Traveling
December 29, 2022
Vinod

Unlike other tiger reserves, Buxa tiger reserve is not famous for its tigers but it is famous for butterflies. As a butterfly lover, Vinod always wanted to visit Eaglenest Sanctuary and Buxa tiger reserve. While visiting Eaglenest sanctuary needs more planning, Buxa tiger reserve is easy to plan. So we decided to pay a quick visit to Buxa tiger reserve during our North-east trip. Even though it was not the peak season for butterflies we thought to just get a glimpse of the place.

I love this vibrant forest which looked more serene after a rainy night. We were driving very slowly to see the butterflies and birds.

Buxa tiger reserve is an easily accessible place through train but as we had our rental car, we drove to Buxa from Manas National Park. We had booked our stay in Rajabhatkhawa Buxa Jungle Lodge which I intended to book for one night and thought to explore a different local home stay for the second night. But I wrongly booked for two nights in the Jungle lodge, so we had our entire stay there. Anyway, we didn’t regret that, as we could see Oriental pied hornbills at the entrance and many other birds.

The Oriental Pied Hornbill was casually foraging on the trees picking up berries. Our stay in Rajabhakthawa was totally worth it because of these kind of sights.

At night, the place was lit with fireflies and the lodge was echoing the sound of Tokay gecko. Also, we got a chance to eat Momos to our heart content in our North-east trip only in Buxa.

We had to take an entry ticket in Buxa tiger reserve ticket counter and then you can cross the checkpost to drive around Jayanti. The drive to and from Jayanti itself was very interesting rather than the destination points because of the eco-tourism which to our taste was a bit over commercialized. During the drive we stopped frequently, to watch birds, moths, butterflies and yellow-throated marten.

Dysphania subrepleta , a species in False tiger moth family was seen everywhere. Especially their mudpuddling activities was mesmerizing to watch.

While we visited, it was a drizzling weather. So the roads and trees were all wet which added more beauty to the place. We just drove around a lot and in one of our drives, we went to a bridge where we saw good group of mud puddling butterflies. So we stopped to take a closer look and Vinod saw Autum Oakleaf butterfly casually basking on the pebbles.

Near a tea estate, we stopped to see after seeing huge movements of insects. On closer inspection, we saw Eterusia aedea species had emerged in huge numbers and it was covering the tree completely. That was really a wonderful sighting for us.

Eterusia aedea really made our visit to Buxa very memorable. Thousands of this species had emerged that day and watching them at twilight was really an amazing experience.

We went on a small hike in one of the forest trails along with a mandatory guide. While waiting for the guide in the ticket counter, a villager called us to their backyard and there we saw the Ruddy Kingfisher. Poor one was confused after dashing on the windows but otherwise unharmed. We asked the villagers to release the bird near the stream.

Vinod was so eager to see the Ruddy Kingfisher in our Northeast trip and he was thrilled to hold the bird in hand. Also we were happy that the bird was not injured, so it can go back to the wild.

We had a quick noodles breakfast and started climbing with the guide. Unfortunately, the guide was not very interested in showing us anything. So we just walked in our own pace and enjoyed the orchids, beautiful plants on the rocks and butterflies. Initially we didn’t see any birds, but after sometime we had the familiar big flapping sound and we rushed to see a flock of hornbill to flew above our head. They were Rufous-necked hornbills. We got a chance to see them nicely, the next day in another trail. Hoya lanceolata and Cat-tail orchids were in full bloom and we saw many other interesting wildflowers in Buxa.

Hoya flowers are always a treat to the eyes and I really loved the contrasting color combinations in this flower.

On the roadsides, we frequently saw mud puddling of moths and butterflies. Dysphania militaris, the false tiger moth were so colorful and attractive that we had to stop everytime we spot a group of them mudpuddling. Yellow Rajah, Orchid tit, Five-bar swordtail, Orangetail awlet, Purple Sapphire were few of the butterflies we saw just on the roadside!

The Five-bar Swordtail is one of the striking butterflies we had sighted in our North east trip.

We went to another trail, where we could drive through most of the way and then a small hike to reach a pond in the hill. It was a serene location and we even saw a lazy turtle there. We then visited Jayanti river which was dried up, so all we could see was endless white pebbles. It was a unique landscape and we were told once we cross that location, the other end of Jayanti is a butterfly hotspot. We decided to visit that place during our next visit. So we just spent time by walking on the pebbles and enjoying the view. There we also spotted the River lapwing with her camouflaged chicks. It was a beautiful sight to see these lapwings running around in a tourist spot. We had previously seen the River lapwing in Teesta river but this time as we got to see the young ones , it was very special.

These kind of terrains are not an usual sight. It was really sad to see the pebbles were removed from many waterbodies for commercial purposes.

We finally cut the watermelon, we had bought during our drive from Manas to Buxa. It was nice to sit in the open and enjoy these little things. This was the final stop in our North east trip, so we casually sat and soaked up the view of Buxa before starting to calculate the right time to drop our rental car and reach the railway station. We did see many beautiful wildbeings and we did see many habitat destruction activities. So we had both exciting and heartbreaking experiences. Though we had spent good time in all the locations, we would love to visit all these places again in different season.