Madras to Manas - Day 1 of our Assam Adventure

Here we are all locked down and "covided".  Sigh!  Assam in January seems a dream.  Yes I travelled, from Madras to Manas, all in a day, I went from beach and coconut trees to Silk Cotton, grasslands and rhinos.

It was a week of unforgettable sights, memories and new friendships, in an MNS trip that was missing my usual companions - Sekar, Raji, Sheila!

11th January 2020 - Day 1

It had been a hectic first fortnight of January - a Sogetsu Ikebana exhibition at Cholamandal, good friends Mona and Donu visiting from Chicago, and last minute packing.  Packed all the warm clothes I could find at home, and some more, (Vijay's message exhorted us to "layer", pack moisturiser, and be prepared for the cold),  and I had a rather bulky bag. Nervously weighed it, and yay, I was within limits!

345 am - left from home at this ungodly hour. Last minute change of backpack. Packing of battery packs. Off with a resigned Sekar as chauffeur to the airport picking up Pritam and Shubha along the way.

The frisson at the beginning of a trip is wonderful.  Anticipation, meeting up with old and new traveling companions. Greetings all around. My usual "inner circle" of mates and partners in crime were missing - Raji, Sheila (and of course Sekar, my long-suffering husband!), so it was a different feeling.  Much to my chagrin, I realised that I had graduated to the "older group" with the younger crew of the Sudars and Yuvan around. My rooming companion Devika had managed to hurt her toe quite badly, but was her usual unflappable self.  Cousin Kumar and family were in full attendance on this trip.  Venkatesh and Aparna, Suresh, Shantharam, Mr Shankarnarayanan...good mornings all around.  Elu and Kumar had gone ahead to explore Guwahati.

We were spread out across the Indigo flight - I was in 20A - and the flight to Kolkata was for catching up on sleep.

Kolkata to Gwahati - The Captain announces that we should watch out for the Himalayas, and there they were in the distance.

First sights of the Bramhaputra from the air.

Touchdown!  Guwahati airport was clean and neat. (I was rather pleased to see that it was named after a local Gandhian Gopinath Bordoloi.)  We met Pranjal, our accompanying naturalist for the entire trip and Hiranya, who was coordinating from HELP Tourism.  Elu and Kumar were at the airport too.  Our transport had come - Innovas - and we all were welcomed with shawls with lovely Assamese embroidery - I was introduced to the Gamusa - like our ponnadais.  More about it later.

Close to 10 am, and so we set  off. Sudar, Bhuvanya and Yuvan and me in one vehicle, with our driver Ramanan. And I had my first glimpses of the beautiful state of Assam.

Bamboo everywhere

Marvellous non-plastic packaging

Crossing the Bramhaputra, as we travelled north on the New Saraighat bridge - I think that's the old one across.  The parapets were so high, that I could only get occasional peeks of the river we were crossing.

We travelled on NH31 - amazingly good surface, and a divided highway.  

We stopped for breakfast...but where was everyone else?  

I loved the names of the towns - Nalbari, Barpeta, Sarupeta.   Poles filled with doves, beautiful little bamboo groves in homes, bamboo fences, ponds, and green and clean.  It was love at first sight.

Many streams and tributaries crossed

We entered  a  tea garden, 

and then there was the Manas arch, turn left and bump along a dusty road and we had arrived!

Florican cottage was a joy.  What a beautiful location, and run by Manas Ever Welfare Society - MEWS.  The cottage is at the edge of the sanctuary and within a 100m of the Beki tributary of the Manas river.

In true MNS style we kind of just wandered into rooms and settled down without a fuss.  The rooms were simple, clean and had all that we needed - clean loos and hot water.  It was lunch time, and we were all assembled in a trice in the lunch room, which is open on the sides, and in the middle, in-between the rooms.

One of the first discoveries was the lemon at lunch.  Hmm interesting.  It has a thick skin, and is tart, and accompanied every meal for the next seven days.  I quite enjoyed squeezing it on dal, which was also a regular part of meals.

Near the wall, a Powder Puff tree full of sunbirds, doves, bulbuls swooping by and tree sparrows.  The sun was shining as we set off for our first safari at 2pm in the afternoon.

Manas first impressions

What a magical introduction.

Welcomed by peacocks

and jungle fowls.  We would see them every time we entered and exited the park.

Silk Cotton forests!  A first for me, and throughout the trip, a lot of the bird "action" was around these trees.

Yellow-footed Green Pigeons seemed most bored at my excitement.

A Blue-Throated barbet! (Psilopogon asiaticus) What a beauty! My first of many lifers that Manas would reveal.  (Photo by Suresh)

The streaked spiderhunter (Arachnothera magna) (Photo by Suresh)

and the Lineated Barbet (Psilopogon lineatus), that's found only in the Bramhaputra region.  This is similar to the brown-headed and white-cheeked barbet, but the steaks go much further down on the chest, and there's no white "eyebrow", or cheek patch.  (Photo by Suresh)

Find the male Siberian Stonechat.  They were everywhere, we saw them everyday, every ride.  But this was my first sighting.  Soon I would recognise their clicking call, as they flew in the grasslands, searching for insects and well camouflaged.  The males were easier to spot for me.  The females, are a duller colour.

Little streams and ponds dotted our drive

The sun was sinking rapidly over the vast grasslands which stretched as far as my eye could see, it was becoming cooler and we moved towards a watchtower, to take in the view.  

A 360 view. Terai Grasslands.  And so much more!

The evening just got better and better

We climbed up to the watchtower, and I for one could not contain my excitement, awe and wonder.

My first rhino sighting, and it was a mother and baby! What a sight - these mega-herbivores, and shapers landscapes.

The baby was a sensation.  Turns out, it had made the local newspapers, and I was privileged to see it and the mother.

The news item said the mother R3A (couldn't they have given her a nice name as well?) was 6 years old and had become a mother for the first time.  The grandma had been translocated from Pobitora.

Born on Jan 4th - less than 10 days old, when we saw it!  It roamed around on its own, but never more than 10 feet from mom, it seemed.  

Strangely endearing - Small ears, big horn, armour plated, the magical one-tonne unicorns of Assam, 

with a butt like a Mami in madusaar,

that prehensile lip and constant singleminded eating.  Watching the rhino like this, it was easy to forget its strength - I felt like walking across the grass and engaging with it, so peaceful did it look.

There was more magic - a pair of Hen Harriers (Circus cyaneus) (another lifer) flew majestically in unison across the grasslands, and I learnt from Pranjal that the male was the whiter/grey one with black wing tips and the female was the one with the Kite-like colourations.  They went and settled in the grassland, out of sight, and it could have been that they were nesting there?  After a bit, the male was seen in the air again, circling and looking to me as if it was hunting for dinner.

A peacock danced and sedately pirouetted, reminding me so much of the moves of a Kathakali dancer, 

a wild boar snuffling around, as the grass was lit by the descending sun

I could've stayed there all night but it was time to go.

We were not done yet though.

We reached another clearing, another watchtower (Budha Budhi)  and we came across the most number of mixed herbivores I have ever seen together.

There were elephants, gaur, rhino and hog deer and wild boar, all in close proximity.  The light may have been fading, and the pictures were not the best, but what a magnificent sight. Soon, it was just shadows, and grey silhouettes fading into the jungles.

Mr Shankarnarayan captured a beautiful moment, which you can see by clicking here, of a rhino and a Gaur sizing each other up, or was it a friendly greeting?

My heart was full, all was well with the world, and as we watched, the magnificent creatures went back into the tree cover, probably unhappy with the attention they were getting from us.

It was just 5 in the evening, but the sun was setting, and there was an immediate creeping chill in the air.

As we made our way out in the safari jeeps, I thought about all the poaching and the civil strife that drove Manas down a rotten path, now revived and healthy.

It was a short ride back to Florican, and I hurried into thermals and all the warm wear that I brought, plus there was a bonfire to boot.

Cute little puppies who also decided the best place to be was at the bonfire!  It was not late, probably around 6, but it was pitch dark.

We sat around the bonfire, moving around to warm all parts of ourselves, including our freezing butts, and given all the synthetic stuff we were wearing, it would have just needed one spark to cause some damage.  Cheerful chatter, notes exchanged, and my mind wandered in disbelief.  Was I really here, at the foot of the Bhutan hills, some 2,500 kms away from where I was this morning?

Hot dinner, soup, roti dal and that lemon is what I remember, and everyone wanted to hurry indoors and under blankets.  Hot water bottles were in great demand!

It was good to get under the thick rasais, Devika tired and probably in some pain and discomfort had crashed out.  But a ventilator over my head was sending down this freezing draft, so I roused myself from under that rasa and went in search of help in getting that closed.

Aah, that felt better and warm.

More Manas Magic awaited.

Lifers for the day -

The rhino of course
Siberian stonechat
Hen Harriers
Blue-throated barbet
Lineated barbet

Continued here.