Kaziranga National Park

On Sunday we left Guwahati for Kaziranga National Park which is a huge World Heritage sitealong the banks of the Brahmaputra River. The park a little over 200 km (120 miles) and took us five and a half hours in our van. (I don't know why the previous section is underlined, I couldn't undo it.) We did have a half our or so tea and potty break. Getting out of Guwahati took a long time because ofcongested traffic and then for the first about third of the way they were doing highway widening which meant that it was bumpy, two lane road in some areas and congested two lane road in others.Beyond there is was congested two lane road that went through village after village after village. The trucks are beautifully decorated. And the buses often have sayings on them. Here’s one that caught my attention.

There is such a respect of animals here. Last week I saw a small dog sleeping on the side of the road and the cars just went around it. None tooted at it or tried to make it move. There are cows pretty much all over the roads. Sometimes they are sleeping on the warm concrete and taking up half the road. Here’s a photo of a typical bridge we went over. It shows the traffic and those of us using the bridge.

When we got to our hotel, Iora “The Retreat-Kaziranaga”, we checked in, ate lunch and took a

walk before we went to bed. We were exhausted by our travel day. The next day we were scheduled for a 6:30am elephant ride and an afternoon jeep safari. We did the elephant safari and then had lunch. The elephants are wonderfully gentle animals that brought tears to my eyes when I was first with them. They seated 2, 3 or 4 people.

Unlike the African elephants, these elephants don’t have the huge ears, their heads are down rather than up, and the highest part of their body is their back. They kind of lumber back and forth as they walk. It’s pretty easy to get used to and is really a nice ride. Here’s a picture of Lea, Stuart and their Mahout (elephant trainer, friend, rider) on their elephant.

One of the first things we saw as we headed out was a monitor lizard. This fellow was at least

six feet long and seemed content to let us watch him for a while before he wandered off.

Then we spotted our first of several rhinoceroses. These are one-horned rhinos whose population here at Kaziranga the home of the world’s largest concentration of these endangered creatures. They are huge and really odd looking. It’s like they are from prehistoric times. Being on elephants we were able to get really close to some of these. I bet we were within 15 feet of a couple of them!! Here’s one of my 30 or more rhino photos.

One of the many treats of our first elephant rides (we have two more) was seeing a baby rhino

that was just a month (or four) old. It looked like a really big stuffed toy. It was really cute. But I bet it weighted several hundred pounds and was about 2.5 feet tall and about 5 or so feet long. Here’s one of the pictures I got.

We also saw a lot of deer. On this ride we saw swamp deer and hog deer. I’m sure the have more official names than that, but that’s what the guides were calling them. Here’s a picture of Stuart and Lea on looking at one of the deer.

Here’s a better picture of them.

And here’s a mom and her fawn. We saw a couple of these spotted fawns and I thought they were really cute. They looked shy and would run away on legs that they seemed to still be getting used to.

Because this is still early in the year for the deer, their antlers are still growing and haven’t

hardened yet. Here’s one that we were able to get close to.

Most of the area that we were going through was what they call . . . you guessed it, elephant grass. It IS tall grass. Some of it was over my head even on the elephant. To get an idea of how tall it is, here’s Lea and Stuart on their elephant; and you can’t see the elephant.

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Though these aren’t wild elephants (we DID see some on our jeep trek) I thought this was a great picture of our elephants heading off for a rest after our ride.

The elephant that Lea and Stuart were riding had a baby that followed it. It was really cute. When we were getting ready to get on our elephants, this one saw us and came right over to Lea to check her out. It was really sweet. Here’s what it looked like.

Here was the first elephant we saw. I thought it was a wild elephant, but it was one of the herd out at pasture.

And, finally for this post, here is a photo of a young boy in a steam giving his elephant a bath.

We completed this ride and my butt was sore. This was like riding a horse with a back about 4 feet wide. I was at the front, just behind the Mahout, and the board for our feet wasn’t long enough (or I wasn’t limber enough) for my feet to be on the foot board, so my feet just hung for the hour plus that we were riding.

All in all, it was an amazing; touching; exciting; beautiful experience.

We had breakfast and I took a nap and we later did a couple hour jeep safari to a different part of the park. During that ride we saw wild water buffalo, wild elephants, several kinds of storks, king fishers, parakeets and beautiful scenery. I’ll talk and show more about that later.

Until then, love to you, and in the spirit of the bus sign, and to me!