The North East has always been an exotic place for those of us on the mainland. Hills, Militants, Tea gardens, and what have you. The flight from Calcutta to Dibrugarh overflew the Brahmaputra – and what a grand sight it was. Stretching across for tens of kilometers at places, serenaded by the peaks of Arunachal on the northern side, the Brahmaputra seemed to almost draw us towards itself. One thing that also struck one as different was the enormous plains of brown on either side of the Brahmaputra, a matter which would require further investigation.
Day One: Target was to reach Digboi, the site of India’s first oil well, about 87 km from Dibrugarh. The tea gardens start almost immediately as one leaves Dibrugarh town. We had landed in the middle of winter – a time when harvesting is not done. We watched bushes being pruned by the women folk, and personally I was disappointed not to see the traditional women with basket imagery that all the tea company advertisements had made us believe we would be seeing. Most of the gardens were unfortunately fenced in, but I managed to find one which was not. Venturing inside I found some unguarded bushes and I decided to do some tea tasting. So I picked up the youngest leaves I could find, which goes into the premium teas that people pay thousands of Rupees a kilo for, and I must share with you that I was disappointed. Maybe we are addicted more to the chemicals used in the tea manufacture, than the tea itself…
One quaint thing about the road to Tinsukia, the first and only major town on the way to Digboi, is the train track that runs almost adjacent to the road. It is a single track, which actually pre-dates the road. So if you are traveling from Tinsukia to Dibrugarh and a monster trucks is overtaking another monster – all you do is play who blinks first – and stay put – there ain’t no way to the left. Another effect of the rail track running in the midst of dense civilization is that the train drivers put a 5 kg weight on the horn and lets it remain there for the entire length of the journey.
Unfortunately you leave the track at Tinsukia in order to take a right turn to go to Digboi – and you miss the engine of the Tinsukia mail passing you – saluting you with its constant gun salute. The road from Tinsukia to Digboi smacks of oil wealth – the bitumen from the refinery being put in regular use in surfacing this road. As you leave the tea gardens, surprisingly you also leave the chai tapris, which remain a good excuse for a cyclist to take breaks. I ended up trying all the local biscuits and vegetables as a result. Digboi refinery was set up in 1902 – and to commemorate the centenary they put up a museum at the site of the first oil well. It is an interesting museum, with all kinds of old pumps, valves and measuring instruments. One thing I can say for sure, the insides of a refinery are not going to be a tourist destination for some time to come. What it lacked in terms of technology, it made up in terms of history. The name Digboi for example, was given by the Canadian oilmen, who excited by the prospects of the oil strike – exhorted the natives, “Dig, Boy, Dig.” Or how the first distillation happened in huge vats – very much like our farmers till date distill their local liquor.
The sun sets early in the east, especially in a country where you only have one time zone. So at 4:00 pm it started becoming dark and I decided to ditch cycling and bought two bus tickets – one lower class and one upper class. The cycle went upper class on the bus roof as I road comfortably back to Dibrugarh from Tinsukia, having covered 120 km on day one. Bhupinder Sehra, the sardarji I was seated next to in the bus turned out to be a fourth generation Assamese, who worked for the local PWD. He helped solve the puzzle of the tree-less plains that I encountered first in my flight – and later confirmed in my cycling. The maximum temperature that Dibrugarh records in the entire year is 29 C. So unlike their bretheren in other parts of India, farmers in this part of the Brahmaputra valley do not have to waste precious fertile land to create shelters for themselves in the summer months. He also advised that the best tea to buy in Assam – the Halmari Tea Estate, was a product of Dibrugarh district.
Having listened to his wisdom I returned back to my hotel room to realize my foolishness. On landing in Dibrugarh I discovered that like in J & K, prepaid cards of other states do not work in Assam. Using this logic I had left the phone for charging in the hotel room, only to find on my return back that one of the waiters had taken a fancy to the HTC Touch. In his magnanimity though, he had left the charger behind. I tried playing Sherlock Holmes, checking the baggage of every employee of the hotel, but I think the police force would have never been a sound career move for me. Like Inspector Bahadurpure of Pune, who convinced me after our maid had decamped with some significant amount of our wealth, that lodging FIRs is the most useless thing to do. Let this robbery teach you a lesson, how to be more careful in the future. After averaging one robbery every two years for the last 10 years, I think I am still not learning my lessons.
A good night’s sleep is the best remedy for any kind of post robbery depression. So I woke up the next day, and started on a fresh journey to Sibsagar. We had a late start with the Dibrugarh Medical College organizing a small breakfast to flag us off on our journey. They even sent some enthusiastic young lady doctors to give us company and ensure that we do not chicken out before we leave the city limits. One of the young damsels had a great fall, fortunately I managed to swerve out of harm’s way as she landed at my feet.
The speed of a cycling group depends inversely on the size of the group – the group that cycles together, eats together. You end up cycling as fast as the slowest member of the group, and take breaks depending on the hunger of any of the individuals. So we were again racing against sundown – driving on narrow roads after dusk without any of your own lights and the dazzle of oncoming lights is a challenge that we would be happier forgoing. Two of us, driving at 20 km/h managed reaching the hotel before dusk, the rest followed as nightfall started.
Sibsagar was capital to the Asom dynasty, which ruled much of Assam for many years. Our host in Sibsagar, Dr Arun Baruah, had a local cultural evening planned out for us. We started with an Antakshri session around a campfire, with songs being sung in as many languages as there were people. Dance followed song, as a local Assamese troupe celebrated the local harvest festival – Bihu. Almost all of us tried out the dance steps, and had opportunity to exhibit our learnings on non-suspecting Assamese folk along the way. After all the dancing, our appetites were satiated by a traditional Assamese feast, which included a huge assortment of delicacies, including the local duck. Next morning the culture exposition continued with a trip to the old Asom palace and amphitheatre.
The Sibsagar-Jorhat leg was a small one. So we started late but still reached on time. The high point of the Jorhat trip was the relatively luxurious Hotel Nikita, the luxury being mostly on account of the geyser which we encountered for the first time in our trip. A hot water bath after a day of cycling goes a long way in building up the morale for the next day. The Bihu festivities were evidently still underway, given the frequency of drunkards we encountered in Jorhat. The local medical association had organized a press conference, which turned out to be a very interesting one, the moment the organizers threw open the floor for questions from the audience. Some of the audience members had some interesting points of view and the interaction that followed had the audience deeply involved in the purpose behind the rally, improving haemoglobin and iron levels to reduce Maternal Mortality Rates. Alas, once home, the journalists continued their Bihu sabbaticals and we did not see any reports about our message and conference in our stay in Assam. We were promised that once normalcy returns, post Bihu, the papers will make mention of the message.
The next day took us to the tourist hotspot of Kaziranga. En route we crossed Numaligarh, the site of yet another refinery, and we were hosted by the doctors attached to the refinery hospital. They had organized a camp the next day in a village 10 km from the hotel we were staying in. We attended the camp, and as VIP guests we were shown around the village. We ravaged the mustard fields, plucked fresh radish from the vegetable patches and ended up enjoying a simple village meal cooked entirely from ingredients grown in the village. We reversed roles after the meal, becoming the hosts who ensured that our village chefs could enjoy the meals they cooked and we served.
We made two trips into the Kaziranga National Park. The first on a 3 tonne elephant and the second on a 2 tonne Gypsy. With a constant swaying from side to side, the elephant gait takes some getting used to. You need cameras with fast shutter speeds. Most of us carrying the 7 megapixel pocket cameras ended up by focusing on handsome rhino jaws and ending up clicking their behinds, as the shutter clicks did not match with the elephant swayings. There are quite a few rhinos in the KNP, 2000 reported in the last animal census in 2006. There was also good deer and a lot of interesting birds. One of our group members, a birder carrying her encyclopedia was excited on spotting some exotic green blue bird, which she could later on identify in her book.
The jeep safari was longer and stuck to jungle roads – about 30 km of them. 5 jeeps would go together and they would end up stopping whenever there were traces of wildlife. The journey through the jungle made us realize how dense it can really be in parts – we came across the usual suspects, but were disappointed in not seeing any elephants in the wild. The few that we saw were at the edge of the park, and we guessed were the safari guys out for a snack in the jungle.
Evening was spent shopping in the Hathakuli tea estate retail shop, where we ended up meeting Chen and his wife. Chen, a fellow tourist from Taiwan, was very enthused when he found out about our cycling expedition. He and his wife do about 100 km a week back home in Taiwan, and promised to return back next year with his bike. He thought that marketing Assam as a cycling destination would be a great idea. Dinner was at the Ibora, a 4 star resort, which we arrived at in our open truck, in the absence of alternative transport. Post dinner, at 10 pm in the winter cold of the sanctuary, we traveled back to our hotel frozen. We managed to reduce the wind chill factor by getting the truck driven at cycling speeds.
Our jeep safari having ended almost at 10 am, we were behind schedule and had one more health camp to attend en-route. So we put the cycles into the truck and drove about 30 km, dismounting just before the camp in order to give the impression of having cycled hard to reach there. Alas we had overshot our reception committee, who were quite puzzled about how 15 cyclists in blazing orange sweat shirts could have gone past them without being noticed. We received one more Gamcha, an Assamese towel, in the reception hosted at the First Referral Unit in the taluka place. Our stock of Gamchas by the end of the trip was about 4 per head. This was followed by a bigger reception in the Nagaon district hospital with more speeches and Gamchas. Nagaon is Assam’s second biggest city and we cycled across most of the city to reach our hotel. Piyush Residency, perched in the middle of a commercial complex, was a turn-off at first sight. But they made up for lack of location and ambience, by their excellent service and their fantastic dinner.
We woke up after the sumptuous dinner to be greeted by deep fog on the last day of the rally. Visibility at the start was only about 20 m and we could hear the oncoming trucks much before we saw them. The road from Nagaon to Gauhati is under repair, so we took a village road passing through Morigaon. The first 20 km of the road were atrocious and the concern was about the survival of the family jewels of the cyclists. Fortunately the situation improved after Morigaon. Another 30 km into the journey we had another camp scheduled with its attendant speeches and gamchas. The last day’s target was 130 km, and with the camp enroute we had to use our by now familiar strategy of cycle and bus in order to make it by sun-down to Gauhati. We were now next to the Brahmaputra, our long lost friend who we met first in Dibrugarh, and slowly drifted away along the route. We were back with her now – and it was awe-inspiring to see her width and water volume. The cycle rally concluded at the National Stadium, the venue of the all India Gynaecologists conference, which was slated to begin the next day.
The next day was sightseeing with the group split into two. Most went to Shillong, nested in the hills about 120 km away from Gauhati. The journey was made all the more adventurous by the hair-raising driving of our Sumo drivers. Two of us stayed back in Gauhati, starting by visiting the world famous Kamakshi temple. The claim to fame is the animal sacrifice that happens here, with stories from the past about human sacrifices also having been made here. The line to enter the temple was about half a km long, and the VIP entry ticket costed Rs. 501. Not having either the time or the money, we did a Kalash darshan, ruminated that Maa Kamakshi would be present everywhere around, and not just in the kund inside the main gopuram.
From here we moved on to do a walking tour on the Saraighat bridge over the Brahmaputra. This is a rail-cum-road bridge; one of the four that connect North and South Assam. There is a footpath along the bridge and we enjoyed the simple harmonic motions created as the Awadh Assam express passed us below. The view was again awesome. Saraighat is witness to perennial traffic jams being the beginning of the National Highway connecting Gauhati to the mainland. A new bridge is being built parallel to the old one by Gammon India. It was interesting to see the huge cranes going into the pits at the bottom of the river and clawing up tons of silt and sand at one go.
By now the desire to go and at least touch the Brahmaputra waters was very high. So after a quick lunch at a very Value-For-Money hotel in Fancy market, we found ourselves at Kacheri Ghat, only to learn that post a bomb blast it has been shut down. Walking back to Sankheshwar ghat, we were serenaded by thousands of boat owners beseeching us to visit Maa Umanand temple in the middle of the river. The costs involved being in the same league as the VIP ticket at Kamakshi, we decided once again to do the Kalash darshan and instead took a ferry to a village on the other side of the Brahmaputra, with total tickets for the round trip for two people being Rs. 20. If there was a climax to the trip, then this was it. The water was cool and clean. Ducks floated along lazily doing their fishing. Sitting in the front of the boat, we felt exhilarated, as if we had just answered a divine calling.
The next day we got the entire troupe that had gone to Shillong for a once-more and Mother Brahmaputra rewarded us by revealing one of her best kept secrets. We saw a single dolphin frolicking along merrily about 25 m from our boat. In that instant the entire trip was paisa-vasool.
The adventure though still continues. Gauhati to Pune is a 3 leg plane journey. I had my apprehensions of one of the legs falling through, what with Jyoti Basu departing and Delhi airport fogging up. The journey from Gauhati to Calcutta was good fun, with a trekker ride to the airport. On arriving at Cal airport we found our evening flight to Delhi delayed by 2 hours. By the time the flight took off it was a delay of 3 hours. Happy that we were almost home and having arranged for a reception committee to meet us at 2 am in the morning, we were flying over Varanasi when Delhi ATC shut down the airport. The pilot made a U turn and we were back in Cal airport in double fast time as the 120 km headwinds suddenly became tailwinds.
Chaos ensued at the airport and a quick decision was taken to cajole the Spicejet guys into giving us tickets to Mumbai on the 0800 flight. By that time it was 1130 pm and we decided to stay put in the arrival lounge at the airport and watched the night time housekeeping activities as the cleaners, the fumigators got to work. Wake up was at 0430 when we found the lounge busy as a Kingfisher flight flew in from Delhi, only six and a half hours behind schedule. I sit here typing out the last sentence of this 12 day adventure and the plane is about to land in Mumbai. Hopefully the adventure gets over here…….