Perumal's Travel Blog

  Left home at 1.30pm after a busy morning including last-minute business call.     Before board meeting on Monday morning.   Checked in and went to SQ lounge. Unfortunately our Singapore Airlines Krisflyer status has dropped n the past few years and so we were not able to bring in guests.    Had a nice lunch of Laksa and Dim Sum since we will be deprived of such local Singapore choices for a week, and later on even for months.. Watched a very Singaporean series on the flight - 4 hours of The Icons that made us.    Some nostalgia but I couldn’t relate to the events after 1999.  Very empty flight- a large double decker Airbus 380-800.  Flight landed 20mins early but had to wait a long while for luggage.  Turned in early at 10.30pm No photos taken.

Day 7: Kaziranga Park  => Link   and Tezpur 5am departure for Elephant Safari.  The animals we saw:  Rhino (lots) Jungle Fowl (the female walking behind is very well camouflaged)  Siberian crane All 4 of us in the group (just parts of!) are visible in this photo! Back for a quick breakfast and then departed for the jeep safari at 8.30am Went in quite a long way but we weren’t lucky enough to spot a tiger (which people had seen the previous day).  Overall we had better close-up photos of rhinos on the elephant safari but the jeep safari in needed to have any chance of spotting a tiger.  The animals we saw were:  Deer and Wild boar and then together  Kingfisher  Rhinos (many more than shown here)  Siberian Crane Turtles / tortoises BUT... no tigers! This park is on the flat plains of the Brahmaputra and flood waters can rise high during the rainy season.  As indicated on this building which shows 2023 level and only 2 earlie...

  Day 8: Tezpur to Guwahati  Apparently there was 5.1 scale earthquake at 2.25am about 60km from us, half-way to Guwahati.   Viji and Saradha were woken up by the bed shaking.  I had been up every hour during the night to clear my nose but didn’t notice the earthquake.  First stop from Tezpur was the  => Maha Mrityunjay  Sivan temple.  Instead of a gopuram there was a huge Shiva Lingam shaped building.  Look at the size of people at the base to get idea of scale.  Not so crowded on the day after Shiva Raatri but Police were there, prepared for a bigger crowd.   Devotees could pour their milk into a vessel and it was conveyed to drip onto the Shiva Lingam. A faster flow would allow it to reach the top of the Lingam but with slow flow it was just dripping on to the border.  Some interesting murals on the walls and ceiling. Unfortunately I got stopped from taking photos all round so only a selection here:  L...

Day 3: S hillong & Cherrapunji (Sohra)   Went for a morning walk from 6.30am but no spectacular views.  Departed hotel at 9am for Laitlum Canyon.  Some nice views but covered in mist even on a sunny day.  Arwah Cave: https://www.meghalayatourism.in/destinations/arwah-cave/ There are fossils visible on the roof and walls but we couldn’t spot any until we happened to see a guide for another group who pointed them out to us.  Thought I saw a Vishnu conch or Ganesha on the hillside - see if you agree… We stopped at a viewing point for the Gorge.  Disappointing as river beds are all dry with no rain from Nov to March.  Most memorable was meeting King Kong at a hilltop.  We went on to Noh Ka Likai Waterfall viewing point There was just a light trickle of water flowing and you had to imagine what it would be like after rain.  Mawsmai Cave  https://www.meghalayatourism.in/destinations/mawsmai-cave/ This cave was extremely narr...