Assam

After a long hiatus due to various reasons, here's an attempt to bring the dormant blog back to life. A little something from a few months back. As promised, an account on my trip to Assam.

My friend Anuj was working on a hydropower project in the northeast of India and needed to go to the northeast for a week to meet some people. He asked whether me and my friends Ward and Thomas would be interested in joining him for a trip to Assam, the land of rhinos and tea. My attendance, and motivation, in the university had become pretty much nonexistent and I wasn't doing anything else, so I decided to go. The northeast had not exactly been on my list of places to visit on this trip, but since the god of randomness (I'm sure there's a Hindu god for that too) decided to step in, the same night I booked a flight from Delhi to Guwahati, the capital of Assam.

Although seasoned backpackers worldwide have gone through almost any nook and cranny of India so far, there are still a few places on the map that remain a bit more obscure (relatively speaking). The tumultuous history of India has made the country go through numerous geographical transformations eventually leaving it a fairly strangely shaped piece of land these days. The partition of East Pakistan into what today is Bangladesh left the northeast of India hanging from the rest of the country like a tumor or an extra appendage reaching towards Southeast Asia - mentally as well as geographically. The Siliguri Corridor aka the Chicken's Neck is the only strip of land separating it from the rest of India adding to the isolation of the area from the rest of the country. The northeast has always been a frontier, a seemingly uncharted fringe of the Indian heartland that barely seems to have a place in an average Indian's consciousness.

The Northeast of India includes seven states called the seven sisters: Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram, Tripura, Manipur and Meghalaya.

What makes the northeast even harder to fit as an integral part of what is generally perceived as "Indian" is the notable cultural and ethnic difference compared to the rest of the country. As Zhou and Kumar in their article on the history of mapping the northeast put it, "as a fluid borderland of Inner Asia, it is difficult to locate India’s Northeast exclusively in either East Asia or South Asia". The geographical borders drawn by the British enhanced this emergence of a separate regional identity somewhere between India and East Asia. This geographical and mental separation is still very present in the attitudes of northeastern people today. Talking to an average young northeastern, one may often hear them refer to "those Indians", meaning people from the Indian heartland, to emphasize the divide.

With all this in mind, we anxiously embarked on our little trip to explore the state of Assam, the gateway to the northeast. We landed in Guwahati late at night, our ride was there to pick us up. After a night of opulent drinking and eating (people in India tend to drink first and have dinner later), the next morning we headed out to our first destination, Majuli, the biggest river island in the world.

The river boat was waiting already at the pier, slowly swaying in the mild waves as the passengers scurried and rushed with sharpened elbows over to get the best seats on the deck below, dragged their heavy luggage behind, drove their motorcycles and mopeds and tried to persuade the occasional domestic animal on the boat. The engine eventually started, emitting black smoke with a steady cadence, and we headed towards vast, sometimes seemingly endless waters, the river Brahmaputra. At some points one could hardly see the shores on both sides. The nickname "mighty" often added to the name of the river seemed just.

Few hours later, we arrived on Majuli, where a convoy of jeeps and other modes of transport were waiting for potential passengers. We hopped on a jeep and cruised through the plains and the forests to our acommodation, a small village of bamboo huts, where it seemed, we were the only residents at the time.
The first night was well spent sitting on the porch of our hut enjoying several cups of fine assamese tea as well as some local spirits, such as rice beer, or lao-pani, as it's also called in Assam. The buzz of the spirits gave us ideas for the next day, since the island was mostly inhabited by tribal people, we decided it would be worthwhile visiting one of the villages and have a chat with them.

The next morning our driver was there rolling his keychain in his index finger, leaning against his jeep. Slightly groggy from the previous night's binge, courtesy of the inn-keepers spirits and other intoxicants provided by local holy men, we jumped into the jeep. We were going to go meet what was known as the Mishing-tribe, a people who originally migrated to Assam from the state of Arunachal Pradesh on the border of China. The village lay nearby and soon enough, we found ourselves in a full on bamboo hut-village surrounded by a number of curious faces peeking out of the huts. A small, thin, but lean and agile-looking man with a thin moustache greeted us welcomingly. He introduced himself as the chief of the village and insisted on showing us around the place.

The houses were supported by bamboo poles and built on a muddy lot surrounded by forest. The place seemed vulnerable to heavy rains. The chief agreed with our assesment and went on telling us how the government of India allocates annually millions of rupees for the development and reconstruction of the village that gets almost wiped out of the pouring monsoon. However, they barely see a single paisa of these funds, because most of the funding gets lost "in the process" to the pockets of state-level bureaucrats, eventually filtering down only a fraction of the original amount. Every year, the tribals have to bribe the local officials to get even a small cut of the funds originally allocated entirely to them. Their predicament is not unique in India, rather it was a textbook example of how corruption on each level of the government spreads its rust on the cogs of development, circulating the funds amongst numerous babu-middlemen and maintaining the unfortunate status quo. Despite the setbacks, the chief seemed optimistic and had faith in his community. He pointed out to a small girl studying attentively on the porch of one of the huts. He told us that the girl was top of her class and the village had come together to support her education so that she could go to college. Other youngsters that had emerged around us told us that they had similar plans.

We thanked the chief for an illuminating chat and decided to move along. Our driver told us that there was a holy man living in one of the temples nearby who could tell us our fortune, if we were interested. I'm not usually too keen on these things, since I prefer to seek comfort in the randomness of the universe, but armed with the metaphorical a grain of salt, I was intrigued nevertheless. Unfortunately we never got that far. Next to the temple entrance was a small booth-like building with a single room. A small group of local men was loitering outside, it seemed some would rather see what was to become their fate. I peeked inside the small, dark room, in which a withered and feeble man was sitting cross-legged. He sat in the middle of huge piles of offerings and gifts given by his visitors. Various sorts of fruit, candles, incense, framed pictures, playing cards, money and other random items lay scattered all over the room. He was dressed in a single piece of cloth wrapped around his body and he was smoking a chillum with such concentration, that it took a good while to even capture his attention. He had a vacant look in his eyes as he kept puffing the pipe while repeating the name of Shiva between the heavy tokes in deep voice that sounded like it was coming out of the bottom of this stomach. We carefully asked whether it was possible for him to tell us our fortune. He looked at us first with a blank stare after which he burst out laughing, blowing smoke out of his nostrils. He said he was currently not in the condition to do so. With poor quality charas, he clearly had fried his brain beyond any clairvoyant capabilities for the day. Instead, as a consolation prize, he dug his piles of offerings for a while and eventually pulled out an apple with a long due expiration date. The next best thing, according to him. The Indians in our entourage were convinced that the man clearly had some powers, because he could afford to turn us down. Only a true holy man could say no to potential paying customers, apparently.


The day was coming to an end and we retreated to our bamboo porch to sit by the candles and mosquito coils. We were going to head back to mainland the next day.


The next day, a bit groggy once again, we found ourselves standing in the back of a jeep driving through a scenery that could've just as well been somewhere in the Serengeti - the Khaziranga national park. The bumpy ride was making me slightly nauseous and the mosquito bites from last night were still itching, only making the prickly heat rash on my skin worse. This all subsided, however, as we entered the national park area and the flora and fauna started to surround us. On both sides lay vast bodies of water decked with thick layers of vegetation. The green mosaic on top of the water was occasionally distorted by the emerging horned head of a water buffalo or the main attraction of Khaziranga - the Asian One-Horned Rhinoscheros.
They mostly prefer to keep their distance to visitors, but as we were turning around to head back, two of them had suddenly appeared next to our jeep, a mother and a baby rhino. The mother turned around and did not seem to approve our close proximity to its offspring. At first our driver and guide seemed excited about the close encounter and encouraged us to take as many photos as possible, but as the heavily armored  beast began assuming charging position, we were barely holding on to the bars of the jeep in the back as the driver was stepping on the pedal already. The mother rhino could've made short work of our 4-wheel drive with a single headbutt.

Despite the intimidating encounter, the Khaziranga was mesmerizing in its natural diversity. Hundreds of different species of birds, the massive water buffaloes, the rhinos, the elephants and the prospect of possibly spotting a tiger - all roaming free in lush greenery, large bodies of water and dry savannah-like grassland.
The possibility of spotting a real live tiger were fairly slim, as they usually see you first and disappear. Seeing one would've demanded a night of patient stalking in a treehouse in the nature reserve. Our time was running short, so we had to leave tigerspotting to more focused makeshift biologists.