December 12 – Kaziranga National Park

We departed for Kaziranga National Park at 3:00am.  Roads were bumpy and we could see the remains of many of the protest fires.  There seemed to be quite a bit of traffic on the road…probably people like us who hadn’t been able to get to their destinations yesterday.

About 45 minutes into the drive we our first protesters but were able to get around the fires fairly easily.  About two hours into the drive we ran into a massive traffic jams with fires across almost the entire road.  The trucks especially were stuck.  However, most of the cars were eventually able to make it up to and around the fires.  The turnout to our hotel was not too far from these last fires.  We arrived at about 4:45 am.  

The grounds of the hotel are beautiful with a large pond and a swimming pool.  Too bad we won't be here very long.

Mary took a 2 hour nap and then we were up at 7:00 to get breakfast and to catch our jeep safari into the national park.  On the way in we saw some domesticated elephants that are used for safari's.

The park is beautiful with many ecosystems there were vast fields of elephant grass, meadows, forests, lakes and rivers. 

There were vast stretches of very high elephant grass.

The park is a major sanctuary for the Greater One-Horned Rhinoceros (or Indian Rhinoceros.  And we had several very good sightings.  

Other wildlife sightings were very good.   Sightings included an Indian Roller,

hog deer,

white egret,

cormorants,

a lot of wild water buffalo 

 swamp deer,

parakeets,

a fish eagle,

wild boar,

spot billed pelicans,

adjutant stork,

a rhesus monkey,

a stone chat,

black necked storks,

ruddy shelducks

a pond heron,

cattle egrets,

a spotted owl,

many Indian turtles,

a very colorful wild chicken,

Siberian geese,

many open billed storks,

a pied kingfisher,

and a common sandpiper.

Near the end of our drive we were watching a rhino quite close to the road.  We had a very good look at him close up.  While we were sitting there the guide suddenly whispered, "Look, look, there is an elephant." Amazingly there was a lone elephant heading our way. It eventually turned and wandered right by our rhino (who kept a wary eye on the elephant).
Our driver started the jeep, just in case of a charge.  And as the elephant moved closer, he moved the jeep a bit further down the road, just around the curve, and stopped just as the elephant reached the road. She eyed us for a while and stayed in the brush until the driver moved a bit further away. Then she crossed the road...keeping an eye on us.

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Video of wild elephant
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Video #2 of wild elephant 
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We had only driven a very short distance when a lone water buffalo started to cross the road in front of us. He then stopped and spent a fair amount of time staring us down. It appeared as though he was trying to determine if we were a threat. It looked like we might have a confrontation on our hands. Finally the driver backed up a bit and the water buffalo decided to head on to the river. 

We took a back road through the countryside to get back to our hotel for a late lunch.  

Then it was discussions about the political and travel situation.  We were supposed to take an afternoon safari to another section of the park but it was reported to be closed down as there were protesters in that section of the park.

It is highly likely we will not get out on the road today because of the protests.  And the news indicated that tomorrow it is expected that there will be and All-India strike.  This means that pretty much everything will be shut down.  Who knows when we will get out of here?  Fortunately, the resort is lovely and very comfortable.