‘Arunachal Pradesh has an annual average rainfall of 2000 to 4000 mm.’
‘Yup, I know.’
‘The monsoons last from May to October.’
‘Yup.’
‘You are going in the middle of the fricking monsoons, you dolt.’
‘Err; there is an All India Butterfly meet there.’
‘Figures….’
‘Huh?’
‘Only people who are crazy enough to watch butterflies would plan a trip there NOW.’
A fairly typical exchange over the weeks preceding my Arunachal Trip. After all, everyone knows that it rains like the dickens out ‘there’ during the monsoons. Every year the monsoons come, the Brahmaputra has an identity crisis and starts behaving like an ocean. Water covers vast tracts of land, displaces people, adds a nice fertile layer of soil to the farmlands and then recedes. In short, life goes on as usual. Heck, I thought, people live there all year round, why can’t I just visit it for a few days? Even if it’s in the middle of the monsoons?
Kurla Railway Station, Mumbai, 0430 hrs, 16th Aug 2006
We make for a weird sight, and there are dozens of people gawking at us from the facing platform, even at this fairly unearthly time in the morning. I mean I would definitely gawk at a group of two guys and two girls, three of them in various cyclical stages of nodding off and waking up with a start with neck breaking jerks when a long distance fast train whooshed past, spraying water on us, and one scribbling furiously in a notebook on a railway platform in Mumbai in the middle of the night. Thankfully the local trains are frequent, so every 10-15 minutes we get an entirely fresh crowd.
The clock finally decides it has gone as slow as possible for the last 2 hours, and finally gets the minute and hour hands to coincide. We pick up our huge luggage and move off towards Lokmanya Tilak Terminus from where the Dadar Guwahati Express will start its inter-galactic odyssey.
Middle of the Great Indian Plains, 17th Aug
There’s something about the railways which really has me hooked. They are messy, and filthy, but its one of those things in which individual components which have nothing attractive about them add up into something which is quite inexplicably enchanting. I love the way the wind blows into my hair, apart from the occasional droplets of god-knows-what-and-I’d-prefer-not-to-know-what liquid that splatter over my face. The speed, the rhythmic noise, really makes you feel like you are traveling. So it wasn’t a very happy me that sat glumly in the air conditioned compartment, looking at the dark tinted landscape, with the arctic winds from the A/C vents making my throat feel like someone scrubbed it with sandpaper. I looked hilarious with a full-face monkey cap, but at that moment I couldn’t quite appreciate the humour, especially since I was running out of handkerchiefs at a very rapid rate. I really can’t understand why the fellas who are in charge of that monstrous piece of cooling equipment called the Air Conditioner always keep the temperatures at the minimum possible. I really don’t agree with environmentalists who cry about the Polar bears’ loss of habitat. They should travel by the Indian Railways sometime.
The train stopped frequently, and I got off whenever it did at a station, and was an instant hit, with people looking at me curiously. After a few stations I realized it would be better if I took off the monkey cap before coming out, especially in the middle of the 40 degree heat.
Green, Greener, Greenest – Assam, 18th Aug
After the flat, barren, dusty plains of Central India, Assam was a feast for the eyes. Every inch was a different, brighter shade of green. In the north were the mountains of Bhutan visible far away, like a mirage on the flat plain. In the south the plains continued till the horizon, covered with lush green paddy fields, bamboo thickets, and the occasional forest. Large water birds, ones seen rarely in peninsular India, moved about in the middle of the fields, as commonplace as ducks. As usual the train sliced through the ‘scape, more out of place than ever.
Guwahati, 18th Aug
Guwahati station arrived spot on time, which was a pleasant surprise, as this train is known for arriving eight to ten hours late on an average. Unlike most railway stations in India, it was very clean, with almost no litter. The porters watched in amusement and a bit of irritation as we turned down their services and carried our own stuff, every person carrying around 30 kilos, walking around like drunkards, the route being decided by the bulky sacks which swung all over the place, leaving us with no choice but to meekly follow. The security policemen stopped us for a moment, and then waved us on after a cursory enquiry, having decided that we were making ourselves far too conspicuous to have any disruptive intentions.
We were surrounded by ticketing agents as soon as we stepped outside the station, who assured us that ASTC, Network and Royal were all the same, and that the guys who ran the show just felt that one name wasn’t enough for a transport business, and that it would be nice fun to have people confused by giving your business three different names. I think they took a bit too far though, by having separate registration counters and even separate buses.
A quick bath in a smallish hotel close to the station with the rather creatively thought name of ‘Hotel Tourist’ and a bite in a decent looking restaurant later we boarded the Network Travels bus to Jagun, a journey of about 12 hours, which was uneventful except for an incident in which the bus pulled down some low-hanging illegal power connections, which caused a bit of a fracas, until the conductor decided he had had enough and moved off towards the bus, threatening anyone who approached him with killer glares.
Jagun town, Assam – Arunachal Border, 19th Aug
After a rather comfortable bus ride (they have just three seats in a row compared to the usual four or five), we reached the town of highway town of Jagun, on the border between Assam and Arunachal. After a quick check that we hadn’t donated any of our stuff to the bus guys, we were bundled into cars by our to-be host in Jairampur, Arunachal, and proceeded towards it at a rapid pace. Soon enough, there were six heads outside the windows, gawking at the unbelievable forests we were passing. None of us had ever seen anything of the sort before. We wished the drivers would take it easy and let us enjoy the view at a slightly leisurely pace, but that was not to be, and we were soon in Jairampur in Arunachal Pradesh, The Land of the Emerging Sun.
Jairampur, Arunachal Pradesh, 19th Aug
Jairampur is a smallish, sprawled out town close to the Assam border in Arunachal Pradesh. Space means nothing here, so everything is well spread out. Clusters of small shops dot the side of National Highway 153, the latest NH in India. The attitude of the people towards money is unique. Every time we made a call, we ended up owing the guy some weird figure of 4 rupees and 79 paise or something similar. However, this figure was always rounded off – not to the next integer, but the previous! So 4.05 became 4, and so did 4.95. This was a practice followed commonly in that region. I really liked the way they taught math out here!
NH 153 goes on ahead, passing through the dozens of smallish villages and towns, right up to the Indo-Myanmar border. This region is steeped in WWII history. For a few kilometers after Jairampur, the road passes parallel to something which looks like another road, about a meter or so above the level of the highway. This piece of tarmac belongs to the 60 year old Stillwell Road, built during WWII. The allied forces’ offensive against the Japs depended heavily on the supply of food and ammunition to the remote areas where the battles were being fought. Construction of the Stillwell road, named after the American General responsible for the northern Burmese Sector, was started in order to achieve this objective. The original plan was to construct the road from Myanmar and deep into China. However, the Japs were driven out quicker than expected, as a result of which the construction was stopped. Parts of the 6 decade old road are still intact and in much better condition that most of the roads in our cities! Unfortunately, the expansion of the highway has been planned, and the Stillwell road will continue to exist only in history texts, another example of the sad fact that everything, absolutely everything, forests, people, history, environmental concerns, can be sacrificed without a thought at the altar of ‘development’, in the form of roads, dams, power stations and mines. Nobody argues against the right of a people to have access to roads, power and infrastructure, but how the expansion of a road which has a single digit vehicle frequency in tens of minutes and which cuts through some of the last remaining patches of pristine forest in the world can be justified is way beyond the realm of my understanding.
Another place worth visiting here is the WWII cemetery, which houses the unmarked graves of hundreds of labourers and foot soldiers from the subcontinent, who worked or fought for the Allied forces. It is in a terrible condition, with only 2-3 graves visible, the remaining taken over and conquered by the unstoppable forces of Nature.
A board outside the WWII Cemetery. It reads ‘ These graves bear silent testimony to those soldiers, unlisted workers and labourers who ventured into the virgin jungle amid blistering heat and laid down their lives in the line of duty during the second world war whilst part of the Allied Forces against the Imperial Japanese Army. Their names liveth forever.’ Even if the board doesn’t quite make it to the next year……
There are also a couple of nice towns if you continue along this highway, Manmao and Nampong. Although there are no famous tourist ‘sites’ here, these places, being quite in the interior are worth a visit just to take in the rural Arunachal atmosphere. The feeling of peace and serenity you get here is quite difficult to explain. Nampong lies on NH 153, which goes on to the Myanmar border. Although Myanmar does not have completely open borders with India, Indians are issued a single day pass to cross over without a visa, on the 15th and 30th of each month. Unfortunately, we weren’t anywhere close to either of these dates, so we had to give this quite interesting chance a miss. Myanmar, apparently, doesn’t place a very high value on its wildlife, and thousands of specimens from the forests of Namdapha, which continue far into Myanmar, find themselves being plucked from the lush heavens of Namdapha and dumped unceremoniously into cages on the side of the road to be sold as exotic pets or food, if locals are to be believed. While India does not have a perfect record when it comes to preserving its natural history, the wildlife trade here is not so blatantly out in the open. Unfortunately, the denizens of Namdapha are way above all this, leading the lives nature has meant them to, and don’t recognize man-made borders, along with the safety associated with them.
Miaon Village, Arunachal, 19th Aug
A single bus, run by the Arunachal Pradesh State Transport Corp, plies back and forth between Jagun and the quaintly named town of Miaon, on our way to Namdapha National Park. Their entire fleet, as we later realized, comprises of these ancient blue buses with a weird design on the sides, which further inspection revealed to be the state bird, the Hornbill. The poor things, such stunningly beautiful creatures in real life, look like the result of some horrific genetic mutation, which resulted in a sparrow getting an elephant’s trunk.
The conductor, an old crook, refused to issue us tickets, saying he had given us a ‘discount’. Apparently, issuing tickets is never much of an issue here, and the conductor generally goes home quite a rich man, with his pockets full of money and hands full of farm produce, swapped by the villagers as payment for the ride. A fair bit of bargaining went on during the ride, and the appropriate number of carrots were either plonked on or removed from the dashboard. The driver did his main job of ensuring that the veggies didn’t fall off from the ventilation opening quite well, along with occasionally swerving the bus on to the shoulder of the road when somebody came along in the opposite direction.
Miaon is a small town close to the Namdapha forests. The 30 off kilometer journey to the sanctuary is a very costly and bumpy one due to the terrible road conditions. A few kilometers from Miaon, the forest flanks the road on both sides, becoming progressively denser, and the road, worse. Half way through, it goes through a river, and we had to get off and wade our way across. This resulted in utter chaos, as one of us found a very interesting dragonfly specimen perched on a rock in the middle of the river, and decided that it must be photographed right there. Another fella dropped one of his shoes, which another chap went to retrieve. He soon found that although the shoe had been caught, he didn’t quite fancy his chances in the rather deep waters he had ended up in. Soon, everybody else was in the water trying to get that chap onto higher ground. After about half an hour of messing around and herding all the souls together, we finally reached the vehicle.
The road now was through forests I had never seen the likes of, massive trees, centuries old, every inch of their surfaces covered with orchids, ferns and creepers. Huge tree ferns competed with trees for space. A T rex wouldn’t have been half out of place in these jungles.
After a while, the jungles on one side of the road cleared, and a couple of hundred feet below us were large green paddy fields, dotted with brown thatched huts. People worked in the fields in ones and twos. Beyond the fields flowed the lazy river, the low water levels the result of a severe drought afflicting the entire of the North-East. On the far side of the river were dozens of hills, all covered with thick forest. It was a stunning sight, one which would have been this way for centuries. Little must have changed for the people living here, with the exception of the vehicles which occasionally bumped along on the road, mostly oblivious and indifferent to their existence.
Crazy, Crazy Forests, Namdapha National Park and Tiger Reserve, 19th Aug
Namdapha is one of the most amazing places on earth, bio-diversity-wise. It covers a staggering 2000 sq. km of virgin forest. The altitudinal variation is also mind-boggling, from 200 m to over 4500 m, a little over 14000 ft! Due to this, a huge number of eco-systems are found here, from evergreen forest to high altitude alpine forests. It is the only place on Earth in which four large felines – the Royal Bengal Tiger, the Common Leopard, the Clouded Leopard and the Snow leopard are found in their natural habitats, all within a few kilometers of each other. Its remote location and inaccessibility doesn’t, however, prevent it from being full once the rains stop.
It was here that my trip was hit by a serious jolt – my digital SLR camera, my faithful companion decided it had had enough of being faithful and conked off. It was a terrible shock, made worse by that fact that THIS was the very last place on earth where I could afford to let something like this to happen. One of the most remote places on earth, one which takes days to reach, and my camera fails on the FIRST day. The stunning sunset didn’t have me enraptured on a rare occasion.
Next day did not start the way I was desperately hoping it would, and it was a very dejected me who joined the others on the morning trail, watching them getting all excited over the dozens of fluttering beauties flying all around us.
