I have heard that India is also great place to see animals in it's natural environment. I decided to try to spot some rhinos in the Jaldhapara Wildlife Sanctuary. It is a National Park which is very rarely visited by western tourist in the North-East part of West Bengal. Without previous arrangement I reached the neighboring city to the park and figured out that it is not easy to get inside the park. One can enter it only for 2h long Jeep Safari or which gives much greater chances to see Rhino - for 1h long elephant Safari. Theoretically there was only one place inside the park where one could stay overnight but was very small (only 6 rooms) and is usually booked by Indian tourists months in advance. Luckily another western tourist show up - Judy, an Australian women, who is backpacking and hitchhiking all over the world for 30 years already. Now she retired, but she said that she does not have too many places that she have not seen already... I wander if I will be able to say like this in 30 years.
After few hours waiting and some additional Rupee, finally it was possible that we would spend the night in the park in this only guest house. The house was placed really in the middle of jungle and on the side there was a forest opening to which wild animals are coming from time to time (sometimes they are putting a bit of salt on this opening). The house was separated from the opening only by a very small river, which is for sure not a problem to cross for charging rhino or elephant. Basically from the front of our house we could appreciate wild animals in the night and at the sun rise time.
This was first time in my life when I have seen such a big wild animals in nature. In the night we have seen two wild elephants, five rhinos, several guaries (Indian Bisons). During the sun rise we were lucky to see one rhino. Early in the morning we took elephant safari. At the beginning I was not convince about the elephant safari, but I hope that trained elephants are not mistreated in the national park and this was the only way to get close to rhino.
We were four tourists and a driver on one elephant and we enter the jungle following two other elephants. First we had to go through the bushes where I had to be careful not to hit any branches with my head, or long leg. We had to cross small river and finally we reached huge savannas (high grassland). This was the favorite place for rhinos. Initially we noticed a small bird landing somewhere in the grass, which was a great indication that rhino was there. We slowly approached it and indeed he was there, smiling to use. We smiled to him back, hang out for a moment and hit the road back. On the way we have seen wild deer extremely close to us... it seemed that our elephant wake it up.
As the completely bonus, we have seen small wild elephant on the way to the park exit.
This was really nice experience, and I hope I will be able to repeat it in another part of the world with another animals.
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