Wildlife Hotspots

Several wildlife destinations at short distances from Guwahati offer a peek into the wild side of Assam.

Home to two-thirds of the world’s great one-horned rhinos, the UNESCO World Heritage Site of 8 Kaziranga National Park is located about four hours from Guwahati. With a diverse vegetation of grassland, marshland, and tropical forest, and crisscrossed by four rivers, including the Brahmaputra, the world-famous park also houses tigers, elephants, swamp deer, wild water buffaloes and a variety of avifauna. Also a World Heritage Site, Manas National Park nestles in the Himalayan foothills at the Bhutan border, about three hours from Guwahati. This dense forest set against a backdrop of the Eastern Himalayas, is a Project Tiger reserve, elephant reserve, and a biosphere reserve rolled into one. It may be one of the smallest of the lot in Assam, but 9 Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary sports one of the densest populations of one-horned rhinos. Just an hour away from Guwahati, it also serves as the winter home of thousands of migratory birds from Siberia and North America. Located between Guwahati Airport and the city, the Deepor Beel wetland is an important Ramsar site with an impressive biodiversity of aquatic vegetation, avifauna, aqua fauna, leopards, and other land animals.

Clockwise from top: A pair of one-horned rhinos at the Kaziranga National Park; elephants taking a dip in the river, Manas National Park; geese take flight within the Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary.