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Cruise India
FULL STEAM: MV Charaidew on the Brahmaputra River in Assam; villagers (below) meet the vessel.
Riverboats, rhinos and the Raj’s relics
Dicky (Sir Richard Stagg, British High Commissioner to India, on his business card), Lady Arabella (that’s ARAbella, thank you, not ‘‘Bella’’) and their dashing, twenty-something lad, Charles, along with their armed escort have vanished into the foliage. Minutes tick by and the posse of motley military men assigned to guard us gathers for a discussion, cradling their collection of antique small arms. Not all seem to share our concern as one squad stands obligingly for my camera while I snap a photo. RG Orang National Park is one of several reserves put aside for endangered and vulnerable species such as Indian rhinoceros, Asiatic elephant, Bengal tiger and pygmy hog. Orang, at just 79sq km, is but a breast pocket in the overall scheme, beside neighbouring 430sq km Kaziranga, the better known of the UNESCO World Heritage-listed collection. The armed escort I thought was a bit of theatrical overkill, but Jimmy
The last days of the Raj are alive and well on the Charaidew, writes Roderick Eime ‘‘THE ambassador is missing!’’ The urgent call came from somewhere within our little group, just disembarked from the tiny fourwheel-drives used to carry us through RG Orang National Park. Deep in the
backwaters of Assam, the thick undergrowth makes it difficult to see the vehicles in your convoy, let alone any wildlife that might be hiding. ‘‘I didn’t see which way they went – anybody?’’
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CRUISE DEPARTS 28 DECEMBER 2010
(Colonel Jimmy Evans, 10th Gurkha Rifles, retd.) reminds me there are still rebels active in Assam. ‘‘These blighters still make a nuisance of themselves,’’ says Jimmy earnestly in a hushed tone. The last time Jimmy was here, he was throwing grenades at invading Japanese forces. He still has a scar from a sniper’s bullet and Military Cross as souvenirs. Not half an hour before, we’d been sipping the local equivalent of billy tea – choice freshly picked Assamese black – while a pair of rhinos explored timidly in the tall elephant grass a few hundred metres in front of us. These days the rifles protect them, but the rhinos remain unsurprisingly gun shy. ‘‘Still a bit flighty, eh?’’ remarked Dicky to the assembled tea drinkers, relaxed on wicker chairs. We’d all arrived that morning aboard the delightful MV Charaidew from Guwahati along the Brahmaputra River, which feeds into the Ganges just north of Calcutta.
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THE SUNDAY MAIL, ESCAPE
October 24, 2010
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