Kaziranga

After my very satisfying experience with the foundation celebration for the temple of Shiva, I decided to move on to another of the things I wanted to experience while in Assam. Between Jorhat and Guwahati is the national park and one-horned rhinoceros sanctuary of Kaziranga. This was something I had been looking forward to since I had talked with Utpal in Guwahati on that first depressing day in Assam. As I get older I get more and more interested in nature and its preservation. Here is a national park that aims at the preservation and enhancement of one of the world's threatened species, the one-horned rhino. The national park's season runs from November through April, and it was now a couple of days into November, and so I was ready to go and see if I could see a rhino. I was prepared for a zoo-like atmosphere with some kind of overrun of tourists. I was also prepared to be gouged for being from a country that is not India. But even when I am overcharged for being not from India, it still comes to a fairly reasonable price to pay for some of these experiences. I was looking forward to it.

I checked out of Hotel Rhino and headed over to the bus terminal. After finding my way to the ticket window, I was directed to a bus on the road. I hopped on and got seated. The ride took about two hours and I arrived at just past noon. I wasn't sure where I was going to go. The place I had gotten help to book at the Assam Tourism office in Jorhat was for the previous night. I hoped I would still be able to stay there, but I was unsure where to find it. I decided to head up to the Assam Tourist lodges and at least leave my bags there while I searched around for this Kaziranga Wildlife Society where maybe I had a room booked. As it happened I found it as I walked towards the tourist lodges. And, I was in luck. They still had a room and it had my name on it. I got settled and then started figuring out how to visit the national park. There was a jeep with people going from the Wildlife Society lodge that afternoon. I had been told that I should do both the elephant ride and the jeep safari, so I thought I might join the people. But then the man running the lodge ran through the costs. The jeep itself was quite cheap. It cost 1350 rupees, no matter how many people were in it. The park entrance fee was 20 rupees and the camera fee was 50 rupees... for Indians. For foreigners the two fees were 250 and 500 rupees respectively. I do like India, but it is incredibly insulting to be treated like that. I decided that I would only be paying that kind of money once, so I asked the man which would be better, the elephant or the jeep. He said elephant, no question. So I declined to go in the jeep. I asked about how to get booked on the elephant ride. I would have to go to the office at 7 that evening to get booked in.

That left me several hours to do things with. I first went in to the Assam Tourism lodge and find Nilim, who had helped me find the Wildlife Society lodge as a place to stay, and apologize for not coming the day before, even though I had a pretty good reason with the Shiva temple. He was in his office and he was happy to see me and gave me some ideas on what to do that afternoon.

Back behind the area of the town was a bunch of hills. Nestled in the hills was a little village with a tea plantation, a coffee plantation, and a rubber tree plantation. It sounded like a nice way to spend the afternoon and so I headed off.

The hills were indeed beautiful and I enjoyed my walk among the people. And despite the town and the tourist atmosphere only minutes away, it was quiet and peaceful in the valley in the mountain. I spent an hour and a half wandering along the path through the village.

On the way back to the guest house, I took a different road for a short ways. It was headed towards a picnic spot and I wanted to get a look. I never got there because I heard noise in the trees. A troop of monkeys was racing around in the trees above me. I watched them for a while. They were quite entertaining.

Then it was time to figure out where the national park entrance was so that I could make my way there in the morning for my elephant ride (assuming that I could arrange it). I walked the three or four kilometers to the entrance gate. It turned out to be relatively easy to find. I was told by one of the park personnel to wait there for a few minutes, as I could book my elephant ride then and there. That turned out to be wrong, but I talked with a man who did the bookings. He told me where to book the elephant ride. Then he offered me a ride back to the guest house area. It was nice of him.

While we were riding back I asked him about the park, the animals, and how they protected it. He told me there are 2048 rhinos as of the 2008 census. He said that they will soon conduct a new census and there should be even more, maybe around 3000. There are about 1000 females and if they all have a baby every year there would be 1000 more, but there is attrition due to predation by tigers and such, disease and other things, and poachers of course. He said there were no fences and they just had to be vigilant against poachers. I asked him how they deal with poachers and he told me they don't try to catch them. He said that if they catch them, they go to jail. Then when they get out, they go on being poachers. “Oh no,” he said, “we don't try to catch them. We try to kill them. Then they can't poach any more.” He then proudly told me that he had personally killed 5 poachers. And he had gotten two arms. I think he meant bodily arms, but I don't know for sure and I don't even know what that might mean. But once again, India's approach, whether official or not, is direct and to the point. Don't be a poacher, or we will kill you.

Later I did book my elephant ride for the very early 5:15 in the morning. Then the ticket bookers told me that they would pick me up and take me down to the park in the morning. It took just a little bit of the bite out of the hugely inflated price for being a foreigner. And in the end, to go for the elephant ride was going to cost about 30 dollars including everything. Not really bad, all things considered, but annoying nevertheless when put beside the 8 dollars for an Indian.