Sunday, November 20, 2011

Sunday November 20

Got up at 4:15 am to get ready by 5:00. Had cookies and coffee in the room and Manoj took us and Somnath to where the elephant safari starts from.

This morning we will be taking a safari into the Eastern Range. Today's ride was a 13 year male named Padman. The mahout was Monoj a helpful, informed, and friendly person. Tried his best to talk in Bengali with us and did a fine job of showing us many species of birds.

We saw a huge herd of swamp deer (Barasing), rhinos, buffaloes, Hogg deer, and wild pigs. I was a bit worried about having to straddle an elephant after my experience with the camel ride, but so far no ill effects. A very enjoyable morning indeed.

Breakfast was elaborate and scrumptious, showed our guide my two tiger videos. He appeared to be suitably impressed and asked many questions.

After breakfast we came back to our rooms, freshened up and I did some packing for our trip to Manas tomorrow.

After that Manoj took us to a tea plantation, something I have never seen before. It also had black pepper vines climbing the shade trees all over the plantations.






Lunch was again, specially made to order for us. Today being Sunday was a buffet lunch and since our lunch was special, they served us in the bar.

There is some construction going on in the resort and today the grinding, drilling, pounding appeared to be from just under our rooms and no amount of asking the front desk for an hour or so respite had any results. The noise continued until we had lunch and left for the afternoon safari. This was the only bad thing of our stay where everything else was great.

The jeep safari took us to the western range where we saw many animals including a monitor lizard and a fish eagle and another gorgeous sunset.

The guide Somnath and the driver Sunil were both very good and tried their very best to show us as much as they could.

Two great days at the Iora Lodge in Kaziranga. .

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