Sorry everybody that I have been absent from the blog for a while. Gabe and I finally recovered from our mysterious illnesses but then I lost my satellite internet for a couple of weeks, and as the project winds down we've been putting in even longer hours than usual.

In the last month we've been spending a lot of time covering village areas on the periphery of the park. As important as the animals are the people who live with them.

On the southern border of Kaziranga sits the Kabi Anglong hills, an area that is one of the largest remaining forest blocks in Asia. It is a safe haven for wild animals that flee Kaziranga during monsoon flooding in July which can submerge most of the park from 1-5 days.

In these hills live the Karbi people, a number of different factions that have been relentlessly fighting for their own autonomous region. In essence it is a very dangerous region where outsiders are definitely not welcome, and violence ebbs and flows. Hence it has been incredibly difficult for me to get permission to enter the area. If not for the indispensable help of Kazi's Western Range Officer, P.K. Deka, we'd still be wondering how beautiful and exciting the Karbi hills really are.

It is a rugged and lush area where the Karbi people use a slash and burn method of growing crops, including rice, squash, corn, other vegetables and wild bananas. The valleys are carpeted with paddy fields and the views are extraordinary.

So with Deka and his forest guards to protect us, we met with an old headman of nine different Karbi villages. It was a brief meeting but it concluded with us gaining permission to spend a day with his people. First the headman would have to send word to all of the  surrounding tribes, telling them that we were invited guests, and a puja would be performed in our absence where goats would be sacrificed to ensure our safety.

The day to visit finally came but a strike was declared and the road into the village was closed off. A major disappointment but the next day everything went back to normal and we spent the whole day hanging out with and photographing the Karbi people.

They performed for us their traditional dances about cultivation and harvesting crops, and showed how they cook all of their food and tea in bamboo tubes over an open fire. Just about every tool they used was made from bamboo, as it grows in abundance here and has limitless uses.

It was a brutally hot day and the schedule for these prepared events took place from 10am to 2pm - the worst light for photographing! But in these situations you take what you can get, especially here wher so many things on this story have turned into a giant boondoggle. I even asked if we could come back for the next few days to work in better light, but it was decided by the headman that I'd have to wait another year!

I am so thankful when things work out at all, especially in this case of visiting Karbi, where I was finally able to hike high up into the hills and make some important photographs for the story.

Video by Gabriel DeLoach

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