You haven't seen India if you haven't seen the North-East. The cultures, the languages and the landscapes there are so different, it's a world in itself. If you look at the map of India, you will realize that the North-East is connected to the rest of the country by a thin, fragile umbilical cord along the northern border of Bangladesh. When the British sliced off India into two bleeding parts during partition, they must have hoped that this cord will be severed sooner than later. Thankfully it has not been, and hopefully it will never be.
The North-East is a veritable melting pot of colours and customs, with influences pouring in from Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Yet this amazing land has tenaciously preserved its own age-old traditions.
The journey to discover one of India's best kept state secrets actually began on this side of the umbilical cord. In a land that's equally mysterious: the Sunderbans in West Bengal. We took a bus from Kolkata to Sonakhali, and then took a long boatride to the heart of the largest mangrove forest in the world. Standing at the hull of the boat, I felt like Columbus in search of the New World and that feeling stayed with me for the next three weeks till I boarded the return flight from Imphal.
Sunderbans is an amazing landscape where islands appear during low tide and disappear during high tide. Water rises as much as 12 feet in certain parts; and animals have adapted wonderfully to this ever-changing landscape. The spotted deer eat salty grass, and the majestic Bengal tiger swims from one island to another. Dreading these man-eaters, the womenfolk here have evolved a strange custom. When the menfolk leave their homes in the morning, the married women remove all their marital ornaments and live the day as widows; and it's only after their husbands return home safely in the evening that they wear these ornaments again.
At the meeting point of the high tide and the low tide, an amazing spectacle is witnessed during every sunset. The water starts swirling there, much like a gigantic whirlpool; and various hues of red, orange and yellow start mixing magically with each other in Nature's own palette. I was tempted to call them God's own watercolours.
Our next base was Guwahati in Assam, which is actually the gateway to the North-East. First, we travelled south to Meghalaya or the Abode of Clouds. It's home to three colourful tribes that have a matriarchal way of life, as also an interesting custom of inheritance. The youngest in the family inherits the most from their parents, almost as if to make up for the lesser number of years spent in their upbringing.
Earlier Cherrapunji was known to be the wettest place on earth, but recently the wet baton has been passed on to the nearby Mawsynram. Here the trunks of gigantic trees look perennially soggy, and wear a dripping cloak of blue-green moss. From a vantage point in this town, you can see a garland of seven waterfalls, fondly referred to as Seven Sisters by the locals. Nearby in a place called Laitkynsew, there were 'living bridges' across rivers, made from the living roots of gigantic ficus trees. As I stood at Dawki on the border of India and Bangladesh, an eagle soared nonchalantly into the neighbouring country, unmindful of the unnatural borders created by man.
The journey through Assam to the exotic Arunachal Pradesh took us through Karbi Anglong, a place infested with militants. When a gang of extortionists tried to stop our car, I asked my driver Gautam to get into overdrive and whizz past them, knowing pretty well that on our return journey we wouldn't need to come back this way again.
The next destination was Tawang in the northern-most part of Arunachal Pradesh. It has the world's second largest monastery that's home to over 600 Buddhist monks. Here most of the houses were nearly four centuries old, and the residents with their deep-set wrinkles looked much older than that. After a breathtaking climb to 12,500 feet, we took a break in journey at Bomdila. Here we witnessed a sunset behind eight ranges of mystic mountains, with each one having a distinctly different tinge of magenta.
On the way to Tawang, we also met the proud inheritors of the very battalion that pushed back the Chinese aggressors in 1962. As we sipped the hospitality they offered on a cold morning, we saw a row of pine trees rising in the misty mountains, and for a moment they looked like soldiers from across the border appearing in stealth.
Arunachal is many states in one state. Stretching across from Bhutan to Myanmar, it has as many as 65 tribes in its densely forested hills. And they speak in 22 dialects that are so different from each other that they don't understand each other. An amazingly rich and diverse land that's yet to be explored, but merely a dozen Indians visit this state every year. It was at one of the check posts that we discovered that we were just the seventh, eighth and ninth tourists that year; and we were already in November.
As we traversed through the highly volatile Nagaland, I kept my hand on that chit on which I had written down the phone number of a senior officer in Assam Rifles whom I had befriended at an army checkpost. He had asked me to call him in case of an emergency, but thankfully I didn't have to make that call.
And then we travelled to another beautiful state that's home to one of India's legendary theatre directors, Ratan Thiyyam. Yes, the land of seven hills and one valley was as spectacular as his awesome plays. Or was it the other way around? Manipur is home to 29 tribes, and sadly also to 36 guerilla armies involved in an uprising. I was witness here to soldiers armed with sten-guns watching over scores of farmers harvesting their crop with a song on their lips and a prayer in their hearts.
In Manipur, you see an unbelievable sight that exists nowhere else in the world. It's the sight of the floating islands of Loktak Lake. Here perfectly circular islands with diametre as small as 20 feet, and thickness as little as one foot, float serenely in the lake. They were created by Nature when hundreds of floating weeds got compressed over time, and soil and dust collected on them till they could sustain life. Today lush green grass grows on them, and nimble-footed deer feed on them, hopping from one floating island to the other. In the morning you find these islands huddling in one corner of the lake, and in the evening you find them in another part of the lake transported there by a gentle breeze.
Our return flight was from Imphal, the capital of Manipur. And unfortunately one of the 36 guerilla armies had decided to call for a state-wide bandh on that very day. Taking a cue from our very own bandhs in Mumbai, we left in the wee hours of the morning and reached the airport before the guerillas stirred from their beds.
Yes, there were many risky and anxious moments right through our 3-week journey into the unexplored world of the North-East; but then what's exploration without adventure?
