At the watery north-eastern edge of Darbhanga district, Kusheshwar Asthan joins two devotions in one place: a revered Shiva temple, thronged in Shravan and on Mahashivratri, and the wetlands that surround it. Declared a bird sanctuary in 1994, its roughly 29 sq km of marsh across fourteen villages become, each winter, a refuge for migratory birds flying in from Mongolia and Siberia.
Between November and March its shallow waters host Dalmatian pelicans, bar-headed geese, the Indian skimmer and — in fortunate years — the Siberian crane. Few places capture so well the character of lower Mithila: a flooded land where the sacred and the wild share the same horizon.