Jaldapara, the Dooars
On the Torsa floodplain, about 150 km east of Bagdogra airport, tall grass hides India's second-largest herd of one-horned rhinos. A family week meets them from an open jeep, then climbs through the tea to the hills.
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331 at the 2025 count
Jaldapara's census in March 2025 counted 331 rhinos, the second-largest population in India after Kaziranga. Gorumara, nearer Siliguri, holds a smaller herd.
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06:00 in winter
The open jeep leaves the Salkumar gate at 06:00 in winter and 05:30 from March, with a forest guide beside the driver. Rhinos feed in the open in the early hours, often a cow with her calf; peafowl, gaur and hog deer keep to the edges.
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Field notes
Cows carry a horn as well as bulls, but newborn calves have none. Fresh dung heaps by the track mean a rhino passed that morning: they reuse the same piles. By late morning they rest through the heat, and so do you.
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The rules
There are no safaris on Thursdays, and the park closes from 16 June to 15 September. Tickets are sold name by name, a day ahead at the counter, so every guest's ID, children's included, is needed a week before.
Photo: Boudhayan Bardhan / Unsplash
Day 3
After an optional last dawn, the car turns west through the Dooars tea, with half an hour among the bushes, then climbs to Kalimpong. At about five hours it is the longest drive of the week; none runs longer.
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When to go
The week ends on the steam ride to Ghum, 2,258 m (7,410 ft), some 2,150 m above the grass where it began. Come November to April, December to March for short grass. Rhinos are seen regularly from the jeeps, but no sighting is ever certain.
Photo: kabita Darlami