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Wild India with the Brahmaputra River

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Itinerary & Map

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Friday, November 19

USA / Delhi, India

Depart the USA on your international flight to Delhi, India.

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Saturday, November 20

Delhi

Arrive in Delhi late this evening and transfer to our hotel.

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Sunday, November 21

Delhi

Our full day exploration of both Old and New Delhi allows us to take in the elegant President’s House and India Gate in New Delhi before we enjoy a rickshaw ride from the imposing Jama Majzid to Old Delhi. Here, in a multitude of brightly bedecked stalls, Indians shop for everything from wedding jewels to spices, and silk brocades to sweets. This is a true insider’s look at the real India. We lunch at one of Delhi’s fine restaurants, then later explore several of the city’s other major highlights: the Red Fort, Qutab Minor, and the tomb of Mughal Emperor Humayan, as time permits. Dinner and overnight at our hotel in Delhi.

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Monday, November 22

Delhi / Khajuraho

After breakfast we take a morning flight to Khajuraho, the once opulent capital of Chandela. This afternoon we visit the World Heritage Site complex of 1,000-year-old Hindu temples—only 20 of the original 80 remain—famous for their fabulously detailed scenes of daily life including erotic carvings. The sculpted exterior of the Temple of Kandariya is considered one of India’s great artistic masterpieces. Dinner and overnight at our hotel in Khajuraho.

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November 23–25

Khajuraho / Bandhavgarh National Park

This morning we journey overland through scenic landscapes of forest, hills, and picturesque villages where women conduct their daily business clad in brightly colored saris. We arrive this afternoon at remote Bandhavgarh National Park. Formerly a maharajah’s private hunting preserve, the area was designated a national park in 1968 and is now famous as one of the very best places to view Indian wildlife and to seek out the rare and endangered Bengal tiger. Dinner and overnight at our jungle lodge.

Two full days are devoted to exploring this scenically diverse park set among the Vindhya hills of Madhya Pradesh. We travel by 4 x 4 vehicles in search of birds and mammals and take elephant rides when possible to track tigers. Expect excitement and the thrill of the hunt as your mahout, or elephant handler, guides his elephant over forested ridges, through thick bamboo and undergrowth, or across shallow rivers.

In the lowlands of the park, the grassland and bamboo groves provide habitat not just for wild boars, and a wealth of deer species including muntjac, or barking deer; the sambar, India’s largest deer; and the chital, or axis deer, but also for their predators the elusive leopard and tiger. In the trees overhead we watch for rhesus macaques and hanuman langurs, and bird watching in the area is phenomenal. In the lodge’s gardens, the flowers and fruit trees attract such species as the green bee-eater, white-bellied drongo, and plum-headed parakeet.

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Friday, November 26

Bandhavgarh National Park / Kanha National Park

After breakfast an overland journey takes us across a hilly terrain, through extensive teak forests and open agricultural areas to Kanha National Park in the lush Banjar Valley. This wonderful national park, even more remote than Bandhavgarh, is often referred to as the Ngorongoro of India, although Kanha is greener and its surrounding hills are more densely wooded. Dinner and overnight at our jungle lodge.

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November 27–28

Kanha National Park

We spend two days devoted to wildlife viewing in Kanha’s beautiful wild country of forests and plains—a true wilderness and the inspiration for Rudyard Kipling’s classic, The Jungle Book. The diverse topography provides ideal habitat for animals, and photographers discover unrivaled opportunities to “capture” the wildlife.

Again, we use 4 x 4 vehicles (and elephants when possible) to explore the riches of Kanha. Expect to encounter herds of chital, the endemic swamp deer or barasingha, Sambar wild boar, and langur monkeys. This area is also the best place to look for the gaur, a bison-like animal and the largest of all bovids. With luck, other possible species include Indian wild dogs, jackals, sloth bear, or perhaps even a rare chousingha—the world’s only four-horned deer. The dramatic plateaus provide breathtaking panoramas of the valleys below and the hills beyond, all encompassing the habitat of tigers and their prey.

The rich birdlife of the park includes such specialties as lesser whistling-duck, Alexandrine parakeets, treeswifts and jungle owlets, little cormorants, and Indian pond-herons, to name but a few. In addition we can expect to see many wild peacocks and hear Indian red jungle fowl—ancestor of all modern chickens. Dinner and overnight at our lodge.

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Monday, November 29

Kanha National Park / Raipur / Kolkata

After a last morning game drive we depart for Raipur. Driving through rural India, is to be constantly exposed to ‘incidental’ culture as we pass through villages and seemingly endless small scale farming. We board an evening flight to Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). Overnight at our hotel near the airport.

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Tuesday, November 30

Kolkata / Guwahati / Embark RV Charaidew

This morning we transfer to the airport for our flight to Guwahati, where we are met and driven up Nilachal Hill to see the holy Kamakhya Temple, one of the country’s most revered Shakti-worship and tantric sites. After lunch we embark on the comfortable steel-hulled riverboat, the RV Charaidew, and cruise for an hour and a half upstream to Kurua on the north bank of the Brahmaputra River.

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December 1–2

Cruising the Brahmaputra River Aboard the RV Charaidew

We spend the day cruising upstream, maneuvering against strong currents, between hills rising on either side. An idyllic stop at Ganesh Pahar gives us a chance to explore a delightfully serene hinterland lying under jungle-covered slopes.

Leaving the hills behind, we enjoy our first taste of the wilderness experience as we cruise between stark sand banks keeping a lookout for the occasional Gangetic dolphin. We may make a short stop to visit a bank-side village, creating a minor sensation as we do. We moor for the night in a lunar landscape of sand islands—the Himalayas, when in view, provide a contrasting backdrop in the distance.

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Friday, December 3

Orang National Park / Kaziranga National Park

Rising early we disembark the RV Charaidew and board a local boat to Orang National Park. We pass through the forest and grasslands of this rarely-visited park by jeep looking for birds as we go. We break our journey today with a stroll at a tea estate, then for lunch before continuing on to our lodge on the border of Kaziranga National Park, situated in the state of Assam in the far northeastern sector of India. Here we spend the next three nights.

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December 4–5

Kaziranga National Park

We have two full days to explore this amazing World Heritage Sites; a 165-square-mile reserve that borders the Brahmaputra River. The country here is mostly flat— a luxuriant tangle of thorny rattan cane, elephant grass, evergreen forest, and shallow marshland.

The reserve offers visitors excellent opportunities to see and photograph the many one-horned Indian rhinoceros and wild Asiatic water buffaloes that live in the park. The rhinos are of special interest and are the main focus of our attention, along with the population of Asian elephant that also occurs here. Other highlights are wild boar, the abundant hog deer, and the locally common swamp deer or soft-ground barasingha. With luck, we may also see the smooth-coated otter, and during a visit to Panbari Forest perhaps encounter India’s only ape, the hoolock gibbon, which reveals its presence with a haunting call. Birds too abound: flocks of bar-headed geese; hordes of ducks; grey-headed and Pallas’ fish eagles; red-breasted parakeets; oriental darters; herons and egrets of all shapes and sizes; black-necked, lesser adjutant, and Asian open-billed storks, and perhaps even the rare greater adjutant stork. Dinners and overnights at our jungle lodge.

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Monday, December 6

Kaziranga National Park / Guwahati / Delhi

After breakfast depart Kaziranga for Guwahati where we will connect with our flight to Delhi. Arrive Delhi late in the  afternoon where we will have day rooms at our hotel before transferring to the airport late this evening.

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Tuesday, December 7

Delhi / USA

Depart Delhi on independent homeward flights.

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