A day in Kaziranga!

Day 3 of our North-East Trip. To read the previous entry please click here. 

Our jeep safari into the Kaziranga National Park was scheduled at 7AM. We woke up had some tea and waited for the jeep to arrive. The jeeps are big enough to accommodate 5 people easily, but since nobody else in our stay opted for a early safari that day, it was just the 3 of us.

The national park as such is humungous, and is split into different ranges such as Central, Eastern and Western. Our first safari was into the Central Range, which has the biggest jeep trail of the park. There are 2 types of safaris in this range - Jeep and Elephant Safari. The elephant safari lasts for an hour and is limited in distance. However, it takes you quite close to the animals. The Jeep safari covers a fair bit of distance, approximately 20 km, and lasts for 2-3 hours. 

The Kaziranga is most famous for one-horned Rhino. Other inhabitants include, Elephants, Wild Buffalos, Deer, and a whole host of birds such as Storks, Vultures, Parrots, Mynah, etc. The safari began with wide open grasslands dotted with rhinos and wild buffaloes at a distance. The excitement of spotting the animals and identifying what it is, really gets to you, as you progress through the journey. The driver a.k.a the guide does keep an eye out all the time (he's also quite familiar with the usual sighting spots) and is almost always the first one to spot any animal. 

As we were driving through spotting Sambhal Deers and Storks, Athiboy feel asleep. And then the driver suddenly stopped the vehicle - the next moment still feels surreal me. A group 6-7 elephants (including 3 little ones) just walked out of a big bush towards the stream beside which our trail lay. As they walked, a cloud of sand rose above them making the scene look exactly like a movie. At that exact moment, Athi also woke up and was excited to see the elephants. They slowly approached the stream and they stepped into the water; they were smart enough to roll their tails (to avoid them from getting wet). Our guide started off the vehicle the moment they entered the waters to ensure that we don't become a disturbance to them. 

As we drove long, it started getting quite hot, and since most of the national park is open grassland types, there wasn't any way to escape the Sun. The farthest point of the range is alongside the Brahmaputra River separated by some wooden fence. We stopped there to look at the river. The river, which is wide and brimming full in the monsoon, was reduced to a very thin stream during this period. But the breeze there was soothing and cool. 

Our last spotting was of a lone Tusker Elephant who was swimming / bathing in the water, towards the end of our safari. I'm at a loss of words to describe how I felt seeing such a gigantic elephant in its natural habitat. You have to see it to feel it. 

Having had a good 2-hour safari spotting all the animals, we headed back to the stay and had some Assamese Thali in the nearby restaurant. The one item that I was most surprised by was the subzi made of potatoes. I have seen baby potatoes, but these were tiny potatoes nearly the size of a peanut. 

We had almost the rest of the day to kill before we head to Shillong the next day, so we decided to go for another safari - this time, to the Western Range. We started off in the noon. The western range was about 12 km from our stay, and the most of this range was covered with Tea Plantations. I have always seen only Tea Plantations in the mountains, and this was the first time I saw tea plantation in the plains. The neat pattern of the bushes alongside walkways were a treat to an OCD person's eyes! 

The Western range wasn't as big as the Central. It had a lot of wild buffalos and a vast area of marshland where we spotted quite a few elephants and rhinos at a distance. A friend of the driver guide accompanied us. He had a pair of binoculars which got us excited to look through and spot the animals. We even managed to click a few pictures through the binoculars. 

By the time the safari ended, it was almost 4pm and the temperature dip was almost instant. From being scorching hot in the noon, it became foggy and cold, and the skies became dusky, as early as 6pm. 

Just when we thought we'd retire for the day, our stay owner told us about the Kaziranga National Orchid and Biodiversity Park, where traditional Assamese music and dance performances happened every evening. So, we went along, and it was definitely a treat to the eyes. The instruments, the song, the beats and their performance - all of them were just too good. We bumped into an Army personnel from Madras who deputed near Tezpur and had come to watch this performance with his superiors. He was visibly excited to have spotted a Tamilian there after a really long time, kept initiating random conversations with us. Have to say it did feel really nice to converse with someone in our native language outside our native state. 

Munching on some light snacks at the park, we headed back to Maihang for dinner and retired for the night.