Day 123, Kaziranga [Thursday 3rd April 2008]
Previous day: Day 122, Guwahati [Wednesday 2nd April 2008]
Next day: Day 124, Shillong [Friday 4th April 2008]
Our alarm goes off at 4.45am, waking us up for 'bed tea' delivered by one of the lodge staff. At 5.10am we get a jeep into Kaziranga National Park, where we then transfer onto the back of an elephant to go on safari! The elephant lumbers through the early morning misty glow, the thick grasses getting taller and taller until they completely surround us. The elephant occasionally grabs a trunkful of grass to snack on.
Suddenly we arrive at a large pond and see a rhinocerous, less tan 15 metres away. She is slowly submerging herself in the water. She goes halway in, stops for a minute or two, then pushes into the water completely and climbs out the other side, leaving a tide mark high on her bony back. The grassy plains around us are dotted with rhinocerous, and despite their huge size the trunks of their bodies are surprisingly thin, their ribs clearly showing through the stretched grey skin. The armour plating is thickest where the skin folds around the joints. They look like prehistoric Transformers.
We walk through the grass for an hour or so, spotting storks, monkeys, swamp deer and bison, before dismounting and heading back to the lodge.
For lunch we go to a tiny dhaba outside the park where I get a delicious dal fry and paratha, which comes with a great sour mustard chutney and a sour-ish salad. At 2pm we go back into the park for a jeep safari, which will enable us to get much deeper into the park. We spend 2 hours in the vast western region of the park, which is a mix of grassy plains and forest. Here we see dozens of rhinocerous, including some tiny baby ones about 2 or 3 feet long. We see wild elephants bathing in a lake, bison, deer and so many birds. It's a beautiful, beautiful park. We can't believe the number, and accessibility of, rhinocerous we see.
Later in the day we see some truly gruesome pictures of rhinos that have been poached, hunted for their horns, their horns hacked off. It's really distressing, but it's also reassuring to hear the Kaziranga park is doing very well in preventing this sort of poaching.
That night the earth moves for us - literally! Around midnight there is an earthquake, and the hotel wobbles back and forth like jelly for a few seconds.
Next day: Day 124, Shillong [Friday 4th April 2008]
Previous day: Day 122, Guwahati [Wednesday 2nd April 2008]