sanctuary one of Rajasthan’s must-visit destinations. Chhapar is Shangri-La for a variety of other fauna too. Spiny tailed lizards, desert gerbils, jungle cats, chinkara, and a host of other land dwellers mean that a summer sojourn to Chhapar is totally worth braving the Rajasthan heat. But it’s in winter when birders from all over the world make a beeline. That’s why we visit in January.

The sanctuary is a home to nearly 1680 Black Bucks. Being a natural home of Blackbucks and you can easily see 500-700 animals in a single herd. It is the only sanctuary in India in which is having a good number of blackbucks in an almost tree-less, saline and flat-land. These black bucks have “Mothiya” for their food.

The sanctuary has lush green surroundings during rainy season, but gets dried up during summer season. Tourists visiting the sanctuary can witness various species of chinkaras, foxes and jungle cats. An ideal site for nature lovers and bird watchers, the sanctuary also serves natural habitat to various resident and migratory birds.

This is an almost entirely flat saline depression - known as a 'Tal'. The 'Chhapar' bit refers to an uninteresting small town nearby. The sanctuary is a savannah-like open grassland area with only an occasional acacia tree or clump of low-growing, extremely thorny prosopis shrubs. There are a few salt-pans around the edges of its relatively tiny fenced boundary of around 3 sq.miles (7.2 sq.kms.), but it is otherwise featureless with only a few trees and acres of tall, golden grass swaying in the lightest of breezes almost as far as the eye can see.