Travelling in the North-East in the summer of 2006
Guwahati >> Eaglenest >> Tawang >> Nameri >> Kaziranga >> Shillong >> Cherrapunjee
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Eaglenest is special because of its altitude range varying from 500m to 3200m. The varying altitude translates into rich variety of biodiversity, with different vegetation and animal life at the higher and lower altitudes. Most of the flora and fauna of the region have remained pristine and undisturbed and well isolated from external world. A jeep track passing through the park is the only means of commute within the park, unless you walk.
LOCATION
Eaglenest is located in West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh, adjoining Sonitpur district in Assam. Tezpur is the nearest town that serves as gateway to the park. You can get to the park from two locations – via Missimari in Assam and then take the jeep track and go all the way till Tenga. Or take the Bomdila highway from Tezpur and reach Tenga to enter the park from here. Entry permits to Arunachal Pradesh is necessary.
Vista of Eaglenest
THINGS TO DO
Birding is the primary activity. You can also walk in the park and enjoy the immense beauty of the forest. See undisturbed evergreen forest in the lower regions and alpine forest and rhododendron vegetation in the higher regions. Eaglenest does have a population of mammals like elephants, tigers and herbivores but the thick forest makes it difficult to sight them. Birders have a treat awaiting for them in Eaglenest. The forest hosts many endangered and endemic bird species that are hard to come by anywhere else.
LOGISTICS AND ARRANGING A TRIP
There are no tourist facilities in Eaglenest. I would strongly discourage casual visitors and leisure travellers from making a trip to Eaglenest. Currently, the only way to travel to Eaglenest is with the help of the infrastructure created by Bugund tribe and Kaati Trust. See Ramana Atreya’s page on Eaglenest for more details. Once your trip has been fixed, they can arrange for your permits and other necessities.
Accommodation will be in tents and facilities are limited. Be willing to live in very basic accommodation with staple food, and be willing to walk long distances every day.
Our accommodation in Lama Camp
To get to Eaglenest, take a bus from Guwahati to Tezpur(5 hours). You will see many shared jeeps heading towards Bomdila in Tezpur bus stand. Catch one of them and get down at Tenga(may be four hours?). You may have to walk or hire a jeep for yourself to reach your camp(15kms) from Tenga. Tenga has a hotel with basic facilities where you stay if you need to.
Travelling in the North-East in the summer of 2006
Guwahati >> Eaglenest >> Tawang >> Nameri >> Kaziranga >> Shillong >> Cherrapunjee
+Previous: Umananda Temple and Peacock Island, Guwahati
+Next: Vacation for Conservation
+Go to the beginning of the series
My fellow travellers started arriving later in the day. We all met in the hotel lobby, got to know each other and quickly went on with long conversations on birds, Eaglenest and other things we had in our mind for the journey into Arunachal Pradesh.
Our team was in interesting assortment of people. We had a management consultant who worked in the retail industry, a writer who write children’s books, two students of post graduation in biodiversity, two software engineers, an officer in the Indian Forest Service, a beautician and a nomadic traveler(me!). Come to think of it, if it was a gathering of 10 people somewhere in southern parts of India, it would most likely have been 10 guys from the IT industry! Conservation and keen interest in birds and nature was the only thing we had in common that brought us together. It made us at home with each other and we quickly made friends and gelled well with each other.
A bridge near Doimari village in Arunachal where we stopped for a short break. Note the thick forest all around
Some of us in the team were very keen to be of use in saving nature. One of the members spent a lot of her spare time working for ‘Kids for Tigers‘. The writer in the group spent a lot of time writing books to create awareness about environment in children and the IFS officer was leading conservation efforts in Kanchenjunga National Park. I was in great company and I knew that my days in Eaglenest are going to be spent doing something worthy.
We were up and ready to leave at 5am next morning and took a comfortable bus to Tezpur. It broke down after an hour of journey and we had to wait for a spare bus to arrive. Our enthusiastic birding group smelled opportunity in this too and were quickly out with their binocs and bird-books in the lookout for new birds in this unfamiliar region. Further, we stopped again at Nagaon for breakfast and reached Tezpur around 12pm.
There was a jeep waiting in Tezpur to take us through rest of the journey to our camp in Eaglenest. We drove through hot and humid planes via Missamari village in Assam and Doimari in Arunachal. We frequently stopped to sight and hear new birds we had never seen earlier, like the Lesser Adjutant Storks, Grey Backed Shrike and many more. The road started climbing as soon as we left Assam and crossed Arunachal border. Empty and barren stretches of Assam gave way to thick, impenetrable and undisturbed evergreen forests.
We drove till evening in thick forest with our narrow road bisecting the forest. The village of Doimari with a small population and a forest checkpost were the only places where we encountered signs of human presence. We continued to stop for seeing wildlife and were rewarded with sightings of Capped Langur, Khaleej Pheasant, Pied-Hornbill, etc.. We also passed a month old carcass of a huge decaying elephant which had slipped down a slide and died.
It was much after sunset when we reached our campsite. We were all tired after an entire day’s journey and were glad to have finally made it. After a simple and filling dinner, we crashed in the camp looking forward to the next day.
To be continued…