Kaziranga National Park, Assam, India
Clearly not in the lowcountry.
The family slides in my dad's old wooden box are dusty and brittle with age. It seems hardly worth the trouble scanning them in, but occasionally there is a neat effect. This is a one-horned rhino in the high grass of Kaziranga National Park in the tea country of Assam. I was riding astride an elephant with my legs spread so wide it took a day to get my knees to touch.
There are no dates on the slide frames but I was young then with braids to my waist. Good memories. It was the first real family holiday I remember taking, driving from the hills of Shillong up into the plains with ten of us squeezed into the yellow willy's jeep.
Monkeys on the roof, tiger paw prints in the mud, snakes in the lake, parrots in the trees. An English tea planter invited us in for tea. We walked down to the river one morning and all the elephants had come for their bath lounging back in the water for the mahouts to scrub their back and spraying the babies with their trunks. When friends talk of swimming with the dolphins I say, I swam with the elephants.
It all looks so civilized now. Go. Ride an elephant into the tall grass through the mist at dawn.
4 comments:
Terrific story. I like the photo as well. You have to spend a lot of time with photoshop to get that effect.
Oh, you could turn this into a book. I want more. What a beautiful story and gasp at your legs *lol* You are too funny.
You are hilarious below with the wheelchairs. I love your pretty blue polka dotted dress. Can I borrow it someday? (just kidding lol) I would love to get one like it.
And how dare those new Virginia Villians or should I say varments for blocking your driveway. Just who do they think they are?
Have a great and beautiful Holiday week-end!
bfarr - nothing that twenty years in a hot outdoor shed can't do! Saves a lot of fussy photoshop work. :)
Sandy - I like my polka dot dress too! One piece dressing and I can throw it in the wash. I wish I had bought one in every color.
The mention of KNP reminds me of my first trip there in 1976 as a teenager.I was quite scared during the elephant ride and so hardly noticed any passing animal or bird.It was also winter and so there was hardly any greenery then.It was late afternoon and certainly not an appropriate time to look around for creatures.My fond memories are of the brief visit to my sister's friend's parents in nearby Kuthori,enjoying a cup of tea and a snack with them;where her retired father set up a snackbar and compact guesthouses made of thatched roof,its windows lined with the white and red Assamese Gamosa curtains and filled with other ethnic items of the region.The elderly couple were pioneers of sorts,when one keeps in mind that one hardly came across Assamese entrepreneurs in the Tourism Sector,thirty years ago.
During the last decade,I've been on my own passing by the highway while on tours to places in Assam and Nagaland.Passing by names of certain places and river tributaries beginning with the word "Di" and of Tea Estates like Khowang which means "big mouth",Khumtai which means "flower seed" reminded me of the Kachari(the community to which I belong)settlements centuries earlier;when they were in their heydays with their capital in Dimapur(now in Nagaland) sometime during the 10th century or earlier.About three centuries later, the Ahom kingdom was established by bold and shrewd men akin to the Burmese and Thai.Unlike the Kachari who were slow,these conquerors set about assimilating culturally to form a society as homogenous as possible and a streamlined administration.To them goes the credit of the adoption of the Assamese script and language and the term Assamese society which includes people not only of descendants of caste/professional groups of mainstream India but also the indigenous ethnic groups who may or may not speak Assamese at home.By the 19th century, the British entered and that's when the tea industry started all over Assam.
KNP celebrated its hundredth year in 2005.The closest surviving descendant of Lord Curzon,whose wife is supposed to have initiated the idea of preserving the Rhino,was present.Other aristocrats too shared the dais,but they were/are celebreties of the elephantine sort.One was Gayatri Devi(hailed as "one of the most beautiful women of the world")who as a Princess of Coochbehar(which was once part of Assam centuries earlier) was considered an expert elephant rider and Mark Shand (brother of Camilla Parker Bowles) of England(one of his trainers in elephant riding is the first woman trainer Parbati Baruah of Assam).Camilla & Prince Charles were about to get married and the press may have embarassed him by asking about them.He evaded further questions by saying that he wished them well.The British certainly do know how to keep people and questions at bay!
Namrata
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