Primate Playground

The Hollongapar Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary is Assam’s evergreen secret. A stroll beneath its lush canopy leaves Sutirtha Lahiri delightfully stumped

- Sutirtha Lahiri

Living in the northern part of the country, it was quite a surprise to find one’s self waking up to sunshine at 4:30 in the morning. Better still, if the alarm happened to be a highly vocal, greater racket-tailed drongo!

I was in a gibbon sanctuary, a small protected area of approximately 21 sq km near the town of Jorhat. The forest rest house where we stayed was right outside the forest, which is largely dominated by Hollong (Dipterocarpus artocarpus), the state tree. This has earned it the name Hollongapar Gibbon Sanctuary.

As the name indicates, the sanctuary is a stronghold for the western hoolock gibbon—the only species of non-human ape found in the country. They are not alone though. With rhesus macaques, the near-threatened Assam macaque, northern pig-tailed macaques, capped langurs, stump-tailed macaques and the slow loris, the Northeast’s only nocturnal primate, the sanctuary is unique for its high diversity of primates. It also presents insightful birding and botanical study opportunities. It was exactly the reason why we—like many others from around the world—found ourselves in this place, hoping to catch a glimpse of these species.

Joined by a young forest guard, we started our trail at around 8am. Monsoons really change the décor of a forest, with dense undergrowth and a multitude of greens. Although the trail was dry because it hadn’t rained in the past few days, the forest on both sides was submerged in water, making access difficult. A small group of rhesus macaques was our first primate sighting of the day. Four to five individuals happily scrambled and jumped from the trees to the huts, and back.