Trip Report: Guwahati / Kaziranga National Park, Assam

We just got back from a 6 day trip to Guwahati, Assam. We stayed with our friends: Smita, Amitav, Nandini and Mrinal. The two sets of kids and parents get along quite well with each other. I went to school with Mrinal at REC Warangal more than 20 years back (yes, we are old!) and always wanted to goto Assam and the Northeast. So to some extent this was fulfilling an old dream of mine.

We flew on a kingfisher flight from Mumbai to Guwahati. I suspect this is one of the longest flights in India. Going there was more than an hour faster than coming back, most likely due to the west -> east winds. Also for some reason the flight did not cross Bangladesh, at least on the map crossing Bangladesh seems the best route. On the way over, we gave Maya a Dramamine tablet for her motion sickness. It did do the job quite nicely, but also had the unpleasant side-effect of making her feel wierd (and hence cranky) for the next 12 hours. On the way back we decided to limit food intake and skip the drugs. This did work, but made her a bit queasy after the flight landed and hence not a very happy camper either :(. I suspect we'll skip the drugs for the next couple of flights.

Smita's parents have a great place with a lots of space on the yard and rooftop. This was quite a treat for our kids after being enclosed in an apartment in Mumbai. We spent the first day just playing various games on the terrace. The next day, we rented a tata sumo and set off for kaziranga national park. From a distance perspective, its relatively close to Guwahati (210 km / 110 miles). However, this being India the trip took us pretty close to six hours. India is making progress at an incredible rate. Will be good indeed when the traffic moves at a significantly faster rate and you can cover distances in reasonable time.

We stayed at Wild Grass Resort in Kaziranga. We got in at approx 4:00 pm on Monday and decided to take it easy and let the kids run around. The resort is great for kids since there is lots of running space and some swings / badminton set etc. In summer, I suspect the swimming pool is also open. We had all our meals there, and the food felt like home cooking. We had some traditional assamese dishes and there were a few hits and misses. We signed up for the elephant ride the next morning and a jeep safari in the afternoon. The kids enjoyed both events and found it quite thrilling to be on the elephant (pictures coming soon). We were quite pleasantly surprised to watch Maya enjoy the jeep tour. She was the only kid to be awake for the entire tour. She was also the kid who complained the most about the long car rides. So kinda nice to see her realize that there is some benefit of being in a vehicle.

Kaziranga lived upto its reputation and we saw abundant wildlife other than tigers. There were quite a few one horned rhinocerous, wild buffaloes, deer, sambal, jungle fowl and wild swine. In contrast we just saw one mother/baby rhinocerous on a trip to Chitwan National Park (in nepal) 8 years ago. The population growth is nice and linear for all species in the Park. India's parks are more like reserves / sanctuaries. There were no hiking trails within the park that we could explore with kids. Adding some hiking trails in various parks would allow people to spend a lot more time within the park. I suspect this will also allow poachers much easier access, so there are some disadvantages :(

We drove back to Guwahati on Wednesday via Tezpur. The DK guide led us to Cole Park there which was a very welcome spot for the kids. The park is well designed in a limited space and the play structures are not bad. We then drove back to Smita's parents house with a short snack/dinner break. The car ride was a wee bit too long. Mrinal's answer was its two more hours to home irrespective of the distance travelled

On thursday we visited Guwahati zoo which is spread across quite a few acres. Significantly better than Mumbai's pathetic Byculla Zoo (which we refuse to take out kids to!). We saw quite a few elephants, some cats, a couple of tigers and a brown bear. The kids were in a perpetual state of hunger, for snacks we gave them digestive biscuits (none of the adults had read the label very carefullty). After a couple of hours at the zoo, we headed to Beatrix in town. We had the Indian-Chinese food there while the kids had a chicken / fish burger. The food was not bad, and a good change from all the Indian food we've been eating the past 3 weeks. The digestive biscuits seemed to have done the job quite nicely, since all the kids had to use the bathroom. Each kid seemed to take their own sweet time and were occupying the potty for 15 minutes or so. We shared quite a few amusing (and disgusting) potty stories while we waited the next hour. We were having a pretty early lunch, so we had the top room, and more importantly the bathroom all to ourselves.

After lunch we trooped over to the Assam State Museum and learnt a bit more about the various assamese tribes. The kids did seem interested in seeing the various model villages and other activities. Would be good if they had some hands on activities. The bathrooms were beyond disgusting and we headed to the nearest cafe coffee day. Yes, it does seem we spend a lot of time in bathrooms :). We then played at the park across from the museum.

The final day we went to Nehru Children's park which is supposed to open at 10:00 am but in reality opens at 10:30 am. The play structures were ok, but it has a pretty cool maze and we spent 30-45 minutes playing hide and seek there. It was just perfect for the younger kids. We then headed to Dynasty, Guwahati's premier hotel and restaurant. The Indian restaurant was not open, and we had to settle for the breakfast menu at Chopstix. The food was passable but the service was pretty pathetic. The food took forever to make, even a simple plain dosa :( We asked for the cheque which took even more time than the food to arrive. We managed to get out of there just in time to catch the plane back home to Mumbai