Heading to Tezpur

I got up early and checked out of the hotel. I will probably end up here or somewhere like it again after I finish seeing and doing what I want to do in Assam, but I don't relish the idea that much. Guwahati just doesn't seem to be that friendly and easy a place to be.

I trudged down to the train station and crossed to the other side of the rail tracks, where I found the bus station. I was going to ask one more time if there was a bus to Tezpur. It just seemed odd to me that there was no bus and I would have to take a jeep or a minivan to get there. But I never got the chance to ask. I was approached by some guy who asked where I was headed. I said Tezpur and he told me that I would need to take a winger, whatever that was. It was the same term the guys had told me the previous night when I was asking about buses to Tezpur. I tried to ignore him, as I figured he was a scout for some transportation company of some sort, and therefore not necessarily out for my best interests. But I got tired of waiting in line to make the inquiry, so I just ended up following him across the street to a spot where there were minivans, or wingers. They were actually quite roomy and it didn't seem that it would be that onerous to take one of them for a four hour ride to Tezpur. The guy took me to the window and I bought a ticket. I think I heard him then say something about a tip for the porter. Had he pushed it, I would have pointed out that porters generally carry something and he had carried nothing of mine. But he seemed to read my expression of, “Fat chance, pal,” clearly enough and just headed out to find someone else.

It took a few minutes to fill the van up and then we were off. And it was really nice to be out of the city. I don't know exactly what it was about Guwahati, but it just rubbed me the wrong way. It could simply have been that it's where my hopes for visiting Nagaland had been dashed, or I have been in gentler sorts of places for the past couple of weeks, but I was quite relieved to be out of there. I hope I don't have to spend a lot of time there when I return before I can get a train on to my next stop.

The road to Tezpur was filled with some rather amusing and really stunning (but not really in a good way) sights. Just outside of Guwahati there was a weigh station. And running in both directions from the weigh station was a line of trucks that had at least 100 trucks waiting their turn, and probably a lot more. That was quite a sight.

Later we came to a railroad crossing. All the way along the road, it was very rough. Some vehicles could handle the rough road better than others, so some were going faster. And they passed other vehicles as they saw fit, not always in the safest manner. At times there were three vehicles all the way across the road going in the same direction. This was not a particular problem as there was plenty of time to get out of the way of the vehicles coming the other direction. But then we came to the railway crossing. And there was a train coming, so the arms were down and traffic was stopped. On both sides of the tracks, vehicles were lined up all the way across the road, making it basically like a football field with the two lines of football players facing each other waiting for the play to begin. Everyone seemed to know that the train was coming and that nobody could go, but in a matter of extremely short-sighted selfishness, they set up a situation where nobody was going to be able to go anywhere once the train was past. It was asinine. And, as I expected, once the train was past, it took about ten minutes to get enough vehicles manoeuvred about to allow the flow of traffic to resume.

Later still, there was some kind of procession that was taking up the road going in the other direction. I'm not sure if it was a funeral or some kind of a celebration, but they were bookended by police officers making sure the paraders were safe.

Other than that, it was just rice fields and tea plantations all through the countryside. A couple of the men in the minivan talked to me for a while about Assam and the natural beauty of the area and the agricultural products that come from the region. It was quite nice.

I also discovered that there is further unrest here. It seems that the whole of the northeast of India is alive with some kind of almost nationalistic spirit. Sikkim acts almost as if it's another country. The visitor's permit that is needed for a visit is much like a visa. And they put a stamp in my passport when I entered and when I left again. And in Darjeeling, the people there want the area to be recognized as Gorkhaland. These sorts of permits exist for many of the seven states that are out in the rest of the northeast of India as well. Assam has no such requirement, but five of the others do require permits. This is ostensibly because these states are bordering some aggressive neighbours, such as China and Myanmar, but there is also this fervour to be recognized as distinct societies that maybe hasn't been well-recognized by India. And there seems to be yet one more group that is demanding recognition as a separate area. They wish to be called Boroland. I don't know how extensive the movement is, or what area they wish to claim as separate, but it does seem to be an active movement.

Then we arrived in Tezpur and I set about finding a place to stay. I was hoping it wouldn't be as hard as it had been in Guwahati. I was pleasantly surprised to find it very easy. I got off the minivan and walked into the first place that looked like it might be nice. And I got a room. Cheap. It wasn't the best room, which explained the cheapness, and it was also furnished with a board for a bed, but it was easy and I was settled, which made it very nice indeed.

And then, things went off the rails again somewhat. When I had met Utpal at the temple the day before, he had told me that I should go to Tezpur and then head up into Arunachal Pradesh to see the Buddhist temple at Tawang. I had asked him if I needed a permit and he told me no. So I was quite excited at the prospect of going into more of the Himalaya range and to see this beautiful temple.

I went across the street from my hotel to the bus ticket stand that was advertising tickets to Tawang and asked if I could buy one. The first thing the man asked me was if I had my permit. I kind of lost it on him railing about why nobody could get the information straight about these things, that I had been told I could go and it didn't require a permit and on and on. And then I stomped off to just cool off.

I headed in the direction of the river and passed the local Assam Tourism lodge and stopped in to see if the local tourism officer was available, even though it was Sunday. I didn't expect anyone to be able to help me, but they told me that he would be there after 6 that evening. That was cool. I told them I would return. Then I headed off to find the river. And I found that to be a soothing way to spend a couple of hours.

By the time I got some dinner and got back to the tourist lodge, the tourism officer had headed out to the market and so I decided to come back the next morning to get some true advice from the person who ought to know. And I headed in to read and get some sleep.