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.