Seat of Our Pants » Assam

Kaziranga National Park Photos

Jaime — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:04:25 +0000

Martin shared about our tour of the Kaziranga National Park in Assam here, but I think it deserved a few more photos, so I’ve put together this gallery.

This park should be on everyone’s Travel To-do List. It was an experience of a lifetime. Big animals. Untouched jungle. Nearly no foreign tourists. Baby elephants.

A perfect combination.

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Good Times at Assam’s Top Attraction

Martin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:57:24 +0000

Today, we took time off from our Arunachal Pradesh quest to visit a national park – and what a park. Kaziranga is perhaps not the best known park in the world, but for us it ranks among the top attractions in India – it even counts as one of the major highlights of this whole trip. Being eye to eye with a full-grown, silently ruminating one-horned Rhinoceros is . . . but let me start from the beginning.

We arrived yesterday afternoon at the National Park entrance in Kohora, Assam, after a sweaty six hour bus ride from Guwahati. Apparently we lucked out, because the first hotel we tried had an affordable deluxe room available – other travelers later mentioned that they had made their bookings weeks or months in advance. After checking in we made arrangements for the morning after: at first we wanted to do just an Elephant safari, but we were talked into tacking on a two hour jeep ride (for an additional 20 USD). After that, we crashed out early, around nine thirty.

Eight hours later, we found ourselves on the back of a mama Elephant, face to face with a curious Rhinoceros. It’s pretty much an unbeatable feeling to get that close to one of the world’s great mammals. It’s an even better feeling doing it from on top of an even bigger mammal. Thanks to the fact that Rhinos and Elephants are friendly, we were able to get very close to the animals – as close as 10 feet at times. Other animals were also lulled into letting us close: water buffalo, a few kinds of deer, wild boars and so on. The tour lasted only one hour, but again: what an hour.

Next up was the jeep tour: we had braced ourselves for a bit of disappointment after the fantastic Elephant ride, but again Kaziranga NP came through. Thanks to a bit of wheeling and dealing, we managed to have our tour go off in between the other tours, so during two hours we didn’t see another soul: just us and the park (and our hired rifleman – for the unlikely eventuality of us meeting a Tiger). We didn’t get as close to the animals as we did from the back of our Tusker, but we saw wild Elephants, Rhinos, Vultures, Red Jungle Fowl, Buffalo and a whole heap of turtles sunning themselves on a log.

We arrived back at the camp at 9, just in time for breakfast. Not a bad morning, really.

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How’s Guwahati? Weeell…

Martin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:36:14 +0000

Guwahati is the capital of Assam, and pretty much unavoidable if you wish to travel in India’s north east. It is a convenient hub with most of the mod cons (espresso, okay restaurants and travel agents). It also picks up a few points for its scenic location by the mighty Brahmaputra river. Other than that, there aren’t many more positives to list: it is a dusty, dirty and congested city.

Having said that, it is an interesting experience for another reason: you hardly see any other westerners here. Beside the stares (of which there are plenty), you can expect people to be interested in who you are and what you are doing here. Some will even go out of their way to be seen next to you – westerners are a novelty!

Still, after four days here it feels like it’s about time we move on. Now, if only that Arunachal permit would come through…

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To Each His Own

Martin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:04:02 +0000

This actually qualifies as entertainment in Guwahati: bring your best friend, lock yourselves into a transparent bubble, zip it closed and commence splashing around on an artificial pool.

As the late Hunter S. Thompson used to say, “Buy the ticket, take the ride.”

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By the Seat of Our Pants: Now Also in the Northeast

Martin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:10:04 +0000

We’ve arrived in Guwahati, the capital of the state of Assam. It is the jumping-off point for the ‘seven sisters’ – the seven small Indian states in the north-eastern part of the country. Our mission here is to try to get a permit to visit one of the sisters: Arunachal Pradesh, and then move on.

Ethnically, Arunachal Pradesh is Tibetan rather than Indian, and we know of a few places that look seriously interesting: almost-mythical Tawang monastery, for example.

Should we be unable to get the permit, we hope to visit the Kaziranga National park: home to two thirds of the planet’s wild Rhinoceroses. Other options include a quick foray into Sikkim and/or spending some time in the province of Bihar. Whatever we end up doing, rest assured that we will post about it here!

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