Forest are the beauty that mother earth has provided us with. The raw beauty can we heart warming and along with it, it can even freeze our hearts. So we, the SSS gang are back with a Lovely, fierce, and adventurous story to impress the readers.
That night we slept in our room. To me it felt like sleeping in the heart of mother Earth. There was a continuous loud buzzing of cricket from all sides. Soft winds blew at intervals and soothed our minds and made us calm.
We were extremely tired and fell asleep as soon as we laid our bodies on the bed. The next morning, I woke up as I heard Sonia shouting for both me and Snigdha to get up. I woke up and was surprised to see Sonia fully dressed. I asked ,"what happened? Why are you shouting?". Sonia replied angrily, "Why are you people here? Just to sleep on the bed? Dont you go out today? Or will you sleep like this whole day?" Snigdha replied sleepily, " I basically came here to rest..." Sonia interrupted her and said, "What do you do in your home?? The only thing you do is 'resting'!"
I started laughing as Sonia was looking very funny on doing such a horrible quarrel.
Anyways, we woke up. Got dressed, we were about 1 hour and 30 mins late from the scheduled time. My father complained to the driver, ,"Never blame me for being late, I had been awaken for hours... Sonia pointed towards us. The driver was not at all angry. He said, "It's okay.... They can rest."
Our car was a open top roof Maruti Gypsy. The driver was a friendly chap. He played nice songs. Though everyone in the surrounding spoke Assamese, he was speaking Bengali. We understood Assamese as well as Hindi. Assamese is quite similar to Bengali and Bengali is my mother tongue.
The car started moving. Birds were chirping all over the area. From the driver, we learnt that there were 4 gates to the Kaziranga. He had brought us there as it was the nearest. Any driver who is responsible for the Safari of the tourists, take them through each of the four gates.
After driving for 5 mins, he told that we have actually entered the Kaziranga forest. Before him telling, the nature had already informed us. We saw a pair of deer which we identified as the swamp deer of Easter India. One of them had long, strong horns, brown in colour and was a stag. It looked handsome as it looked towards us with green grass outlining his background. The other was a female deer without horns. Both were reflecting the sunlight and appeared to be sparkling.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The pair of deer was far from us. Our car stopped. We clicked some photos. They were grazing. We found a car moving by our side. The four friends whom we had met yesterday, who had stayed in our hotel, they were out for side-seeing. They looked at the deer and then looked towards themselves. Then they came out and said, "Hello! I am Raj, they are my friends Alok, Ajay and Ram." I said, "Hello!!!" They didn't stop for long. While we were getting on the jeep, another car rushed from beside us. We felt as if the men were not interested to see the animals. They had something else to do. Who can be so ignorant towards such beautiful animals. Then we went ahead. The driver was telling us several stories, " জানেন এই সোনালী ৰঙের ঘাস দেখছেন , এখানেই বাঘ লুকিয়ে বসে থাকে আর সুযোগ পেলেই ঝাপিয়ে পৰে৷ " ["Do you know, these golden coloured grass help a tiger to camouflage. Whenever he finds a good chance, he pounces on the man."]
Next we saw a big strong one horned rhinoceros. It covered itself with mud to keep himself cool. The one tusk or horn looked dangerous. If anyone is attacked, it would be impossible to escape. Small birds sat on the big animal's body and we're eating insects which sat on the mud over the rhino's body.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
We were watching the rhino when suddenly were heard the sound of a gun. We were terrified. We heard another sound of gun. It was illegal to harm any animal in a national park. How was it that someone was killing animals. With the sound of the gun, we found an elephant cross the road hurringly. Many birds started shouting loudly and many flew away. The elephant was almost running. It could be dangerous if it goes near any human. We were not very far. So we got up on the car and headed in another direction away from the elephant. On the way we found the forest department car heading towards the sound of the gun. We found the two jeeps which we had seen while coming, joined us. They must have seen the elephant too.
We came to a safe place. But it was quite dark. We saw a big bird rather, it was an eagle. With the sound of so many cars coming, it flied away and sat on a distant tree. Our driver informed us that it was another of the specialities of Kaziranga National Forest, Pallas' fish eagle. My father asked the driver (his name was Palak) , "Where can we see a tiger?" Palak replies, " ভাগ্য খুব ভালো হলে দেখতে পাবেন ৷ খুব খারাপ হলেও দেখতে পাবেন ৷ " ["If you are lucky enough, you'll get to see it. Otherwise if you are unlucky enough, then also you'll get to see it."] He said jokingly....
