Assam Day 4 - Orang!

May 2020

Trains are getting lost, flights are getting cancelled, locusts are swarming the plains of north India.  As expected, cases are doubling in states like Assam.

August 2020

Floods in Assam, and the sanctuaries and animals are in distress, with no access to highlands for them.  

COVID continues its merry spread across cities and states, though it does seem to have slowed in Chennai.  And I sill have not finished this post.

Here is another stab at it. 

15th August 2020 - 7 months to the day, oh my goodness this definitely is getting finished today!  What better way to mark our independence, than write about a visit to a remote corner of India early this year.  

14th January 2020

Continued from here.

Goodbye Manas

Today was the day we were moving to Orang, where we would have one afternoon safari, and spend the night at the town of Mangaldoi, which we would pass actually on our way to Orang.

All woollens packed into my large bag - I was relieved to have brought an outsized bag, as I could just throw stuff in any which way, and now it had an added item - the bamboo "vase" which is about 18 inches long!

We bundled into our cars, said a big thank you to the Florican staff  at Manas (I wondered if I would ever return there again), as set off for Orang/Mangaldoi.

A 10 am halt at Nalbari for tea, and we were exposed to the Bihu market wonders - all sorts of things.
 

 

A man held a fish as if it was the most normal thing to do - maybe it was for him.  Not for me.  I gawped, just like the poor fish.

The bamboo baskets all looked so inviting - but I followed a "Only look no buy" policy, and left without anything additional!  This was a fishing set.  

When I returned back to Chennai, Kamini was scandalised that I had passed by on nolan gur - which was being sold by the tubfulls.  Venkatesh (or was it Aparna?)  bought some delicious pedas - it was good to be travelling with them - we were constantly eating!

We crossed Mangaldoi, and continued.  Mustard fields were in bloom.

At around lunch time - oneish - (yes, time is measured by mealtimes), we arrived at Orang! We were at the gate of the park,  a newish resort - Green Planet just at the gate, but it was not large enough to accommodate us all overnight, so sadly we were trekking back into Mangaldoi for the night.  But for now, a clean loo was most welcome.

Trying hard to make the boys who were helping us at lunch to understand that no we didn't need plastic bottles of water, but a jug would do nicely thank you.  They looked at me as if I had gone mad....I suppose there was a lot lost in translation!

Orang - the first I heard of the place was in 2008, from Chithra,  as this back of nowhere place - and now I was there/here, never mind!

We met Najib, another young naturalist, and now, along with Pranjal and Yuvan, we had a trio of young naturalists!  Najib worked with Wild Wings, a local NGO in the area of wildlife conservation, and he was going to accompany us on our drive through Orang.

After lunch, we saw some jeeps, and all of us hopped into them, and waited.  and waited.  I was with Suresh and Pritam and Shuba.  After a bit of time, we heard a lot of Assamese exchanged between Pranjal and Najib and the drivers.  It seems that there was a standoff between the drivers and the forest rangers over manhandling of a tourist, and the park was actually closed that day!  

After much cajoling and explaining by Hiranya  that we had come all the way from Chennai, some kind of compromise was reached and we had to shift to some other jeeps (I guess these were the ones of the forest department and not the ones of the resort), and then we were let in.   

I was with cousin Kumar and Usha in the rearranging, and it was all in the family in our jeep.

Orang is a little park - 78 sqkm - on the north banks of the Bramhaputra, and if I'm not mistaken I recall Najib mentioning that it belonged to a Raja of the region.  The vegetation was very much like Manas - grasslands, and silk cotton.  

Bird community of Rajiv Gandhi Orang National Park, Assam

The entire protected area was a human habitation till the last decade of 19th century (Talukdar and Sharma 1995). The area was inhabited by different ethnic groups. The villages were abandoned during the latter part of the 19th century, and in course of time, the area became covered by vegetation where animals took shelter. In 1915, it was declared a Game Reserve. The area was declared Wildlife Sanctuary in 1985 and upgraded to a National Park in 8th April, 1999. Entire area of the RGONP is the core part of recently declared Orang Tiger Reserve in December, 2016.

Sitting quietly in the shade was an Asian barred Owlet, looking on seriously at us.  Soon it turned its back on us, but Suresh captured it sneaking a peek at us!

The undergrowth was beautiful as was the canopy above...where to look?

A fairy bluebird sat high on an exposed branch

We stopped at a watchtower and took in the landscape 

The Eurasian Wryneck

Then there was some scurrying in the undergrowth just below the watchtower, and Najib said it was a Eurasian Wryneck.  Now me and my myopia took ages to spot it, but  it kept everyone busy for a while as it scuttled among foliage, now you see it now you don't, the shutterbugs getting more and more frantic! 

Finally, even I saw it!  And even got some hopeless pictures of it.  

The Eurasian Wryneck - Jynx torquilla - a lifer for me.  It is a woodpecker, but what is it doing on the ground.  Strange bird!

It had these jerky movements and was always on the move.  I learned that it is a ground feeder and has a long tongue that it uses to probe for ants.  

I saw the characteristic "namam" down its back, but it was really well camouflaged, and busy!

There are videos on YT of this bird doing some interesting things with its rather supple neck.

A beautiful capture by Sudar of said Wryneck

And then we arrived at the forest bungalow from Chithra's account!  If only we could have stayed here.  What an idyllic location!  But everything looked totally rundown.  But why oh why does it have to be like this? Why do we find forest bungalows go into disrepair, and then new ones get built?

I could imagine staying at this guest house and looking out on the vast grasslands below

If you click on the picture and enlarge the panorama, you see, the view from the rundown guest house - the vast grasslands, in height order it seemed - the pasture and then medium height grass and then really tall elephant grass.

The tall grass, with the trees beyond

We just sat on the wood stumps, soaking it all in, as the sun slowly dipped and the light faded.  As the sun lowered, the birds were returning to their roosts.

It was a herbivore bonanza. Swamp deer, hog deer, boar, francolins, rhinos....all grazing peacably. No carnivore in sight. Egrets and kingfishers, drongos and bee eaters.

About 10% of the area of the ONP is wetlands and water - the Bramhaputra river, with its tributaries Pachnoi and Dhanisiri, flow through these areas, and there are also many "bheels" or lakes.

The Indian hog deer (Hyelaphus porcinus)

Another first for me was seeing these small deer, which are supposedly found across northern Indian plains.  Their body shape seemed a bit different, with downward  slopy shoulders.  The white on their tail was more evident when they flicked their tails, which was very often.

Assam seems to be their last refuge these days, as their numbers in areas like Corbett have dwindled.  I learnt that these are grassland deer, and were once much more abundant than chital, but as more and more grassland came under fire/degradation, these deer had nowhere to go.  

Now under the IUCN endangered list, I hoped that they continue to thrive here in Orang.

As with all of the creatures of the Bramhaputra region, the annual floods mean they have to move to highlands, but with more roads and development cutting off access to highlands, there is huge loss of hog deer every monsoon.  

They needs grasslands to fawn, so their successful  breeding is under threat with dwindling grasslands.

It was only 430 in the evening, but the sky ws darkening, and it was soon time to leave the park, but we had one last encounter, almost missed.  A lone elephant to the left of the road watched us go by.  The jeep driver was a little skittish and didn't want to linger - discretion around lone male elephants was what he muttered.

Beautiful sunset views as we bounced along the jungle roads to exit the parks, accompanied by the screeching of parakeets on their way back "home", wherever that was.

We exited the park and stopped for tea, and a tete a tee with Najib and his work. The tea was not worth writing about, but there was much banter as we waited in the chilly darkening evening air.

It was a couple of hours ride to Siddharth Palace, which was named more in hope and wish than in fact, but rather interesting.  Steep steps and up and up.  Rooms with glamorous velvet curtains behind which were plain brick walls, hmm.  And the steps (I kid you not). were not flat but seemed like out of that nursery rhyme - there was a crooked house. All those days at Manas we were served hot simple meals and it was fine.  Somehow this veneer of poshness and floating oil always makes me suspicious. So I ate sparingly (yes I can do that, believe me). The waiters were obsequious and supposedly the owner had a Madras connection - he had come to Chennai to do his engineering!!  It was Bihu night, and we were in for all night singing and dancing we were warned, and yes they partied all night long to a mixture of Bollywood and Assamese music.

We did not see the pygmy hogs - another species under threat because of lost grasslands.  ONP is a site of some pygmy hog restoration programme.  

 

 Day 5 - on to the river!

We of course were up with the lark, but the staff were all hungover and asleep and Pritam came down to find that we were locked in hahahaha. Some Hotel California like situation.  After some hollering, we were let out by some sleepy waiters. I went for a stroll and found some interesting things.

An Apollo Chennai outreach!

A doggie with offal

And this rather stern notice for employees of the hotel

which I noticed while having breakfast

I had packed up and come for breakfast leaving Devika in the room to finish and join us downstairs. Cars were getting loaded. She wandered down and told me  that she thought I had left my soap behind. So I went on up again on those crooked stairs to our room with the satin curtains, and retrieved my soap, and there I saw rubber chappals, green, near the bathroom door.  I muttered to myself that Devika has forgotten her slippers, picked them up with a flourish and went off downstairs after a final look around to ensure nothing else was abandoned. 

I marched purposefully to Devika calling out to her and waving the slippers, as she was loading her bag and I very helpfully wanted her to put it in before the bag got put away in the car boot. The waiter from the hotel was following me in a strange fashion.  At this point Devika told me, in her usual unhurried and calm voice, it's not mine Ambika, and .....I looked from slipper to her to the following waiter to all the other MNS members standing around looking on. The waiter sheepishly said, woh hamara hotel ka chappals hain (actually I should've been the sheepish one you would think). There was much tittering and guffawing as I hastily handed it back to him and ran off to wash my hands.  "What else are you smuggling away Ambika?" was the refrain, and Suresh was sure I had watched the movie If it's Tuesday it must be Belgium!  

And then we were off, to our next experience on the river itself.

Assam Day 5 - Seeking the dolphins, encountering the Osprey - the gigantic Brahmaputra

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.