Kaziranga Enchanted

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Dear Readers, before you read this, you have to know that this article of mine is not a travelogue on the great Kaziranga National Park. Today, I am writing about my own experiences in the Park, a forest so deep and so mysterious…a land which has never failed to mesmerize me on my jaunts to it so far, all of my life.

In the past few years, a yearly visit to Kaziranga had become quite a ritual for me and my family. Every cold winter season we would plan and take a trip to this feral wonderland and every time, every single time, my heart would beat the same, with the same wonder like I was seeing the grassland for the very first time.

This year too, we had planned a short trip to the Park but this time the trip we were taking was indeed special. My husband who is from the North of India was coming along with us, meaning me and my parents. It was going to be his virgin experience exploring my beloved, beautiful Assam and I was quite excited for him to see the Park.

I guess, if I could call any place on the planet Earth my personal ‘favorite’, this would be it. So that day, as we embarked on the waited-for-so-long journey, I was excited, to say the least. I believe that my husband could perceive my obvious burgeoning excitement when, throughout the journey, I kept, with great elation, pointing out to him the vivid, idyllic landscapes passing by in a quick succession as our car traipsed ahead.

The fleeting panorama was probably nothing out of the ordinary to a person born and bred in Assam – there were little mud huts of the highway hamlets with cow-dung smeared, kesa courtyards and sometimes, a little pond completing the picture. But to me, it was as if everything was new and unique. It was a bittersweet moment for me as I tried hard to commit to my memory every fleeting moment for I knew that I was not going to visit that part of my country very soon. I was just trying, desperately to show my husband, in that little eon of time, the vast expanse of our red land and with it our intertwining culture, of how the essence of it will always throb in my veins, in my blood.

It was the first week of April and everything around us was lush green – the rice fields, the mammoth Krishnasuras, the tall and stately Aahot trees donning the highways – everything seemed to have been swathed in by freshness. I was ecstatically happy when I realized that my husband was looking with utmost amazement at the pure beauty of Nature at her best…it meant that my job was almost done.

Burhapahar…

We reached the Old Hill by the latter part of the afternoon and as always, it meant that we were on the brink of arriving at our destination.

I know this, for certain, that the sight of Burhapahar looming ahead has always invoked a tinge of an unknown, covert fear in the minds of anybody and everybody who have driven through it. You see, there are a lot of narratives of the eerie kind, of sudden encounters that had occurred while maneuvering across the sharp and difficult curves of the Ol’, Ancient Hill. Unexplained fatal mishaps which had transpired on the Hill had further driven home the point that the Old Hill was mystery personified and it was best left to that. There is, in fact, a temple at the end of the hill where you can profess your immeasurable gratitude and prayers after successfully driving out of the Hill…unscathed, unharmed.

Anyway coming back to our trip, in the late hours of the afternoon, after almost half a day of driving on the broken down, dilapidated highway, we finally reached the resort where we were putting up for the next two days. With the afternoon sun now mercilessly beating down at us and though tired from the long road trip, we, without wasting any more time, decided to take the jeep safari through the Park’s Central Range that very afternoon. And so we did.

Once the heavy iron gates of the Park creaked open and fell behind us, I was barely able to contain my exhilaration. Our rickety, protesting jeep sped on the small dirt road inside the forest, and I was, all of a sudden, transported to a strange, different world, a world with an altered state of reality.

As you enter the forest a strange hush falls…You could almost feel the tranquillity of silence engulfing your senses, almost forcing you to embrace the natural, untamed surroundings. And as your eyes fall on the inexplicable, thick, dense foliage of the forest, you feel a different kind of awareness. Exciting, electrifying – there’s no particular word that can ever describe what you feel when you are in the forest. You become more aware of yourself, of the cloak of peace around you and in the split of a second, the humdrum of your frenzied life is left far, far behind.

This time, like in all our past trips to the Park, we were fortunate enough to come across the mighty one-horned rhinos sauntering lazily on the open grasslands, as if they didn’t have a care in the world. It was like they had already stumbled upon the secret of Life, unlike our own selves, and were at peace with everything worldly.

Some of the majestic rhinos were grazing alone while others ambled together but keeping a safe distance between themselves. We came across tiny rhino calves walking with their huge mothers and this celestial sight was indeed a spectacle to behold. The ‘tiny’ calves never walked a yard away from their mothers and were happily grazing under the watchful eyes and protection of their bulky, gargantuan mothers. I am sure that this precious vision could turn any hardened heart into mush in a matter of seconds.

I believe, with all sincerity, that Kaziranga can unfailingly boast of the highest number of animal sightings and this time too, we were blessed to witness the sheer beauty of these God’s gentle creatures, that too from close quarters.

Deers of different varieties, herds of wild, gigantic elephants, colorful birds, wild, mud-covered buffaloes, indignant hogs…name it and we saw it all. It was like a gifted glimpse into a different, secretive world, still virgin and as close to the vision seen by the Maker.

As the evening set in, deep in the interiors of the forest, a lonely tusker suddenly made its presence known to our breathless safari entourage and this only added to our excitement.

I feel that what is another wonderful dimension about the whole experience is that once you are inside the forest, you could see different tints of eclectic colors, rows and rows of color splattered everywhere. I never knew that so many tints of the color ‘Green’ could even exist – teal, moss, olive and what not. I could only gape at the backdrop, utterly stupefied by the splendor of the lush acreage of the grassland.

Just imagine yourself being lost in a sea of green touched by a wild riot of flamboyant colors. Now imagine that your aural senses are so heightened that you can even catch the rustle of the leaves as the passing wind softly caresses them. I was able to experience all this and much more in the same dusky evening.

The unstoppable Time rolled on with all of its determination and though we were inside the forest for quite some time, it felt that time had suddenly hurried into nothingness and we were left wanting for more.

Suddenly we came across a group of armed men, tall and heads high, silently walking on the dirt forest path as if they were all driven by an unknown, urgent purpose. “Forest guards,” our guide-cum-driver explained. They smiled at us as we passed by them in our jeep. As I watched their receding backs from my vantage point, all I could feel was a sense of reverence and gratitude at what they do. It takes a different kind of a heart to walk deep into the forest with so much so under the protection of old, ancient rifles. Visualize that they do this every single day and that too in the pitch-black darkness of the night, the time when the forest comes alive, with the prey and the predators. These men are the real protectors of our forests and though they do not have much means or the advantages of the latest arms and pieces of equipment, these people are willing to gamble their own lives in the line of their duty, protecting the forest dwellers.

With heavy hearts as we drove out of the forest, I could see the animals, tall and proud…some in large herds and others solitary…some wandering to the open grassy pastures and others deeper into the forest. However, it seemed to me that they were walking in unison with the same gritty determination, to survive the falling night.

It was then I could not help wondering, with a sense of helplessness and profound sadness, whether these creatures would be able to survive in this world for long, whether they would, too, fall prey to blood-thirsty man, our materialistic pursuits. It was heartbreaking for me to realize that their innocent beauty, ironically, has now become a reason for their impending doom. My beloved land of the Red River and the Blue Hills…How I wish that the essence of humanity had indeed existed in us…How I wish that we could see that the unfathomable world belonged to every existing creature, mighty or frail, who walks on it and how miserably we have failed in that…How I wish…How I wish.