Gorumara National Park: Wildlife and Forests in India’s Dooars

Gorumara National Park covers only about 80 square kilometres, yet a late afternoon at one of its watchtowers can bring Indian rhinoceros, gaur and elephant to the same stretch of riverbank. It lies in the Dooars of northern West Bengal, where the last ridges of the Eastern Himalaya run out into sal forest and tall grassland along the Murti and Jaldhaka rivers. On Odyssey Traveller’s Tour of Darjeeling, Sikkim, and Bhutan, this is where the small group spends its single night on the plains, between the monasteries of Gangtok and the long climb into Bhutan. What follows is less a safari checklist than an account of the habitat itself: why it holds the animals it does, and how to watch them well.

The Dooars as an ecological threshold

The Eastern Himalaya does not taper gently into the plains. It rises almost straight out of them, so that the drive from Gangtok, at around 1,650 metres, reaches country barely a hundred metres above sea level in a single morning. The rivers make the same descent. Leaving their gorges, the Murti, Jaldhaka and their neighbours lose speed abruptly, drop the boulders and gravel they have carried out of the hills, and spread across wide, shifting beds. The result is a narrow band of floodplain, forest and grassland pressed against the foot of the mountains, and Gorumara sits squarely within it.

Ecologists describe two quite different habitats meeting here. One is the Terai–Duar savanna and grassland, the tall-grass country that once ran along the whole foot of the Himalaya from Nepal to Bhutan. The other is the moist deciduous forest of the lower Gangetic plains, dominated by sal. Gorumara holds a working sample of both, which is why so many animals can be found in so small an area: the forest gives cover, the grassland gives grazing, and the rivers tie the two together. Our guide to the Dooars and its tea country explains how this strip of land passed from Bhutan to British India; this article stays with the ground itself.

Gorumara’s grasslands and forests

Sal, silk cotton and bamboo

Most of the park is forest, and most of that forest is sal: a tall hardwood with a straight grey trunk and broad leathery leaves, long valued for timber and still the defining tree of the Dooars. Among it grow teak, much of it planted during the forest’s years under timber management, the spreading shirish, and the silk cotton tree, locally called simul, whose bare branches carry heavy red flowers late in the dry season. Bamboo groves fill the damper hollows, and the forest supports a considerable number of tropical orchids, most of them growing high on trunks and branches rather than at eye level.

Riverine grassland and the salt licks

Along the rivers the trees give way to grass and reeds that can stand taller than a person. This grassland is the reason Gorumara exists as a protected area at all. The Indian one-horned rhinoceros is a grazer that depends on exactly this mix of tall grass, shallow water and mud, and it was the rhino’s breeding population that first earned the forest its sanctuary status. The grassland is not permanent. Across the Terai and Dooars, open grassland is kept open by flood and, historically, by fire; left undisturbed, it slowly closes over into scrub and then forest. The monsoon floods that close the park each year are also what renews it.

The park’s watchtowers are sited with this in mind. Several overlook salt licks, patches of mineral-rich ground by the water that herbivores return to again and again, which is why an hour spent quietly at a tower often produces more than a longer drive through the forest.

What wildlife can you realistically expect to see at Gorumara?

Gaur, several kinds of deer and peafowl are the most dependable sightings, with a fair chance of rhinoceros at the watchtower salt licks and a smaller chance of wild elephant. Nothing is guaranteed: this is forest, not an enclosure, and animals come to the licks on their own schedule. The park has recorded around fifty species of mammal and nearly two hundred species of bird, so even a quiet visit rarely feels empty.

The large herbivores

The gaur, sometimes called the Indian bison, is the one most visitors remember: a massive, dark-coated wild ox with a high ridge across the shoulders and pale lower legs that look like stockings. Chital, sambar, barking deer and hog deer move through the grassland edges, wild boar are common, and Asian elephants use the park as part of a wider range that extends well beyond its boundaries. The rhinoceros, grey and heavily folded with its single horn, is most often seen from the towers in the late afternoon, when it comes down to graze and wallow.

Birds of the forest edge

For many travellers the birds turn out to be the richer experience, because they do not require luck at a salt lick. Hornbills cross the canopy with a heavy, audible wingbeat; scarlet minivets flash through the treetops in small flocks; the Asian paradise flycatcher trails its long white or chestnut tail through the understorey; and spangled drongos call from exposed perches. The rivers lie on a flyway for migratory species, and the ruddy shelduck, an orange-brown winter visitor from Central Asia, is among the waterbirds that may be seen in the cooler months. A pair of binoculars earns its place in the luggage here more than anywhere else on the tour.

Can you see a tiger at Gorumara?

Almost certainly not. Gorumara has no resident tiger population, and the occasional animal that passes through is a rare event rather than something to hope for. The only large cat that lives in the park is the leopard, and it is secretive enough that most visitors never see one.

That absence matters more than it might seem. Without large predators, the park’s herbivores have grown in ways their habitat struggles to support. The gaur population has roughly doubled in recent years, raising concerns about overgrazing, and among the rhinoceros the usual ratio of about one male to three females has shifted towards one to one, leading to more fights between males and some deaths. Gorumara is, in this sense, a small reserve doing a large job with an incomplete set of pieces, and its managers work with that imbalance rather than around it.

How a Gorumara safari works

There is no wandering into Gorumara on foot. Walking along the roads through the park is actively discouraged, since elephant, gaur and rhinoceros all use them, and entry to the forest is by forest-department safari only. Visits run in open four-wheel-drive vehicles in fixed time slots, each accompanied by an authorised guide, and the number of vehicles allowed in is limited. Rather than a roaming game drive, each safari follows a set route to one of the park’s watchtowers, where visitors climb up, settle in and watch.

The towers each have their own character. Jatraprasad, named after a forest-department elephant, and the nearby Rhino Observation Point are the most sought after, both overlooking salt licks by the river. Medla, on the park’s eastern fringe near the Murti, is known for its wide views across the forest. Chukchuki is favoured by birdwatchers, and Chandrachur stands near the Murti forest bungalow. Permits are issued through the Lataguri Nature Interpretation Centre and the state forest agency.

On the tour, the afternoon at Gorumara is free, and the safari is an optional addition for those who want it. The rest of the group can stay in the hotel garden, which, in the Dooars, is rarely without birdsong.

How physically demanding is the Gorumara safari?

Less than most days on the tour: it is mostly spent seated in an open vehicle, with one real climb at the end. The forest tracks are unsealed, so expect some jolting, and the watchtowers are reached by steep flights of steps with no lift. Anyone comfortable with the tour’s Level 2 activity rating, which asks that travellers can climb and descend stairs, will manage it, but it is worth mentioning any knee or balance concerns to the Program Leader beforehand.

A reserve-forest history

Gorumara’s protection is older than the national park that carries its name. After the Dooars passed into British hands in 1865, its forests were brought under the colonial forest service, and Gorumara was declared a reserve forest in 1895, valued first for timber. The forest bungalow inside the park dates from the British period and keeps a log book running back to its earliest years, a long, handwritten record of who came and what they saw.

The emphasis shifted to wildlife in 1949, when the forest was declared a sanctuary because of its breeding rhinoceros. It became a national park on 31 January 1992, and has grown since from a core of about seven square kilometres to its present size by absorbing neighbouring forest. The 1970s and 1980s were years of serious poaching; today Gorumara is considered one of the less threatened parks in the region, partly thanks to better-equipped rangers and partly because the villages around it now earn a living from visitors. In 2009 the national environment ministry named it the best-managed protected area in India.

Those villages are part of the story. More than ten thousand people live in the forest villages that ring the park, working for the forest department, in ecotourism, and in the cultural programmes that visitors attend. The evening cultural performance arranged for the tour group draws on this tradition. The pressures on the park come from the same edges: grazing from fringe villages, fires set to clear undergrowth, and a railway line whose trains have struck elephants crossing between forests, three of them on a single day in May 2006.

Responsible behaviour in a sensitive habitat

Gorumara works because visits are brief, quiet and on the animals’ terms. A few habits make a real difference, both to the wildlife and to what you see.

Keep voices low in the vehicle and on the towers. Sound carries across open grassland, and a rhino that has heard a group arrive will often simply not come out. Stay in the vehicle between the gate and the tower, and do not ask the driver to leave the track or edge closer to an animal; elephant and gaur in particular can be dangerous at close range, and guides follow these rules for good reason. Turn off camera flash and phone sounds. Take nothing into the forest that you would not carry out, and leave no food behind, since animals that learn to associate people with food rarely end well.

The same courtesy applies beyond the park boundary. The forest villages are homes, not exhibits, so ask before photographing people, and follow the guide’s lead on where to walk.

What should you wear and bring for a Gorumara safari?

Muted greens, browns and greys, several light layers, and binoculars. Bright colours and white stand out at a distance, and strong perfume or insect spray can carry, so keep scents minimal and apply repellent before the drive rather than on the tower. In November the plains are warm by day but an open vehicle in the early morning or late afternoon can feel surprisingly cool, so a light jacket is worth having; in April, a hat and water matter more. The tracks are dusty in the dry season, which is worth remembering for cameras and anyone who wears contact lenses.

Can you enjoy Gorumara without going on safari?

Yes, and many travellers do. The day’s real subject is the landscape itself, and much of it is seen on the drive down: the change from hill forest to tea garden to sal forest, and the sudden openness of the plains after days in the mountains. The afternoon can be spent resting in the hotel garden, where birds of the forest edge are frequent visitors, and the evening cultural performance and a glimpse of rural life on the Bengal plains round out the day without any need to board a safari vehicle.

Gorumara National Park on the road to Bhutan

For the small group of 6–14 travellers, Gorumara is a single night, but it does something no other stop on the route can. After two days in Gangtok and its monasteries, it brings the journey down to the warm, low country that the Himalaya grew out of, and shows the kind of habitat that once ran unbroken along the whole foot of the range. The following morning the road runs about two and a half hours to the border at Phuentsholing, and then climbs for five more into Bhutan, a transition described in our article on crossing from Sikkim to Bhutan by road.

Seen in the context of the whole route, the Dooars and its forests are the low point between two mountain worlds, in the most literal sense, and the easiest place on the journey to understand how closely those worlds are tied together. To see where Gorumara falls among Tiger Hill, the toy train, the monasteries of Sikkim and the dzongs of Punakha and Paro, read our day-by-day guide to the Darjeeling, Sikkim and Bhutan itinerary, or explore the Tour of Darjeeling, Sikkim, and Bhutan itself.