Brahmaputra Wilderness & Assam Tea Trails

Assam does two things extremely well: rhinoceros and tea. This nine-day route takes both slowly. A heritage bungalow at Balipara with a working estate around it, a walk into Nameri for white-winged duck, then…

Length: 9 days, 8 nights
From: ₹2,08,000 per person
Pace: Balanced
Stops: 6
Best months: November to April

The route

6 stops over 9 days

Guwahati
Balipara
Nameri
Kaziranga
Jorhat
Majuli

Tea at six on the Balipara verandah, mist off the Jia Bhoroli
White-winged duck on foot in Nameri with a forest guard
Three ranges of Kaziranga, from short grass to Sohola beel
Hoolock gibbon duetting in Panbari reserve forest
Mask-makers at Samaguri satra on Majuli island

Day by day

What actually happens

Length: 9 days
Stops: 6
Pace: Balanced
From: ₹2,08,000

1

Guwahati

Arrive Guwahati

You land at Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi, most likely via Delhi or Kolkata, and are met on the concourse. Twenty-five minutes into town. If the afternoon is still yours, take the sunset boat on the Brahmaputra — the river runs four kilometres wide here and the light on it is worth the hour. Dinner is Assamese: masor tenga, khar, black rice pudding.

Night: Vivanta Guwahati
2B L D

Balipara

Kamakhya, then tea country

Up Nilachal hill early for Kamakhya, the most important Shakta temple in the east, hibiscus and goats at the door. Umananda island afterwards, where a small population of golden langur was introduced decades ago and simply stayed. Then four hours north-east across the Kolia Bhomora bridge to Balipara, arriving among waist-high tea bushes by late afternoon.

Night: Wild Mahseer, Balipara
3B L D

Balipara

Addabarie: leaf, wither, roll

Tea at six on the verandah while the mist lifts off the Jia Bhoroli. Then into Addabarie Tea Estate with the manager: two leaves and a bud, the pluckers’ baskets, the withering troughs, the CTC drums, and a tasting where you learn to slurp properly. Afternoon in the bungalow library, or a bicycle down the estate roads between the shade trees.

Night: Wild Mahseer, Balipara
4B L D

Nameri

The Jia Bhoroli and Nameri

Nameri is 200 square kilometres of semi-evergreen forest against the Arunachal foothills, and one of the last strongholds of the white-winged duck — perhaps eight hundred left worldwide. You walk in with an armed forest guard; there are no jeeps here. In the afternoon, fourteen kilometres of grade one rafting, watching the shingle bars for ibisbill.

Night: Nameri Eco Camp
5B L D

Kaziranga

East to Kaziranga

Three and a half hours by road via Tezpur and Kaliabor, the Brahmaputra somewhere off to your right the whole way. Kaziranga holds around 2,600 greater one-horned rhinoceros, roughly two-thirds of the world’s population, across 430 square kilometres of alluvial grassland. Afternoon jeep in the Kohora range: rhino shouldering through elephant grass, wild buffalo standing in the beels.

Night: Diphlu River Lodge, Kaziranga
6B L D

Kaziranga

Bagori range at first light

The western range opens at half past five in winter and it is genuinely cold in an open jeep — take the blanket they offer. Bagori’s short grass gives the best rhino viewing and a real chance of tiger, though density and sightings are two different things here. Also eastern swamp deer, hog deer, and Bengal florican displaying in March.

Night: Diphlu River Lodge, Kaziranga
7B L D

Kaziranga

Agoratoli, and the gibbons

The eastern range is for birds. Sohola beel holds spot-billed pelican, bar-headed geese and greater adjutant, that magnificently ugly stork of which fewer than 1,200 survive. Pallas’s fish eagle on the dead trees. In the afternoon, Panbari reserve forest on foot for western hoolock gibbon — you hear the pairs duetting long before anything moves overhead.

Night: Diphlu River Lodge, Kaziranga
8B L D

Jorhat

Majuli, and the satras

Three hours east to Jorhat, then the ferry across to Majuli, the largest river island in the world and shrinking every monsoon. Kamalabari and Auniati still run as monastic Vaishnav schools, with dance practice at dawn; at Samaguri they make the bamboo-and-clay masks used in bhaona drama. The evening is spent at an 1880s planter’s manor.

Night: Thengal Manor, Jorhat
9B

Jorhat

Depart Jorhat

Breakfast in the garden, then twenty minutes to Rowriah airfield for the morning flight to Kolkata or Delhi. This is your departure day. If you would rather have longer on the ground, the drive back to Guwahati takes six hours along the south bank and can take in the Kaliabor tea gardens — say the word and we will rearrange it.

Night: Departure day — no overnight