Wayanad, in India’s Western Ghats offers pretty much the same species as Coorg in Karnataka and Mudumalai in Tamil Nadu.  We stayed at the Grassroots Wayanad Lodge near Kalpetta which is between Bangalore and Kochi so either can serve as your gateway city for your Central Asia award.  We had Adi (Aditya) the owner organize a local guide with a jeep to take us birding.  He was a bit late picking us up but we did see a few more birds along the roadside just outside the lodge.

While having breakfast, we watched some kids playing soccer.

The driver finally showed up and we headed off to the nearby rainforest along the river to look for birds.  We started too late to get really good sightings but the butterflies were numerous and very pretty.

Next we visited a lake that seemed to be a popular picnic spot for locals with pedal boats for hire.  It wasn’t very birdy though.

We saw a few more birds including a female Scarlet Minivet on the way back, then picked up some takeaway food to bring back to Grassroots for lunch.  We pulled over an ice cream seller on a motorcyle and bought some ice cream to take back as well.