Snapshots in sepia: Parts III and IV

III

Pasighat is Arunachal's oldest town, established by the British in 1911, and is the headquarter of the East Siang district. It serves as a gateway to the rest of the state and it is from here that we were to board the shared jeep that would take us to our next destination -- Yinkiong, a town some 200 km from Pasighat.

A local transport strike forced us to stay in Pasighat for an extra day that I duly spent hiking through lush hill tracts and watching women in their colourful wraparounds and parasols go about their day's business.

On a day washed out by spells of moderate-to-heavy rains and made inactive by the bandh, these minor distractions provided the much-needed relief.

IV

My jaw dropped when I saw the driver of our jeep, a boy barely out of his teens. From my erstwhile trips to northern Himalayas, I was used to seeing hatta katta Punjabis/Jats behind the wheel, negotiating hairpin bends on difficult mountain terrains, and, hence was least expecting an adolescent to drive the jeep. Very soon, however, as we set out on our journey, all my doubts were put to rest; I realised we were in safe hands.

We were a motley bunch travelling to Yinkiong, all eight others in the group of ten were either officers in some government department or traders travelling on work. We, the only two "outsiders", were hence of immense interest to them. They just couldn't believe that anyone could come to Yinkyong just for a pleasure trip. All kinds of tales were traded as our co-passengers wished us luck and safety for our trip that, as we eventually came to know, happened to coincide with the election season in Arunachal.

By then my morale had touched rock bottom. The driving force that kept me going was the spectacular landscape and also the thought that we were now at the point of no return, and the only wise act would be to just move forward and cross bridges as they came. And bridges we surely did cross!

The monsoon season is not a good time to visit this part of the country, even if you love the rains.

There are chances of being held up due to mudslides or the hanging bridges being washed away by the rains. Sometimes it might be too risky just to travel in such weather. The brighter side is that you get to see the mighty Siang, that skirts the Pasighat-Yinkiong road, in all its elements and are able to freeze plenty of Kodak moments. "Beautiful" would be an understatement while describing this route, "mesmerising" would near-about qualify it.

Power supply in Arunachal is sporadic at best and non-existent at worst, which is an irony since Arunachal has the potential of being one of the largest hydel-power-producing states in India. Most places, if they are not too remote like Tuting, receive power for only a few hours in the evening. When we reached Yinkiong, the sleepy hill town was settling down to another evening of darkness and rain. Desolation was creeping in and for a moment I found myself asking, "What am I doing here?" Just then, the bright blue signboard of SBI Yinkyong came into view. Somehow in the remoteness of the situation that ubiquitous sign seem strangely re-assuring, making me feel that I was in "known territory".

Snapshots in sepia: Part II

There are a couple of entry points to the state. We chose the one through Dibrugarh in Assam that would entail a 2hr boatride through the mighty Brahmaputra and take us to Pasighat in Arunachal. Negotiating a treacherous mud bank to reach the boat prepared me for a trip that would see many such challenges and me doing the constant balancing act. As bouts of rain lashed the steel grey landscape and a sea-like river rocked our deceptively simple motor boat, I sent a silent prayer to that invisible hand, who creates and nurtures such formidable beauty.

Travel, at times, instils a sense of deja vu. Two completely disparate places, far removed from each other, can seem so eerily familiar that you are left wondering whether you've got your geographical coordinates right. We had landed on the other shore quite unharmed but uncomfortably drenched, and here we were on a bus speeding towards Pasighat along NH-37, the highway that crisscrosses emerald green ricefields, rises above swollen rivers and provides some of the most spectacular views that closely resemble the lush landsacpes of South Goa. Hence the deja vu act!

However, the semblance ended there. I was soon brought back to circa 2010 by a gaggle of voices -- two women animatedly discussing a family wedding in Assamese, a little girl talking to her mother in a sing-song dialect and the bus conductor going around asking for tickets in Hindi. The bus soon came to a halt and a man clad in khaki got on to check our ILPs. We had entered the East Siang district in Arunachal Pradesh and the red-and-green ramparts of the border checkpost was proudly proclaiming the same.

Snapshots in sepia: A fortnight's trail through rains, rivers and occasional melancholia

I

I did not know what to expect of Dibrugarh, a town on the banks of the Brahmaputra that is famed for its tea industry, and our first stop of what was going to be literally a journey into the unknown.We had decided to backpack our way through parts of Arunachal Pradesh, through places that usually do not fall in the regular "tourist circuit". In fact, the Eicher India Map is not much of a help when it comes to providing information about these places; it merely mentions the names of places, leaving one to wonder whether going there would actually mean falling off the map!

A land shrouded in mist and mystery, Arunachal Pradesh till quite recently was out of bounds for the "regular tourist". One had to travel in groups, as individual travellers were not issued Inner Line Permits (ILPs), a prerequisite if one has to travel through the terrain. Though situations have changed greatly, yet till date, whatever little information one gathers about this area is mostly from blogs of foreigners. The regular "tourist" still restricts herself to the Tawang-Bomdila-Bhalukphung circuit. Nature lovers at best try to squeeze in the fascinating Namdapha Sanctuary. We, on a whim, decided to give the usual touristy trails a miss and choose an off-the-beaten track instead.

However, it soon appeared that preparing an itenerary for such a trip would be quite a daunting task. Even though we could manage to chalk out a tentative route, we still failed to find accommodation for most of the places. As it turned out, the places that we were planning to visit didn't have private accommodation on rent, or so said "Google". The only available places to stay were inspection bunglows meant for sarkari karmacharis (public servants) of various departments and one needed proior permission to stay there. Sarkari connection was hard to come by for us and not having much time left, we decided to bank on the much-talked-about hospitality of the people of the region and the blessings of the Uparwallah in general. Not a very comfortable thought to start a trip with!