Guwahati - Tezpur - Kaziranga

After a good night's sleep, we woke up the next morning and had some amazing Aloo Parathas and Chole Bhatura for breakfast, and that's when V received a call from his friend. We'd thought this friend lived in Dehradun, but apparently he got posted Tezpur (near Guwahati) more than a year ago. He saw V's pictures and status on the social media and called up right away and asked us to come meet him. Since this was just an hour's detour from our next destination we thought we'd go make a visit. And guess what, it was one of the best decisions.

The friend is a doctor in the military hospital and was provided accommodation as a part of the hospital quarters. The home, and the surroundings as such were lovely. Neatly built similar looking buildings, flowers of every colour around each corner, good roads, and one big beautifully maintained garden. To me, it felt like a mini version of Neyveli. I loved the place instantly. Athi started playing and roaming around with the friend's daughter who was a couple of years older than him. After an hour of roaming around, we had a heart-filling lunch of Idli, Dosa, Sambhar, Omelettes and Curd for Athiboy, and ended it with a fruit custard for dessert which Athi thought it to be ice cream and gulped one whole cup happily.

The kids digging through in the Military Hospital Garden 

We took off from Tezpur at around 5PM. Our route to Kaziranga did give us a glimpse of the mighty Brahmaputra. The bridge at the crossing could easily be about 2-3 kms long. I was awed at the width of the river, though as such water flow was not at full capacity. We reached Kohora at 7:30 in the night, Kohora is the town nearest to the Kaziranga National Park, but has very limited economical online stay booking options. We had booked our stay at a place called Sneha Bhavan, which was basically a 3/4 bedroom house, whose 2 bedrooms were converted into rooms for guests to stay. These guys only offered stay, and didn't have food options, so we refreshed and went out for a quick dinner at Maihung, a place considered to be provide authentic Assamese food. Vegetarian options being very limited, we settled in for some Dal, Rice and Papad. 

Day 2 came to a wrap, as we prepared ourselves for an exciting jungle safari the next day.