The train being late to arrive at New Jalpaiguri meant that the train also arrived late in Guwahati, in the state of Assam. This was not a particularly troubling thing because it had been scheduled to arrive at 4 in the morning, and there is just not much that can be accomplished at 4 am. We arrived at 5:30 instead and that was much more manageable. We got off the train and tried to find something to eat. We hadn't eaten dinner, as it happened. When we were wandering around the New Jalpaiguri station trying to find a place to just sit and rest, we had been approached by these two young gentlemen with uniforms. Their crests said they were with Meals On Wheels. The name means something else to me, but here it seemed to mean they were with some kind of train catering company. Because they had uniforms and were actually in the train station, we probably trusted them more than we should have. But they looked at our ticket and then said they could bring us food for on the train. They took our orders and disappeared. When we got on the train, they duly remembered us and helped us find our carriage and brought us some food. At a ridiculous price. We balked and decided that we didn't want the food. He immediately lowered the price and started haggling. I suppose we should have asked how much at the time we had ordered, but we didn't. In the end, we were arguing back and forth so long that the train started to leave. With no agreement in place, they had to get off the train or face a long way back to their “office” and so they took the food and left. Of course, this left us dinnerless. So by the time we reached Guwahati, we were hungry.
We originally went to the wrong side of the station, and couldn't find much of anything useful. We had to get to the other side of the station. But the person we asked pointed us in the wrong direction and it took us some wandering and going through probably forbidden areas to get to the other side of the tracks. There we found hotels and places to eat. But this is where things seemed to be going a bit wrong for Kenichi and I. I had been getting the feeling that he was more or less ready to go separate ways. I wish there was a good way to have conversations like that. But when we were finding our way to the other side of the tracks, he didn't really seem to pay much attention to whether I was with him or not. Then, when we found some hotels and such, I went to talk to some of the jeep drivers that were around. They all had messages about permits on their windshields, so I wondered if they had information about what would be needed to go to other states. They didn't. But when I went back to find Kenichi, he had disappeared. I eventually was walking along the row of restaurants that were open and saw him. I went in and we were re-united.
Then, full, we decided to try and find an Assam Tourism office that was supposedly nearby. We walked around for a bit. I had seen a hostel that seemed to be affiliated with Hostelling International. I suggested that we go there to see if they had information we could use. HI hostels usually have staff that are travellers and are therefore good sources of information. So we headed in that direction. But at one point I turned around and Kenichi had disappeared again. Hmmm... I talked to the hostel people and went back out and Kenichi had reappeared again. He had been in travel office getting some information, which was that we needed to go to a place called Nagaland House in order to get a permit. The hostel guy showed us to the Assam Tourism office, which was closed and then started to help us figure out which bus to use to get to Nagaland House, but Kenichi thought we should wait for the tourism office to open. I agreed to that and so we waited. But at length I noticed that it was Saturday and wondered aloud if the office would even open. It was my impression that Kenichi was a bit annoyed by that observation, and even more so when it turned out that the office wasn't in fact going to open that day. We packed up and Kenichi decided that heading for the Assam Tourism office in the train station would be the next step. We started heading that way, but I turned around a few moments later and Kenichi was gone again. Once can happen, and even twice can be explained away, but this was third time we had managed to get split up. I looked around but couldn't see him, and so I decided to go to the station and see if he showed up. He didn't. And since it was the third time, I figured that the time had come to part company, which is what I was thinking had been on his mind for a while.
I'm not sure what brought it on, but I do know that, while I am perfectly capable of deciding things myself and can make plans, when I'm around someone who is also more than capable of doing those things as well, I can just go along with things and not really add much to the endeavour. And I imagine that puts people off after a while. My suspicion is that that's what happened, but I may never know. I did send Kenichi a message over Facebook later to wish him well, but who knows.
From that point on, though, I began making different decisions. It seemed that I was indeed going to need a permit for Nagaland, so I figured that I would try the Nagaland House and see if it was open. But first I wanted to drop my bag off somewhere. I felt I was going to be in town overnight anyway, so I started looking for a room. And I found that Guwahati was very, very busy. I must have checked in 40 or 50 hotels and everywhere it was the same. No rooms. In the end I gave up and decided to take my bag with me to Nagaland House. I got some directions to take the bus and set off. A forty minute bus ride later, I got off and started asking people where to find the place. When I found it I walked in and was told, no, they don't do permits for foreigners in Guwahati. I was a bit shocked. I had heard so many things, from no permits being needed to permits being done in Guwahati, I didn't expect to come to this complete block in my plans. And there was no shaking them. There was even a notice posted on their door that suggested that all I had to do was show up in Nagaland and report to the Foreigner Registration Office and it would be all right. They nixed that and told me it couldn't go that way. They could only accommodate Indians at that office. But all I had to do was go to Delhi, to Nagaland House there and get my permit. Then I could come back and have no problem. He seemed a bit taken aback when I said that, since it would involve two or three days to get to Delhi, another day to get the permit and then two or three days to return to Guwahati, no, I would not be going to Nagaland after all. And that the lack of information, anywhere, on how to go about a visit to Nagaland meant that they were losing out. And he seemed a bit upset when I told him that since Nagaland didn't seem to want my money, Assam would get instead. But he offered no solution to the quandary beyond going to Delhi to get a permit. It would have been nice, but another time, I suppose.
Then I headed back up to the station to try again to find a place to stay. I eventually did find a place that had a rather expensive room (all things considered), and got checked in. Then I went for a walk. Guwahati is along the Brahmaputra River. This river comes down out of the Himalaya Mountains and travels through various spots before coming into Assam. From Assam it goes down through Bangladesh and then meets the Ganges before emptying into the ocean. In each country and state, the river has a different name. Brahmaputra is the name it has in the state of Assam. It runs from east to west through the state, and forms the northern boundary of Guwahati.
I decided to seek the river as I was somewhat dispirited from finding out that I wouldn't be able to visit Nagaland. It took some searching, but I did find it and I found a way to get to it. It seems that spending time beside a river is not particularly important in much of India. Consequently there are relatively few access points to most rivers (so far) and there seems not to be much in the way of parks beside a river either. Rivers are nevertheless important means of transportation and there are spots where access to the rivers provides access to some kind of ferry. This is what I found here. The view from the spot was divine though.
I decided to just go ahead and climb aboard the next ferry that arrived. However, the ferry didn't cross the river. It went to a small island in the middle with a temple on it. That was fine.
I climbed around on the island for a while and visited the temple. I can't say that I understood who the temple was built for, but I rang the bells that were there and watched some of the visitors get blessed by the religious leaders there. It was interesting and it was also soothing to my disappointment.
At the end of my visit to the island, I met a man who lives in Guwahati. He started chatting with me and so I asked him what I should do in Assam. He was a fountain of information. He told me I should go to a place called Tezpur. From there I could go up to a spot called Bomdila and then Tawang. They were in Arunachal Pradesh, and Tawang has the second largest Buddhist temple in Asia. It is also set in the mountains and is supposed to be quite beautiful. Then I could come back down and take a ferry up to Kazinranga national park to go and see one-horned rhinos and other animals, before continuing on to Jorhat and the world's largest river island called Majuli. After that I could go down into Meghalaya and go see a tree root bridge. It sounded like a great plan and I started to get excited again. He took my email address and said he would send me more information.
With that I headed to my hotel and felt much better about the trip to Assam, even though I wouldn't be doing what I had originally planned. The day that had started badly had turned into a fairly successful seeming one.
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