We did our kagels by riding on an elephant. The
elephant, her name was Pavan, put her right foot down, and we swayed to the
right. Then, ponderously, she lifted her right foot and put down the left. We
shifted to the left. Then she lifted her left foot and put down her right foot.
And so it went, slide to the right, slide to the left, slide to the right
again, swing and sway with Annie May.…. Meanwhile I was sitting upright,
clutching back pack, binoculars, dark glasses and phone-camera squashed between
two iron rails, one for me to hang onto, one for Miriam behind me. I sat just
behind the mahout who worked the elephant like a sled, one foot behind each
ear. He had an iron prod but he used the blunt end to scratch Pavan’s head from
time and she twitched her big fringed ears in appreciation. Pavan had no sense
of propriety. She paused from time to time to break off a branch and devour it,
chomp, chomp, chomp, and once to poop. Pavan, I just learned, is the name of a
slow dance.
We
lurched in this way, accompanied by about five other tourist encumbered
elephants, across open grass searching for the endangered one horned
rhinoceros, hidden by the deep grasses. The Rhinos are a dirty white canvas
color, or if you prefer, an off-white linen color, and they really do look
paneled in armor, with bright rather friendly eyes set above a large protruding
square nose. The famous one horn is a tuft of hardened skin and hair, looking
like a miniature pyramid about four centimeters high, on the females, a little
back and a whole lot larger for the males. It is said that the one horned rhino
may have been the inspiration for the unicorn but the rhino has none of the
other attributes of the delicate, white fairy tale unicorn. This rhino looks
pre-historic, his skin in armored panels across the back but from behind the
skin is like ill-fitting baggy trousers over short heavy legs. Dinosaurs come
to mind. The rhino is no groupie. We saw enough to make them seem ho-hum, but
always singly, peering over the grass, or, if in a twosome then as mother and
child. Although along the highway and in the park we saw many domestic or
“captive-bred” elephants we now had the rarer pleasure of coming upon a little
group of wild elephants silently peering at us from the grass and brush: a
mother with a baby and a yearling.
We came
upon a herd of perhaps four hundred light brown deer, the males with antlers,
the females with babies. Of the four species in Kaziringa National park we saw
two, the barasingla and the hog deer. These, with long long slender legs and
delicate brown faces were barasingla, the others, half their size, small and
quick, were hidden in the grass and ran as soon as we flushed them. They had
pointed faces, like a fox, but the large ears and tender eyes of the bigger
deer, belieing the name of hog deer. Any similarity to a hog, so heavy, snuffly
and slow would be as unlikely as a similarity between the rhino and the
unicorn.
From
the top of the elephant, waist high in wild grass we could see all the way
around the horizon, feathery trees fringing the mist at 7:00 in the morning,
and a few small clumps of high bushes with an occasion stork or Indian roller
bird tastefully waiting to be noticed. The only other time I rode on an
elephant was through thick tropical jungle where we rode at eye level with tree
branches and came upon small groups of buffalo unperturbed by our lurching
arrivals and departures. From the back of an elephant in grasslands you think
you can see forever.
Our
last treat of the day was an otter, doing the breaststroke. His sleek head
rising and falling in the water, creating a silvered wake, just as the large
and perfect circle of the sun, in a diffuse haze of orange gold, sank into the
distant tree line. Oh, yes, there were birds too, most notably a pair of eagles
in a nest who came out to soar and circle overhead for the late show.
Our
guesthouse probably predates independence and exudes an air of seedy grandeur.
There are no signs and we found it only by driving down a long winding
driveway/dirt road: several two story buildings set in a park-like enclosure
with scraggly grass nearly buried in dried bamboo leaves, paved walks, and
large trees enclosed by a vine covered head-high wall. True to form in these
colonial left overs, on the wall of the fine, high ceilinged dining hall are
old lithographs of British triumphs, the siege of Manipur in this case, and
some amateur but delicate bird drawings. We have a very nice room with
old-fashioned casement windows on three sides, twin beds and hot and cold
running water. The meals are enormous. They start with a rather spicy (i.e.
Chili hot) soup followed by rice, chapattis, stewed dal, also spicy hot, either
chicken or mutton masala very spicy hot, and at least two more vegetable
dishes, not too spiced, and, as if that weren’t enough, Indian pickle. For
after’s there is a small dish of flan, mercifully bland. And tea, always tea.
Delicious Assam tea. We’ve passed some of the tea plantations on our speedy
jeep rides to and from the Preserve, side by side with rice paddies.
A few
days ago we also lurched, but at mega speed, as we hurtled up and down steep
hills on a narrow dirt, then paved, then again dirt road, sometimes only a
meter from the edge of a precipice. The road was roughly carved out of the side
of the mountain and was often only a few meters wide, made up of of
switchbacks, hairpin turns, and figure eights, twisting, clawing, crawling up
the steep side of a mountain, which had no gentle contours. We usually had to
stop and watch as passing cars slid a few inch between us, squashed by the
looming mountain on one side and by the beckoning void on the other. That ride
was also lurch to the right, lurch to the left, lurch to the right, lurch to
the left, but at an average of ten lurches a minute. I know. I clocked them.
The drive up to the Eagles’ Nest Preserve was 150 km and took seven hours. I
felt as though all my internal organs had been in a washing machine on spin
cycle for a long time.
But it
was worth it. We spent two nights in a tent clinging to a side of the mountain
with no one else in sight for hundreds of miles – which is how far we could see
from our mountain side in the clouds – except for the few out-buildings for the
staff and the small rough eating room, with a hand made tin stove that smoked
badly and sent out an indifferent heat. The temperature got down to 7 degrees
at night, about 20 we’d guess in Fahrenheit. It was some cold at night in those
tents but the view out and down through the mountains was breathtaking. One
morning, less misty than usual, we could see a series of high, peaked, snow
covered mountains way over in Tibet.
Here
too we had a good guide. Between them Miriam and the guide identified about 43
species of birds, all of whom Miriam had never seen before. There are 1200 bird
species in India, according to a tattered guide book I read in the eating room,
and 600 of them can be found in this region. That’s because on that twisty up,
up mountain road we passed through four different temperate zones and were
introduced to new birds in each one.
There
is lots more to tell, of course, a whole treatise on building materials for the
sheds and small encampments we passed on the way up, (bamboo and/or tin) and
another on the tribal composition of these northern marginal states where the
people begin to look increasing Mongolian or Chinese- but your eyes must be
fading over already. And I have only ten more minutes on the hotel Wi-Fi!
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March 2015, India
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