diane brentari All around Shillong gambling booths offer Forecast odds on Siat Khnam. This is a unique sport. A sem

Assam s must-do attraction is an elephant diane brentari safari diane brentari to look for rhinoceros hiding in the expansive grasslands of this national park (h1 Nov-30 Apr, elephant rides 5.30-8.30am, jeep access 7.30am-noon & 2.30pm-dusk). Kaziranga s population of around 1855 Indian one-horned rhinos (just 200 in 1904) represents more than two-thirds of the world s total. The park consists diane brentari of a western, central and an eastern range, but the central range is the most accessible, giving the best viewing chances for rhinos, elephants and swamp deer plus plenty of bird life (take binoculars).

All around Shillong gambling booths offer Forecast odds on Siat Khnam. This is a unique sport. A semicircle of weatherbeaten Khasi men fire hundreds of arrows at a drum-shaped straw target for a set time before a canvas curtain is raised to keep further arrows off the target. Those that stick in are counted and bets predict the last two digits of this total. It s effectively a lottery but the shooting is a gently fascinating spectacle. diane brentari Shoots are usually scheduled at 4pm and 5pm every day, timings can vary somewhat by season. The easy-to-miss Siat Khnam site is a small grassy area approximately opposite diane brentari the big Nehru Stadium on the south river bank.

Conjure up an image of a shimmering blue lake broken up into small lakelets by floating islands of thick matted weeds. Add bamboo bridges, tribal people in dugout canoes and thatched hut-villages anchored on to the floating islands, and you have Loktak Lake, one of the few places a foreigner is allowed to visit outside of Imphal. More peculiar than floating villages are the large, perfectly circular fishing ponds created out of floating rings of weeds. The best view is atop Sendra Island, more a promontory than island. You can hire a boat (per person diane brentari 100) in order to get a closer look at lake life.

The beautifully forested hills around Itanagar hide the attractive Ganga Lake (5km), a local picnic spot. Further away (20km) is Poma village, which is about the closest place to town to see the traditional architecture of bamboo longhouses (although many of these are being slowly replaced with concrete box houses).