About 8 on the morning of the 29th I left Shillong on a big, comfortable sumo headed to Guwahati in Assam, 50 miles north. I got there about 10:30, coming down from the Meghalaya hills, though the area around Guwahati, on the Brahmaputra, is hilly, too, though much lower in elevation. I ate lunch across from the bus station while watching the cricket World Cup final on television. At noon I took a bus to another bus station outside town, from where I left on a 12:45 bus heading east, traveling south of the Brahmaputra and passing near the entrance to Kaziranga National Park, famous for its large numbers of rhinoceros.
The 125 or so mile bus trip passed though hills outside Guwahati, then flatlands (where we had a half hour lunch stop, with more cricket on television), and finally by hills to the south just before we arrived, shortly after 6, after dark, at the little village of Kohora, alongside the highway and just a mile or so south of the main entrance to Kaziranga National Park. I checked into a roadside hotel and met Anna, whom I had met in Nongriat. She and I went to the park headquarters to book an early morning elephant ride for the next morning. The elephant ride cost us 1000 rupees (about $16) each, plus the park entrance and camera fees for the day of another 1000 rupees. It's much cheaper for Indians. After dinner I met Nitin who had just arrived at my hotel, too late to book an elephant ride.
I had to get up early the next morning, before 5, for the elephant ride, but, incredibly, a guy next door to the hotel decided to practice on his drum set starting about midnight. He went on for about an hour. I also was awakened by heavy rain that night, maybe between 2 and 4.
I got up at 4:45, in time for the 5:15 elephant safari. At the park headquarters about 20 elephants were ready to take tourists into the flat, low lying national park (with an elevation of about 240 feet) just north of the Brahmaputra. The park is about 400 square miles in size and is said to have about 2400 rhinos, about 100 tigers, more than 1000 elephants, and lots of deer, plus many more animals. (A newspaper I read more than a month later reported that in 2014 27 rhinos had been killed by poachers and that 22 poachers had been killed and 47 arrested by the park rangers and police. As of May 14, 2015, there had been 9 rhinos killed in 2015.)
The elephants used on safaris carry either two or three tourists, along with a mahout. Anna and I had an elephant and mahout to ourselves and got to get on (from a high platform) and get away first. The round trip ride took about an hour, and I enjoyed the swaying ride atop an elephant. We started out under cloudy early morning skies through burnt grass and reeds, with only a few trees.
On an elephant humans can get much closer to rhinos than on their own. Rhinos are used to the elephants being close and don't seem to mind the humans on them. On our ride we saw a few hog deer and four very dark gray rhinos, very easy to see in the open terrain. We got right alongside a couple of the rhinos and also saw a small herd of ten or fifteen elephants, including three or four calves. The morning was misty and humid, causing my camera to fog up. Rain began to fall just before we returned. Afterwards we returned to the village for tea before trying to find someone to share a jeep safari into the park.
We did find someone at the park headquarters, north of the highway, to share a jeep safari, and left about 7:30 with a somnolent Swede named Lars and an excellent driver. With three of us, the jeep cost us only 650 rupees each, a little more than $10. We saw lots of elephants on the trip, first a group of domesticated ones, the elephants that had taken tourists on the early morning safari, bathing in a stream with muddy banks near the park entrance. Driving further into the park, the driver heard a rhino's call and we could see through the grass on our right one rhino chasing another, heading towards the road. Our driver backed away and one rhino, the one being chased, dashed across the road ahead of us. The other one halted sharply at the roadside, about 50 feet in front of us, and glared in our direction before slowly turning around and going back through the brush the way he had come. We heard some more high-pitched noises from that direction. We drove further, and saw a long brown snake, perhaps four or five feet long, near a big hole, which it soon slid into.
We drove on through grasslands and then a beautiful riverine forest under cloudy skies. The sun came out a bit. We saw turtles on logs in the river as we looped back towards the park entrance. In trees we saw a harpy eagle, gray headed fish eagles, egrets, and herons. On the ground we spotted about 20 green parrots with long blue tails, maybe hunting for insects. A pied kingfisher hovered above the river, then dived down to it. We saw quite a few rhinos and elephants and hog deer here and there. We watched one elephant walk down to a pond and give itself a mud bath with its trunk. We stopped at a pond filled with egrets and black necked storks. We arrived back at the village after 11. Anna left on a bus heading east and I had lunch.
About 1 I walked to the park headquarters and found two Israelis who had just arrived and were willing to share a jeep safari. We left about 2:15 with a much poorer driver than the one I had in the morning. We followed the same route as in the morning and saw a couple of rhinos and some elephants in the distance. We did see one elephant up close, a bull elephant first in the bushes and then on a road just to the left of the road we were on. The driver panicked and drove away quickly. We got a great view of a giant, yellow beaked hornbill, first on a tree and then flying away.
There wasn't really much to see until we reached the pond that had been filled with egrets and black necked storks in the morning. Here you are allowed to get out of your jeep at a grassy area right next to the large pond. Egrets and storks were still there, as were hog and sambar deer, about 20 of the latter, eating grass just beyond the pond. A rhino emerged from the trees and bushes beyond the grass and began eating the short green grass just beyond the pond. It would eat, walk a few steps, and then eat some more, slowly approaching the pond. When it reached the pond it drank for about three minutes. The nearby storks didn't seem to mind. Hog deer stood and ate grass in the background. Having finished drinking, the rhino continued moseying along and eating grass. It was great to watch, though noisy Indian tourists had arrived in their jeeps. We spent about a half hour there, the highlight of the afternoon.
The sky was darkening as we continued towards the park entrance. We passed two elephants and two rhinos in tall grass near the road. We came across a mass of jeeps at a small lake and were told a tiger had been reported, but we didn't see it. We did see an bull elephant and a rhino at the lake, in the middle distance. Heading towards the gate we came across a big hornless sambar deer standing motionless beside the road. They usually flee when humans are close. This one just slowly walked away. At the entrance gate Indian tourists were harassing a baby elephant. I saw that one had written his name on its back. We got back to the village about 5:45, just before dark. I was tired after a very early morning and a poor night's sleep and went to bed before 9. I had asked the hotel manager about the midnight drummer and he said he knew who he was and would ask him to desist.
I was awakened by heavy rain and thunder about 1:30. The monsoon comes earlier to the northeast than the rest of India, though I suppose this was a pre-monsoon rainstorm. Kaziranga National Park is closed from the end of April until November. During the June to September monsoon the Brahmaputra bursts its banks and floods the low grasslands of the park 10 to 15 feet deep. In the park are signs showing the flood level in different years. The animals flee to higher elevations.
I got up about 7. Dark clouds filled the sky. I walked to the jeep counter near the park headquarters but didn't find anyone to share a jeep. In any event, it was a rainy morning. I walked up to the government hotels nearby and looked around. They are quite nice, wooden and colonial style. Lots of tea bushes grow nearby.
About 9:30, after breakfast, I took a walk, under cloudy skies, heading north on the paved road from the village to the park entrance. I watched a woman in a rice paddy right beside the road very rapidly planting rice. She looked up and smiled. I crossed a couple of wooden bridges, with vegetation, including lotuses, clogging the slow moving streams beneath. Rain fell now and then. Before reaching the park entrance I turned west on a dirt road. I passed a house with some big hogs in front and ten little ducklings in a small pen. Further along a woman was using her feet to squish a big pile of mud, the mud to be used to cover the bamboo walls of her house. The houses I was passing were mud walled with thatch or metal roofs.
The dirt road turned south, heading towards the highway. I walked a bit further and then turned back. The sun was now out. I passed a school with a bunch of friendly kids now in the schoolyard, apparently in recess. They came running towards me and were very friendly. I again walked by the house with the ducklings. They were out of their pens, swimming along together in a newly planted rice paddy. I watched as a boy and his mother called them back and herded them back into the pen. The family was very friendly, and posed for a group photo: the mother, her son, a naked little son, and another woman.
Reaching the paved road, I walked to the park entrance gate. A very energetic young woman in a red sari was using a 30 foot long bamboo pole with a sambar antler tied to it to break off dead tree branches for firewood. She was very strong and expert. Branches crashed all around. She had two little children, not very well behaved, with her. She also had a little shop selling food to tourists at the park entrance. I sat in there and ate potato chips for lunch. Jeeps arrived for the afternoon safaris. I walked back to the village and my hotel slowly, stopping for quite a while to watch a woman using mud to hand plaster the outside bamboo walls of her house. I got back about 4 and about a half hour later I again walked along that road for about an hour, until almost dark. The sky was now cloudy again. I saw lots of egrets flying over the rice paddies and got out of the way as more than a hundred cows came down the road heading to the village. A cool wind blew.
The next day was cloudy all day and windy and chilly in the morning. At 7:30 I left on another jeep safari, with an Indian couple from Bangalore, following the same route as before. I was a little surprised at how few foreigners there were at Kaziranga, though relatively few foreigners travel to India's northeast. The driver drove too fast, with stops too short. Near the entrance we passed a rhino just off the road among trees. Later, we saw more rhinos, elephants, hog deer, storks, fish eagles, and a big herd, perhaps 50, of sambar deer lying together in a grassy meadow. We had another good view of a rhino near the river and again at the pond where you are allowed to get out of the jeep. We were back in the village by 10:15, so the jeep safari was about an hour shorter than the one I had taken two days before.
About 2:30 I left on another jeep safari, with an Indian family of three and a guard with a rifle. I don't know why we had a guard with us this time. Again, the jeep drove too fast. I think that generally Indians are content seeing an animal for about 30 seconds and then are happy to continue, while foreigners want to spend more time watching an interesting animal once they've come across one. I should have been more assertive about getting the driver to slow down. This time the jeep reversed the usual circuit -- same circuit but different direction.
We saw barasingha (swamp deer), elephants and rhinos. We saw more than 20 storks in the pond where you can get out of the jeep, mostly black and white ones, but also black necked storks with reddish orange legs. We spotted three vultures on a dead tree. Vultures are becoming rare in India, killed off by some sort of medicine given to cattle that is fatal to vultures. We had good, but brief, sightings of rhinos and a great view of a fish eagle. Near the end of the jeep safari, we spotted an elephant by the side of the road. It briefly charged a nearby jeep, which zoomed forward, out of the way. The elephant stopped and trumpeted, having shown who was boss. We arrived at the village about 5. The sky was dark, and it was cool and windy.
In the village I walked over to the open market, with produce laid out on the ground, almost all vegetables. All the vendors were male. One guy was selling about 15 different spices displayed in little sacks, two kinds of onions (red and white), ginger, and tobacco leaves. I watched him for a long time. All measurements were by handheld scales. The folks in the market were all very friendly. I was the only westerner around. When I left at 6 it was still going, in the dark, with some lights. I came back after dinner about 8 and it was closing up. Heavy rain fell that night.
The 125 or so mile bus trip passed though hills outside Guwahati, then flatlands (where we had a half hour lunch stop, with more cricket on television), and finally by hills to the south just before we arrived, shortly after 6, after dark, at the little village of Kohora, alongside the highway and just a mile or so south of the main entrance to Kaziranga National Park. I checked into a roadside hotel and met Anna, whom I had met in Nongriat. She and I went to the park headquarters to book an early morning elephant ride for the next morning. The elephant ride cost us 1000 rupees (about $16) each, plus the park entrance and camera fees for the day of another 1000 rupees. It's much cheaper for Indians. After dinner I met Nitin who had just arrived at my hotel, too late to book an elephant ride.
I had to get up early the next morning, before 5, for the elephant ride, but, incredibly, a guy next door to the hotel decided to practice on his drum set starting about midnight. He went on for about an hour. I also was awakened by heavy rain that night, maybe between 2 and 4.
I got up at 4:45, in time for the 5:15 elephant safari. At the park headquarters about 20 elephants were ready to take tourists into the flat, low lying national park (with an elevation of about 240 feet) just north of the Brahmaputra. The park is about 400 square miles in size and is said to have about 2400 rhinos, about 100 tigers, more than 1000 elephants, and lots of deer, plus many more animals. (A newspaper I read more than a month later reported that in 2014 27 rhinos had been killed by poachers and that 22 poachers had been killed and 47 arrested by the park rangers and police. As of May 14, 2015, there had been 9 rhinos killed in 2015.)
The elephants used on safaris carry either two or three tourists, along with a mahout. Anna and I had an elephant and mahout to ourselves and got to get on (from a high platform) and get away first. The round trip ride took about an hour, and I enjoyed the swaying ride atop an elephant. We started out under cloudy early morning skies through burnt grass and reeds, with only a few trees.
On an elephant humans can get much closer to rhinos than on their own. Rhinos are used to the elephants being close and don't seem to mind the humans on them. On our ride we saw a few hog deer and four very dark gray rhinos, very easy to see in the open terrain. We got right alongside a couple of the rhinos and also saw a small herd of ten or fifteen elephants, including three or four calves. The morning was misty and humid, causing my camera to fog up. Rain began to fall just before we returned. Afterwards we returned to the village for tea before trying to find someone to share a jeep safari into the park.
We did find someone at the park headquarters, north of the highway, to share a jeep safari, and left about 7:30 with a somnolent Swede named Lars and an excellent driver. With three of us, the jeep cost us only 650 rupees each, a little more than $10. We saw lots of elephants on the trip, first a group of domesticated ones, the elephants that had taken tourists on the early morning safari, bathing in a stream with muddy banks near the park entrance. Driving further into the park, the driver heard a rhino's call and we could see through the grass on our right one rhino chasing another, heading towards the road. Our driver backed away and one rhino, the one being chased, dashed across the road ahead of us. The other one halted sharply at the roadside, about 50 feet in front of us, and glared in our direction before slowly turning around and going back through the brush the way he had come. We heard some more high-pitched noises from that direction. We drove further, and saw a long brown snake, perhaps four or five feet long, near a big hole, which it soon slid into.
We drove on through grasslands and then a beautiful riverine forest under cloudy skies. The sun came out a bit. We saw turtles on logs in the river as we looped back towards the park entrance. In trees we saw a harpy eagle, gray headed fish eagles, egrets, and herons. On the ground we spotted about 20 green parrots with long blue tails, maybe hunting for insects. A pied kingfisher hovered above the river, then dived down to it. We saw quite a few rhinos and elephants and hog deer here and there. We watched one elephant walk down to a pond and give itself a mud bath with its trunk. We stopped at a pond filled with egrets and black necked storks. We arrived back at the village after 11. Anna left on a bus heading east and I had lunch.
About 1 I walked to the park headquarters and found two Israelis who had just arrived and were willing to share a jeep safari. We left about 2:15 with a much poorer driver than the one I had in the morning. We followed the same route as in the morning and saw a couple of rhinos and some elephants in the distance. We did see one elephant up close, a bull elephant first in the bushes and then on a road just to the left of the road we were on. The driver panicked and drove away quickly. We got a great view of a giant, yellow beaked hornbill, first on a tree and then flying away.
There wasn't really much to see until we reached the pond that had been filled with egrets and black necked storks in the morning. Here you are allowed to get out of your jeep at a grassy area right next to the large pond. Egrets and storks were still there, as were hog and sambar deer, about 20 of the latter, eating grass just beyond the pond. A rhino emerged from the trees and bushes beyond the grass and began eating the short green grass just beyond the pond. It would eat, walk a few steps, and then eat some more, slowly approaching the pond. When it reached the pond it drank for about three minutes. The nearby storks didn't seem to mind. Hog deer stood and ate grass in the background. Having finished drinking, the rhino continued moseying along and eating grass. It was great to watch, though noisy Indian tourists had arrived in their jeeps. We spent about a half hour there, the highlight of the afternoon.
The sky was darkening as we continued towards the park entrance. We passed two elephants and two rhinos in tall grass near the road. We came across a mass of jeeps at a small lake and were told a tiger had been reported, but we didn't see it. We did see an bull elephant and a rhino at the lake, in the middle distance. Heading towards the gate we came across a big hornless sambar deer standing motionless beside the road. They usually flee when humans are close. This one just slowly walked away. At the entrance gate Indian tourists were harassing a baby elephant. I saw that one had written his name on its back. We got back to the village about 5:45, just before dark. I was tired after a very early morning and a poor night's sleep and went to bed before 9. I had asked the hotel manager about the midnight drummer and he said he knew who he was and would ask him to desist.
I was awakened by heavy rain and thunder about 1:30. The monsoon comes earlier to the northeast than the rest of India, though I suppose this was a pre-monsoon rainstorm. Kaziranga National Park is closed from the end of April until November. During the June to September monsoon the Brahmaputra bursts its banks and floods the low grasslands of the park 10 to 15 feet deep. In the park are signs showing the flood level in different years. The animals flee to higher elevations.
I got up about 7. Dark clouds filled the sky. I walked to the jeep counter near the park headquarters but didn't find anyone to share a jeep. In any event, it was a rainy morning. I walked up to the government hotels nearby and looked around. They are quite nice, wooden and colonial style. Lots of tea bushes grow nearby.
About 9:30, after breakfast, I took a walk, under cloudy skies, heading north on the paved road from the village to the park entrance. I watched a woman in a rice paddy right beside the road very rapidly planting rice. She looked up and smiled. I crossed a couple of wooden bridges, with vegetation, including lotuses, clogging the slow moving streams beneath. Rain fell now and then. Before reaching the park entrance I turned west on a dirt road. I passed a house with some big hogs in front and ten little ducklings in a small pen. Further along a woman was using her feet to squish a big pile of mud, the mud to be used to cover the bamboo walls of her house. The houses I was passing were mud walled with thatch or metal roofs.
The dirt road turned south, heading towards the highway. I walked a bit further and then turned back. The sun was now out. I passed a school with a bunch of friendly kids now in the schoolyard, apparently in recess. They came running towards me and were very friendly. I again walked by the house with the ducklings. They were out of their pens, swimming along together in a newly planted rice paddy. I watched as a boy and his mother called them back and herded them back into the pen. The family was very friendly, and posed for a group photo: the mother, her son, a naked little son, and another woman.
Reaching the paved road, I walked to the park entrance gate. A very energetic young woman in a red sari was using a 30 foot long bamboo pole with a sambar antler tied to it to break off dead tree branches for firewood. She was very strong and expert. Branches crashed all around. She had two little children, not very well behaved, with her. She also had a little shop selling food to tourists at the park entrance. I sat in there and ate potato chips for lunch. Jeeps arrived for the afternoon safaris. I walked back to the village and my hotel slowly, stopping for quite a while to watch a woman using mud to hand plaster the outside bamboo walls of her house. I got back about 4 and about a half hour later I again walked along that road for about an hour, until almost dark. The sky was now cloudy again. I saw lots of egrets flying over the rice paddies and got out of the way as more than a hundred cows came down the road heading to the village. A cool wind blew.
The next day was cloudy all day and windy and chilly in the morning. At 7:30 I left on another jeep safari, with an Indian couple from Bangalore, following the same route as before. I was a little surprised at how few foreigners there were at Kaziranga, though relatively few foreigners travel to India's northeast. The driver drove too fast, with stops too short. Near the entrance we passed a rhino just off the road among trees. Later, we saw more rhinos, elephants, hog deer, storks, fish eagles, and a big herd, perhaps 50, of sambar deer lying together in a grassy meadow. We had another good view of a rhino near the river and again at the pond where you are allowed to get out of the jeep. We were back in the village by 10:15, so the jeep safari was about an hour shorter than the one I had taken two days before.
About 2:30 I left on another jeep safari, with an Indian family of three and a guard with a rifle. I don't know why we had a guard with us this time. Again, the jeep drove too fast. I think that generally Indians are content seeing an animal for about 30 seconds and then are happy to continue, while foreigners want to spend more time watching an interesting animal once they've come across one. I should have been more assertive about getting the driver to slow down. This time the jeep reversed the usual circuit -- same circuit but different direction.
We saw barasingha (swamp deer), elephants and rhinos. We saw more than 20 storks in the pond where you can get out of the jeep, mostly black and white ones, but also black necked storks with reddish orange legs. We spotted three vultures on a dead tree. Vultures are becoming rare in India, killed off by some sort of medicine given to cattle that is fatal to vultures. We had good, but brief, sightings of rhinos and a great view of a fish eagle. Near the end of the jeep safari, we spotted an elephant by the side of the road. It briefly charged a nearby jeep, which zoomed forward, out of the way. The elephant stopped and trumpeted, having shown who was boss. We arrived at the village about 5. The sky was dark, and it was cool and windy.
In the village I walked over to the open market, with produce laid out on the ground, almost all vegetables. All the vendors were male. One guy was selling about 15 different spices displayed in little sacks, two kinds of onions (red and white), ginger, and tobacco leaves. I watched him for a long time. All measurements were by handheld scales. The folks in the market were all very friendly. I was the only westerner around. When I left at 6 it was still going, in the dark, with some lights. I came back after dinner about 8 and it was closing up. Heavy rain fell that night.
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