Elephant rides and the 'city of blood'

We started a little later at 6.30 for tea. We met Polash and went off for our second elephant ride. It was amazingly busy with an army coach load of second elephant riders; but soon we were mounted and off. One baby had wandered off with the crowd, away from its mother and the other elephants told it to go back, 'growling' at it. Eventually, she came along with the mahouts cloth in her trunk and collected it. The baby trumpeted and she sort of whistled at it. Alls well that ends well. Almost immediately we saw a lone rhino in the short grass. Then we moved off into taller grass and as we came past a small pond, there were two rhino having a quiet time. Poor things had to move off, but we had a good view of them. The elephant Dougal and I were riding was prone to run and go in the other direction so the mahout gave him several bonks on his head! We walked on into the shorter grass where the swamp deer were grazing. At the back were some unknown birds, which turned out to be Brahminy ducks - or ruddy shellduck. We saw a very young hog deer and then headed towards 'home'. On the way we saw a wild boar sow with six piglets, and then the mother elephant with her three month old baby. Back at the station we gave our elephant our old bananas all the way from UK! The mahouts made them put up their trunks as a thank you. While taking photos, our elephant decided to investigate my camera - almost taking it in its trunk! It was a lovely trip.
Back to the lodge for breakfast which included puff bread and potatoes.
At 10 we had an appointment to visit Assam people. We weren't sure what this would be, and Polash mentioned we could visit the market down the road. But before this we walked to a house close to the lodge where a family with two young sons live. The lady welcomed us. We saw she is a weaver as there were two looms to the side of the house. She built these herself and teaches other women how to weave - taking about six months. She also has a loom on which she weaves special orders for local people, say for celebrations such as weddings. She told us that she keeps silk worms, feeding them until they make their cocoons and harvesting the silk. She unwinds it and dyes it with natural dyes, before weaving it. Then she showed us their shrine to the god Vishnu. It has no image, just a flame which they use mustard oil and cotton for. Her older son demonstrated blowing the conch shell, which they blow at the end of prayers each day. Mel could manage it quite well, but no one else. We went into their living room where her husband had a collection of musical instruments including an elephant head string instrument with bow. We sat down and she brought us sweet milky tea and some puffed rice and savoury snacks. Then came the surprise as she brought some of her dancing clothes and dressed Mel up in them. All very lovely and great fun. We went outside and took pics. Back inside the lady brought some more of her fabric, but suddenly Mel started a really bad coughing fit. We sat her down - two friends had just arrived, and she brought Mel, first some water, then some honey and finally some tulsi leaves chopped with honey. This is a good remedy - its Indian basil. All this time, Alan and Dougal were playing cricket with the young lad out in the yard with great hilarity. When more family visitors arrived it was clearly time to say goodbye. We thanked her a lot for her hospitality and Mel wrote in her small notebook how much we appreciated her showing us her house. They gave us little facecloths embroidered with elephant heads from the Elephant Festival.
Now we went down to the end of the road and visited the market, which seemed small, but sold all sorts of stuff from herbs and spices to clothes and shoes, vegetables and fish. We ended up buying some incense. Polash suggested buying a duck for dinner, and when we got back to WGL he sent the driver back to get one!
We cleaned up and then went to lunch of chicken, rice, cauliflower, dhal with potato and aubergine pekora followed by the ubiquitous fruit and custard.
As Alan and I sat over a cup of tea three women visitors came and spoke to us. They were three sisters who were up from Guwahati for Sunday lunch. One had a fabulous bright yellow sari on with a black jumper.
It was already 3pm and time to leave to see the elephants bathing in the river. When we arrived it was amazing as hundreds of people were there. We bought one pounds worth (£1) of bananas to feed the elephants and immediately a crowd formed round us. Unknowingly we had become the centre of attention with people wanting to shake our hands and exchange New Year greetings. We even had our photos taken with some families; but it was getting out of hand, so we had to walk away or we would never have seen the elephants bathing. It seemed everywhere we went there was soon a crowd around us - making our viewing pretty difficult, but it was all good natured. We saw the female elephant and her 3 month old come for a bathe. The little one was clearly a bit scared, but managed to survive by climbing on her mum's side a little. She did get dunked a few times even so! When the bathing was over we crossed the field with the elephant and went to watch them playing football, which was great fun. They were pretty good, and will perform for the President at this year's 100th Elephant Festival in February. When they finished we fed them the bananas which went down very well and quickly. We still had a crowd with us and were very conscious of being photographed and even videoed. Eventually, as it was getting dusk, we crossed the road and saw a great photo-op as the overcast sky became quite pink behind some elephant which were tethered there for the night. After this it was really time to leave and we came back for a cup of tea and to pack as we leave WGL in the morning. Polash tried to persuade us to take one last elephant ride at 6am, but we have to leave at 8 to go to Tezpur - so all too much rushing about to fit that in.
Now we are about to go and have special Assam duck curry for dinner!
The drums and cymbals are playing and the dancers performing, but we are only listening tonight.
Dinner included tasty soup, the duck curry, fried banana flower, cauli pekora, beans, tom sauce, rice and dhal. Pud was cold rice with raisins and nuts - not everyone's favourite! Over tea there was a learned discussion on iso-tropic things and experiments with vanilla slices -hmmm!

Today the tea-wallah arrived at 7am for breakfast at 7.30. We were back to cereal, scrambled egg and toast. By 8.15 we were on the road to Tezpur, stopping to look at a couple of rhinos at the edge of the park. The driving seemed a bit quieter and we turned off to Tezpur in no time. We paid to go over the huge bridge across the Brahma-Putra river; but although the view was stupendous, no stopping on the bridge meant no pics much to our disappointment. We turned down the sandy track to the river bank. Here a huge beach with shallow creeks at the side served as a local port and 'resort'. The amount of rubbish was indescribable and there were loads of people who were instantly drawn to us. We walked across the 'beach' to a waiting boat. Mel and I both thought this was a small rowing boat which had a stack of red placcy chairs on board; but no, our boat was quite large though still just open with seats down the sides. A large engine sat slightly to the rear - not an outboard, and the boat with the chairs tied up behind us. We climbed up a gangplank from the beach into the boat and took our seats. The young lad started the engine and we chugged away from the shore and the spectators. They took us up river under the famous bridge and passed the confluence of the Borelli River into the BP. This was quite rough where the faster flowing B flowed over a sandbar into the BP. We avoided that and continued along to a point bar where we put in and the boys set 'camp' for us. We walked up the bank a bit and glimpsed the Gangetic dolphins - just their backs breaking the surface, and took some pics of two fishing net constructions just offshore. The chaps made a loo for us - three sides of canvas round a small hole, the fourth side open away from the camp! Polash was at pains to point this out to us. We sat on the sand and watched for a better view of the dolphins to no avail, but we watched a pied kingfisher which perched on the fishing net supports. Polash came along the shore in the little boat that had been emptied to take us two at a time out on to the water to try for a better view. When we had all had a go, we sat on the chairs for a while, then D, M and I walked across the bar to look at the other river. Alan soon joined us as we watched some cormorants flying up stream and being swiftly swept back down again. They then sat on a small sand bar drying their wings. Soon Polash called us for lunch. A table had been set under a couple of beach brollies, and we sat down to kedgeree, local fish curry, a sort of whitebait, veg curry and salad. Unfortunately the salad had tiny whole chillis in it which Dougal mistook for green beans and bit into it with dire consequences. He ate loads of cucumber to counteract the burning, but it was rather nasty. Just as we finished lunch, Polash spotted two birds in the water. At first he thought they were mergansers, but it turned out that they were a female and chick red-throated grebe. Alan and Dougal walked up for a closer look and as they walked back Mel and I saw a Gangetic dolphin come right out of the water - long nose and all. We all piled back into the boat as the boys had packed everything up, and we headed across the river to where a fisherman was working his nets - hopefully good pics. Then we motored down towards the bridge and a sort of bay where the dolphins had been spotted. We were lucky as the dophins were there and surfaced several times, quite fully. They are very difficult to see, nevermind photograph, so we just enjoyed catching glimpses of them. Just as we were leaving, one came right out of the water and Alan and Dougal got a good sighting. Now we headed back to the beach and disembarked. A small boat loaded with reeds that had rowed past as we were having our picnic was just putting in to the little creek, and we watched as they unloaded the cargo, mostly on their heads. Back at the van we got organised and decided to visit the temples as it was 2pm, and would be good light, rather than getting up early before we leave for Nameri at 9am tomorrow.
At the first temple, there were columns topped with cobras just in front of the entrance. On either side of the entrance (r) was Ganesh and (l) Hanuman. A holy man took us in when we had taken off our shoes and led us through a couple of rooms, ringing bells hung from the ceiling. At the back is Shiva draped in marigolds and all the pilgrims came to another holy man who placed a vermillion spot on their foreheads. He gave us each a marigold from the decorations - to be taken in the right hand. As we left he got Alan and Dougal to ring the bell. Outside again we re-shoed and then walked around the temple. This is a 20th century one built on the site of a really old one. We saw the old pillars standing at strange angles. In the garden to one side there was a sort of hermit - a man who has renounced everything and lives from what people give him. He looked very unkempt and a bit wild, surrounded with what looks like so much rubbish and with a smoky fire going. There was also a woman in anther part of the temple area.
We left here for a second temple. This is really an area commemorating the place of Tezpur - 'city of blood'. We paid to go in and for two cameras and read the story of Usha and her handsome prince, the battle between her father and Krishna and Shiva which was very bloody and in the end they declared a truce. We then walked up the hill passing all sorts of sculptures about the story - a bit Disneyland-ish. The view at the top was quite spectacular over the BP river. We were followed by the usual four or five youths and the man trying to video us. Back at the TATA a man rushed up to Alan and more or less forced him to have his pic taken with him and his baby; his wife waving the camera in Alan's face. All very weird and annoying! Polash is pretty amazed at this behaviour and puts it down to ignorance. So we drove to the Hotel Luit which is fairly run down masquerading as the best in town. We have tv in the rooms so caught up on the news and watched some cricket. Power cuts and rats seem to be the norm ; but dinner was OK - tandori chicken, cucumber salad, naan and chapatis. Basil, the rat, was seen popping in and out of the a/c unit, which is switched off just now. We played a couple of hands of bridge before retiring and being caught out by another power cut.

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