Safari > Articles > Kaziranga National Park, Assam

The Brahmaputra is one of the world’s great rivers. For nearly 1,800 miles, it cuts a blue swathe round the eastern end of the Himalayas and like its namesake, ‘Brahma’ - ‘the creator’, it brings life to the alluvial flood plains and grasslands of northeast India. But, like another supreme Hindu God, Vishnu, the Brahmaputra is also indiscriminately destructive.

In the geographical centre of Assam, the river forms the shifting northern border of Kaziranga National Park, one of the gems of Indian wildlife conservation and home to 65% of the world’s population of ‘Rhinoceros unicornis’, the great one-horned Indian rhino. Each monsoon, the Brahmaputra breaches its banks and floods the park, breathing life back in to the parched land and replenishing the 200 ‘bheels’ or shallow lakes with water and fish. “You can’t think of Kaziranga without the monsoon floods,” B.S. Bonal, the park director told me. “They replenish water supplies and cull some of the old animals. But high intensity floods, like 1998 are hell.”

In 1998, a massive flood killed many animals, including 39 rhinos, and destroyed the core of the anti-poaching infrastructure within the park. There is now an emergency plan that will operate when serious flooding occurs, but it has been a struggle to overcome the loss of the infrastructure.

Despite this setback, the park’s poaching record is enviable. “Poaching was heavy in the late 80s and early 90s”, Bonal said, “We have built a network of 130 manned poaching camps throughout the park and taken the lead in anti-poaching. The rhino population has increased 40% in the last five years. The 1999 census put the number at around 1,600.”

Catching sight of a rhinoceros is certainly not a problem. Ten minutes atop a sure-footed elephant and I was face to face with a grey pachyderm through the rising mist. These armour-plated, antediluvian beasts are a magnificent sight. Numerous and seemingly unphased by the huffing elephants and the camera clicks, it is possible to get very close to them.

Kaziranga has much else to see besides. There are 14 other endangered species, including swamp deer, leopards and Royal Bengal tigers. Pug marks in the sand and a buffalo carcass were the closest I came to seeing a tiger, but one morning a leopard did lope past my hotel bungalow, nearly causing me to swallow my toothbrush. There are also dozens of rare species of shallow waterfowl.

I visited Kaziranga in February this year - a good time as the elephant grass is burnt back and the game viewing is better. For an independent traveller staying in the state government accommodation, visiting the park is a very Indian and relatively expensive affair. The park HQ at Kohora teems before dawn with sartorially challenged jeep loads of Indian tourists in their winter ‘mufti’. If you plan your tours in the park this way, you are allocated a jeep driver (who is effectively your guide as well) at random by the park authorities - a lottery as some are good, while others speak no English or know nothing about the game. A better option is to stay at the Wild Grass Resort and visit the three ranges of the park in their own jeeps.

The northeast region of India was off-limits to travellers for much of the 1990s (some of the more remote states still are). However, the black cloud of terrorism has passed over Assam. There are incidents of violence, but tourists are seldom the targets and visiting Kaziranga is for the time being, safe and very worthwhile.

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