By Gangadharan Menon
Mumbai, Apr 18 : Connected to the rest of the country by a thin umbilical cord along the northern border of Bangladesh, the Northeast has mostly been off the tourist trail for various reasons. But if you’re game for some adventure, there’s a whole new world to be explored out there.
My journey to discover this secret land actually began on this side of the umbilical cord, in the equally mysterious Sunderbans of West Bengal.
We took a bus from Kolkata to Sonakhali, and then a long boatride to the heart of the largest mangrove forest in the world. Standing at the hull of the boat, I felt like Columbus in search of the New World and that feeling stayed with me for the next three weeks till I boarded the return flight from Imphal at the end of my trip.
The Sunderbans was the perfect appetizer for the main course to follow. It’s a magical place where islands appear during low tide and disappear at high tide. The animals have adapted superbly to this ever-changing landscape.
The deer eat salty grass, and the majestic Royal Bengal Tiger swims from one island to another. Dreading these man-eaters, the womenfolk here have evolved a strange custom. When the men leave their homes in the morning, the married women remove all their ornaments and spend the day as widows; it’s only after their husbands return home safely in the evening that they wear these ornaments again.
Sunset in the Sunderbans is like nowhere else on earth. At the meeting point of high tide and low tide, the water starts swirling, building up into a gigantic whirlpool in various hues of red, orange and yellow. It’s as if they’re God’s own water colours.
Abode of the clouds
The gateway to the Northeast is Guwahati in Assam, from where we travelled south to Meghalaya or the Abode of the Clouds. It’s home to three colourful tribes that have a matriarchal way of life and also an interesting custom of inheritance. The youngest in the family inherits the most, possibly to make up for having ageing parents.
Earlier, Cherrapunji was known to be the wettest place on earth, but recently the baton has passed on to the nearby Mawsynram. Here the trunks of gigantic trees look perennially soggy, and wear a wet cloak of pre-historic moss. From a vantage point in this town, you can see a garland of seven waterfalls, fondly referred to as Seven Sisters by the locals. Nearby in a place called Laitkynsew, there were ‘living bridges’ across rivers, made from the living roots of gigantic ficus trees.
As I stood at Dawki on the border of India and Bangladesh, an eagle soared nonchalantly into the skies of the neighbouring country, unmindful of the unnatural borders created by man.
Encounter with extortionists
The journey through Assam to the exotic Arunachal Pradesh took us through Karbi Anglong, teeming with militants. When a gang of extortionists tried to stop our car, I asked the driver to get into overdrive and whiz past them, knowing that on our return journey we wouldn’t need to come back this way.
Our destination was Tawang in the northern-most part of Arunachal Pradesh, the world’s second largest monastery that’s home to over 600 Buddhist monks. After a breathtaking climb to 12,500 feet, we broke our journey at Bomdila. Here we witnessed a sunset behind eight ranges of mountains, each with a different tinge of magenta.
On the way to Tawang, we also met the proud descendants of a battalion that had pushed back the Chinese invaders in 1962. As we sipped the hospitality they offered on a cold morning, we saw a row of pine trees rising in the misty mountains, and wondered how a tranquil place like this could have been the scene of a fierce battle.
Arunachal is like many states rolled into one. Stretching from Bhutan to Myanmar, it has as many as 65 tribes in its densely forested hills. They speak in 22 dialects that are so different from each other that they don’t understand each other. It’s an amazingly rich and diverse land, but merely a dozen Indians visit this state every year. A guard at one of the check-posts told us that only a handful of tourists had preceded us in several months.
Stengun-toting soldiers
Nagaland came next on our itinerary and we had to be on extra vigil. As we traversed through the highly volatile state, I kept my hand on a chit in my pocket on which I had written down the phone number of a senior officer in Assam Rifles whom I had befriended at an army check-post.
Then we travelled to another beautiful state that’s riven with insurgency. Manipur is home to 29 tribes, and sadly also to 36 guerilla armies. I was witness here to soldiers armed with sten-guns watching over scores of farmers harvesting their crop with a song on their lips and a prayer in their hearts.
In Manipur, an unbelievable sight is that of the floating islands of Loktak Lake. These circular islands with a diameter of just 20 feet, and thickness as little as 1 foot, float serenely in the lake. They were created by nature from floating weeds compressed over time.
Today, lush green grass grows on them, where nimble-footed deer feed, hopping from one floating island to another. In the morning, you may find these islands huddling in one corner of the lake, and in the evening, they may be in another part of the lake, gently transported by the breeze.
Our return flight was from Imphal, the capital of Manipur. Unfortunately, one of the 36 guerilla armies had decided to call for a state-wide bandh that very day. Bandhs were nothing new to us, however, and we left in the wee hours of the morning to reach the airport before the guerillas could stir from their beds.
Yes, there were many anxious moments right through our three-week journey through some of the little explored areas of the Northeast, but then what’s exploration without a little adventure?
Source: DNA
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