Visiting North
East of India was always a dream for me, reading different blogs I was always
fascinated about the life in North East. I want to cover north east at the earliest
before it become too commercialized but never got the right company to do that. 2013 winter I made a rough plan to visit
north east with my wife and started collecting information's to execute my plan.
Soon I understood from different sources
that it is not going to be easy for a first timer to NE with family considering
different dimensions of the place. Even I don’t have any friends NE so I had
dropped the plan to go with family and started looking for a friend with
similar mind set as the NE trip is more of a cultural experience than visiting
places. In the middle of nowhere I got
someone who was ready for this fascinated trip and interesting part was he sits
next to me in office for past one year and I never realized it J.
Where to Go
NE consist of 7 sister states so we have to decide where to
go. We had only 7 days to spend, this was our judgement on 7 sisters
Assam – NO. Safety
is a concern lower Assam and other parts are very much Indianized.
Manipur – NO.Again
safety concerns, protests going on against non-Manipuri’s. Few blasts were
reported in last week targeting only non-Manipuri’s
Tripura – NO. Small
state…. not much to see as per our research
Meghalaya – YES. Biggest attraction was visiting living root
bridges also we want to spend a day in Asia’s cleanest village Mawllynong.
Nagaland – YES.
The hornbill festival happening at Dec first week also we want to see the Naga culture “the real head
hunters” !!!!
Mizoram- NO. Same reason as in the case of Tripura
Arunachal Pradesh-
YES/NO . We want to visit Tawang but we had only 7 days for the trip so we kept
it as backup plan if we wont get entry to Nagaland. Also Arunachal culture is equally
fascinating as Nagas. But we rated Nagas slightly above.
In paper the plan looks fine as we have 7 days and need to
cover only 2 states . 3 days per state and 1 day in Guwahati to get the feel of Assam. Also we will be
travelling across Assam on the way to Nagaland. So all set and the plan was
Day1 – Bangalore – Guwahati in flight. From Guwahati to
Shillong and from thereto Mawllynong
(Stay)
Day 2 – Back to Shillong Roam Around Shillong (Stay)
Day 3 – Back to Guwahati and catch train to Dimapur. Roam
Around Dimapur(Stay)
Day 4 – Dimapur-Kohima . The Hornbill Festival
Day 5- Explore other parts of Kohima + Hornbill
Day 6 – Hornbill and getting back to Guwahati
Day 7- Reaching Guwahati and Roam Around Guwahati. Catch
Evening Flight Back to Bangalore
But plans went
terribly wrong while executing it J
Rule No 1 :- Never go
to NE with a fixed plan you need to be flexible with your plans.
So here we start
Day 1
We reached Guwahati on time but on the way to Mawllynong we
got into Crazy Shillong traffic and lost 3 hours. We reached Mawllynong around
8 PM and spend the day in a homestay inside the village. On the way we stopped
in one of the typical Khasi Hotel run by a lady to taste the local cuisine. We had a campfire at night in the homestay and
got opportunity to taste the local beer. Homestay Owner was very friendly and happy to know that we are from Bangalore.
Day 2
We got the unexpected on 2nd day, Khasi people (tribal people of Meghalaya)
declared general strike in Shillong. Their demand was to impose ILP for
outsiders to enter Meghalaya. We have to start early from Mawllynong to
Shillong as they announced some rally by 12 PM. On the way we covered the root bridge in Riwai
village and it was stunning. We had stopped in Elephant falls as well and
reached Shillong by 1 PM. All non Khasi
shops were closed in Shillong and CRPF was patrolling everywhere. We roamed
through the safe areas of Shillong in the evening but we made sure we never
went out of vicinity of a policeman/army.
Khasi youth were conducting rallies in between … we took that also as an
experience. Due to this strike we lost
the chance to experience the Shillong Night Market and other attractions.
Day 3
Plan was to reach Dimapur at the earliest and spend a night
there. We want to see 2 places mainly Dimapur Gun market and Kachori Ruins. But
we got a lot of negative reviews about Dimapur from Shillong and our taxi drivers,
so we dropped our plan of spending a
night in Dimapur. Also our train was late so decided to go directly to Kohima
after reaching Dimapur. Yes we took the
entry to land of festivals and manage to find a home stay near to Naga Heritage
village. Kohima we sync with other groups who came for Hornbill festival.
Enjoyed the home made Naga food and famous rice beer at night.
Day 4&5
Hornbill festival, it was exactly as I had imagined. A
photographers dream I would say. Even I felt like this is a festival mainly targeting
Photographers. At first it makes u too excited, tribal dressing, ornaments, weapons
everything will be new to you. After few
days you may feel repetitive. As they push the festival from 7 days to 10 days I
think the content got diluted. Best part
is it extremely colourful and gives you
a platform to see all tribes together but most of the time it makes you feel
you are watching something orchestrated. All together worth a visit even though
it is not well organized. We visited other places like Night Market, Dog
Market, Keeda Market etc.
Day 6
We spend half day @ hornbill but Another strike was waiting for us, this time in Dimapur (We need to cross Dimapur
on the way to Guwahati). Luckily it was only till 6 PM. We started from Kohima
to Guwahati just after the strike and reached Guwahati next day morning.
Day 7
Went to famous Khamakya temple and did some shopping in
Guwahati before catching our flight back
to Bangalore
Things to Keep in
Mind while travelling to NE especially Meghalaya and Nagaland
1. Sunset is around 4.30 and sunrise at 5.30
so the day is short (In December)
2. Limited public transport options and you
have to depend on share taxies
3. Travelling in the night is not advisable
4. There are no banks or ATMs outside the city
so keep cash with you once you travel outside city
5. As it is recommended to travel only in day
time buffer enough time for that
6. Roads are not in good condition and it is a
hilly area so travel on the road takes much time compared to other parts of
India (Average 30KM/Hr)
7. Don’t trust the trains most of them not on
time due to single lines
8. Locals are friendly but you need to bargain
most of the places (taxi, hotel, food etc)
9. Limited options for vegies especially in
Nagaland. Pork, dog, snail, frog they eat almost everything.
10. People normally use taxi, so you have to trust the driver we used
to track the car using GPS to make sure he is not cheating us
11. Most of the tourist places close by 4 PM,
plan accordingly.
12. Nothing
much happens after 8 PM in these area
13. I am a hard core non vegie but never adjusted
with Nagaland food, it has a strange smell.
14. Most of the souvenirs’ are expensive in
Nagaland/Meghalaya, I will recommend to do some shopping in Guwahati which was
much cheaper.
15. A general strike can be declared any moment
in NE and it can go up to a week or more, so don’t go the NE with a tight
schedule as ours.
16. ILP is required to enter Kohima but they
relaxed the rule for Hornbill festival so we manage to get it without ILP
17. Army is everywhere in Nagaland, I would say
every 100 mtr there is an armed personal
18. We spend almost 25K for 1 week trip (Dec 2013) which includes accommodation and flight fare, transportation is expensive due to lack of public transport.
Hornbill
Meghalaya
Living Root Bridge
Tribal Naga Women
Hornbill
Horbill
With Naga Tribals
Mawllynong
