April 22 | Experienced the fear of being on ground and the that of safety at a height

If sighting the rhino from the gypsy was not enough, we took an elephant back ride safari starting at 5AM in the morning. Mohan our guide came to the Hotel Emerald early morning to pick us up. We went back the Kazironga National park, but this time from a different entrance and entered the park on elephant back, instead of the gypsy. The five of us on a single elephant seemed a little cramp and my concern was that, if the rhino will be sighted on the left of the elephant, i will not be able to turn around and hence felt this will be such a waste of time, but i was in for a huge surprise.

The ride lasted all of 35mins, but we managed to sight nothing less than fifteen rhinos from very close proximity and close here meant as less as 30feet away! Our first sighting was a mother rhino with her little one; they were grazing and seemed pretty unfazed by the elephant’s presence. Later the guide told us that as wild life specialists, they are more worried when they sight a baby rhino than when they see an adult, and this is because the protective instinct of a mother is far more aggressive than that of protecting itself. Had anyone got off the elephant at this instant, he/she would be in for some serious damage from the mother. One-horned rhinos are the most aggressive of all breeds of rhinos and they not only attach by hitting its target, but also bite and tear the target apart. Nevertheless, we got some great click from the safety of the height.

Next, we saw two rhinos chilling in the pond, they seemed to be playful but even then, i felt vulnerable and could be rolled under the charge if i ever got off the elephant. While the guide had told us that rhinos are solitary creatures, they seemed pretty social this Thursday morning. As mentioned earlier, we sighted not less than fifteen to twenty rhinos during this safari. Frankly, i could go on about all the rhinos we sighted but that’ll be monotonous, so i’ll leave that to the pictures.

After the safari, we fed the elephants with bananas and then went to the lake front for some black-pepper flavoured tea, it was the first time i was having this, but relished it enough to ask for three cups in a row. While all was fun during the safari, the pollen in the air during those 35mins had affected breathing patterns of our host Zoravar and what made things worse was that he was out of his inhaler, so we had to get out sooner than we would otherwise would’ve stayed.

Once back at the hotel, we wound up breakfast and took off for Shillong. And then we realized something weird and if i may call it, we were struck by bureaucracy! Kazironga-Shillong-Guwahati are in a triangular path, which means no place comes on the way while travelling to the third, but certain rules made it essential for the jeeps to go to Guwahati to fuel-up, which meant we had to go around the perimeter of the triangle instead of just going directly to Shillong. Hence, we came back to the transit camp, had our lunch here and then headed to Shillong.

On the way we passed many small villages with small schools and beautiful backdrops to the road, but often we would see either some construction activity or factories bellowing smoke and particulate matter that messed the air, wish people and the government could do something to maintain the sanctity of the beauty of this stretch.

A few kilometres before Shillong, we stopped at ‘Bada Pani’ which is one of the biggest lakes i have ever seen. It was a beautiful sight and this is in spite of the fact that, the water levels were really low. Just after we left from there, we saw the sky turning orange in twilight, had we been at the lake, it would’ve made for one of the most beautiful pictures i clicked on the trip.

Anyway, we got back to Zoravar’s house, had a few drinks at his place, had our dinner and crashed.

Moral: Remember to be at the park early morning, later it gets extremely crowded that reduces the number of sightings.