Chilika Lake, Odisha, India    (Nov 2022)        

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Chilika Lake, declared the first Indian wetland of international importance in 1981, is the second largest brackish water lagoon in the world. It is home to many threatened species of flora and fauna, and a major site for migratory birds on the subcontinent, hosting over 160 bird species (source). The highlight of our visit to Chilika was our sighting of a couple of Irrawaddy dolphins who gave darshan multiple times (it happened too fast for me to photograph them), even as five noisy tourist boats chased them. :-)

Boat launch point	Off we go looking for ...	... Irrawaddy dolphins	Local birds
A brackish water lagoon	2nd largest in the world	Our boat and captain	Stopping on Rajhans Island
A sandbar of an island	Walking across to the sea	Island vegetation	Trash strewn around :-(
The Bay of Bengal	Elated tourist	Another elated tourist	Unspoiled beach
Rajhans Island	A lagoon at Chilika	Fishing nets at Chilika	Tourist
A long running scam on Chilika Lake Buyer beware. A dude will come to your boat on an island stop and break open clams and other shelled mollusks to extract gems. It's all fake and sleight of hand. They are not real gems. Also, even if they were real (they aren't), do not support this illicit killing of marine life for vanity products—grow up! It's similar to the idea of not supporting ivory products to reduce the killing of elephants.
Clams	"Extracting" a "natural" pearl	Breaking more mollusks	All fake