Today would be our final day in India, but most of the day would be spent travelling to the airport from our lodging in Namdapha National Park. Our guides, and the information we had, suggested it could take up to six hours, so in order to be safe for our 14:20 flight we left the National Park at 05:15, but this meant we had the exciting experience of driving through the extensively forested National Park before sunrise. Sadly, no interesting mammals materialised but as daylight broke, as we made a couple of stops of park formalities, we picked up a few birds including our first Coppersmith Barbet of the trip, and a small group of Ashy-headed Green Pigeons.
Our progress on the road was very good, and so we could
afford time for a short stop in an area of forest near Dihing Patkai National
Park to maybe have a chance to pick out some of the targets that we had missed.
In the hour that we spent there we managed to get a few interesting birds, such
as a Small Niltava and Little Spiderhunter, but sadly I missed the
Chestnut-backed Laughingthrush that made a frustratingly brief appearance, one
of the main targets for this site. Still, it was nice to be able to get some
final birding done on the trip.
In the end we arrived at the airport at 11:20, three hours
early for our flight and leaving us with plenty of time to get ourselves
organised. This was only the first flight of the day, flying from Dibrugarh
Airport near Tinsukia to Delhi. Then we had an eight hour stop in Delhi, before
our flight back to Europe at 03:00 the following day, taking us to Frankfurt.
It would not be until 17:00 on the 13th that I would finally arrive
back in Manchester, after a very enjoyable trip.
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