After six weeks off work with a seriously painful back, I am (slightly reluctantly I admit) back in the saddle and “at abroad” again (as the phrase goes).

Before I started flying for a living I used to get really excited thinking about the birds I’d be able to see from my hotel window, as - beer/diet-coke in hand - I stood on my verandah post-flight overlooking the miles of luxuriant forest or clean white sand stretching off into the distance below me. I may live in a residential area, but “at abroad” would be very different - wild and unpopulated, with parrots, and small red birds dipping their bills into the bougainvillea, the background sounds full of strange whistles and chirps…

I’m sure if I said - for example - that for my back-to-work trip I was going to Delhi in northern India, your mind would fill with images of new and exotic birds, the waft of spices, the bustle and colour of India - of course, as I discovered many years ago big hotels are built in cities not national parks, health-and-safety demands that the windows don’t open in case a world-weary business exec decides that he or she can’t face another round of contract negotiations and makes an undignified swallow-dive into the car-park from ten floors up, and the only sound filtering through the walls is next-door’s television…And the view? I dare say, you probably wouldn’t have conjured up anything like this…

Not what you’d hope for after an eight-hour slog across the skies eh? Oh well, wherever you look out of a hotel window you are always going to see a few birds, and even if they’re rather common and relatively uninspiring species like Ring-necked Parakeet, Common Myna, Black Kite, Feral Pigeon, and House Sparrow, there’s always going to be a hotel garden to get stuck into.

Truth be told I’m a huge fan of hotel gardens. You don’t always stagger off a plane into 90 degrees of heat and monsoon humidity and feel like charging off somewhere - especially if you’re going to be back on the plane returning home a mere 24 hours later! So down to the garden I went…

I’m going to sound like a right moaning minnie, but unfortunately the hotel garden at the Sheraton New Delhi is of the “Heck, we forgot to leave somewhere for the guests to go outside - how about we partition off some of the car-park, build a flower-bed or two, put up an umbrella, and hope everyone prefers to stay inside anyway?” type. A quick wander around added a Common Tailorbird to the birding day-list but precious little else (exciting if you’ve never seen a Common Tailorbird of course, but not especially so if you saw your first one back in 1985).

So why bother to write a post about something so dull? Well, friends are beginning to think I’ve slid off the blog precipice never to return so I felt I really ought to write something, and those flower beds I mentioned…? Flowers attract insects, and who couldn’t be fascinated or charmed by finding these three “bugs” just inches from the end of your nose?

Common Lime Papilio demoleus

Paper Wasp Polites sp

Carpenter Bee sp

Yes, the first few times you get back in the saddle may not be the most comfortable, but it’s good to remember what it feels like to dream of the great outdoors “at abroad” again!