Enchanting East

Highlights

• Arrival at Kolkata and transfer to Sundarbans (Day 1) - You will be meeting your tour IWS Guide at Kolkata airport/ railway station who will have everything arranged for you from beforehand. You will board your taxis and move right away towards Sundarbans. A 3 hour drive from the city, you will reach a place named Godhkhali, where the roads end, and you’ll board your houseboat with all the luggage and supplies for next few days, and you’ll set sail towards the tiger reserve area. In half an hour, you’ll enter the reserve area, and the rest of the day you’ll be going around in the world’s biggest largest mangrove forest. In the evening, you will exit the park boundaries and anchor right on the edge of the forest. You’ll spend the night on the houseboat.
• Explore the Sundarbans Delta (Day 2, 3, 4) - By 6 in the morning, you will enter the forest and spend the entire day in the delta, searching for the elusive most elusive fauna of the world, including the swamp tiger, fishing cat, leopard cat, estuarine crocodile, water monitor lizard, Gangetic river dolphin, and olive Ridley turtles, and countless more. All meals will be served on the boat itself. You’ll be exiting the forest range only prior to sunset, whereby you’ll anchor at different spots everyday, enjoying the beautiful moonlit evenings and the pure, salty breeze from the ocean around you.
• Transfer to Kaziranga (Day 5) - Today you’ll wake up at leisure and start our journey back to land. Post-breakfast, you will dock at Godhkhali from where you will board our taxi back to Kolkata, from where you fly up to Guwahati. Guwahati is one of the biggest cities of the northeastern part of India, and is the gateway to the Seven Sisters of India. From Guwahati airport, you will board our taxi and travel to Kaziranga, which can take upto 6 hours. You’ll have lunch on our way, and the scenic highway goes parallel to the forest boundaries, where you can normally spot the beautiful wildlife even before reaching the park! You will reach Kaziranga before sunset, and check into your resort. The rest of the evening will be at leisure. You can relax and unwind after a day full of travelling.
• Safaris into the park (Day 6, 7) - After the one-of-its-kind boat safaris of Sundarbans, you’ll experience a more traditional safari set-up, in an open gypsy, on land. You’ll have back to back morning and evening safaris in the beautiful Kaziranga. You’ll be notified about the safari timings by your tour IWS Guide since they change depending upon the seasons and sunrise and sunset. You can expect to see the Big 5 of Kaziranga in your safaris, namely great Indian one-horned Rhinoceros, Indian elephant, royal Bengal tiger, eastern swamp deer and wild water buffalo. You’ll have photography opportunities like no other here. The sheer amount of wildlife you’ll see on your safaris is one of the most in any park of India. Your IWS Guide will make sure the zones you get are the best for animal sighting, and will take you through the best routes to ensure best sightings.
• The final safari and transfer to Guwahati (Day 8) - The final safari you will do would be the special elephant safari into the park, whereby you can get particularly close to the wildlife, giving opportunity to make some awesome photos. After you fifth and final game drive, you will head back to your resort, freshen up, pack up and move back to Guwahati by your taxi. You will be dropped off at Guwahati airport/ your hotel/ any place of preference, where your tour IWS Guide will bid adieu and you can continue your journey thereon!