The morning mood of Kazi

So here I am with the report of our final day at Kazi. I have to explain it with the help of two posts because of two reasons. One, the images of morning elephant safari carries a totally different mood and I don't want to mix those images with the rest. Second, otherwise there will be quite a number of posts in a single blog post with very less words along with them. So I have decided to have two posts for the final day.

When I was planning for my Kaziranga Trip in the winter last year, the thing that I was dreaming about was that of an image where a Rhino will be grazing in the green grassland with a morning misty mood around. But on all the four days by the time we entered the National Park it was 7:30AM onwards with no mist around. We were also helpless because the Park opens only by 7.30AM! So I was terribly disappointed. What made me pissed off is when I came to know on the fourth day that the elephant safari starts at 5:30 in the morning and I have only 1 day to go for that. :( All the time I was thinking that the elephant safari also starts by 7:30AM as no one is allowed to enter the Park before that. But in truth the elephant safari takes a different route (obviously!) and it starts at 5:30AM! I had inquired with  many people while making the tour plan but all the time I had forgot to ask this one information which proved me very dear!

 So finally I was in the grassland in the wee hours of the morning and the atmosphere around was very misty and moody. I was overjoyed by the scene around and simply enjoyed it for quite some time.

 Many people don't like shooting from elephant's back. The angle will be that much interesting and you cannot change the angle. It was first time for me to shoot from the back of an elephant.

It was a new experience and I was kind of liking it. In my images I made sure that I make the images of fairly distant objects with wide angle perspective so that the matter of angle can be eliminated as much as possible.

 The sun was not yet there in the horizon and the moon was still dominating the sky. But the light of the dawn was already celebrating its presence. It was a very unique moody atmosphere that I experienced there. For my good fortune we found a rhino grazing calmly being oblivious to our presence.

The flocks of egrets and mynah had started to fly in the sky declaring that they can see the Sun at the horizon. Slowly the bluish mist started to become yellowish and within next 10-12min the golden light of the Sun was glowing everything around.

It was a wonderful moment. Enjoying the sunrise in the midst of elephant grassland is an amazing experience. The mahaut was very co-operative and told good stories of the elephant which was carrying us. They all call that lady as "Phoolan Devi" :). This is because all the rhinos are afraid of this lady and they normally don't come close to her, otherwise many a times rhinos charge elephants. Phoolan Devi's calf was following us all along and it was very funny and enjoyable seeing how happy that cute calf was.

I had always heard that how tall the elephant grass is but here on this day I really experienced it. It is virtually impossible to know what is there just a couple of feet away! To give you people a comparative perspective, in the below image the people are actually sitting on the back of an elephant and that elephant is no less huge! :)

Our ride ended at 6:30AM and I was very very satisfied with the way it went.

self in the front, Anush in the middle and Adithya U N in the back

This is what I had imagined before planning the trip here and finally on the very last day it had come true - Kazi in the winter morning mood.

Cheers,
Ash