Thoughts - Top of My Mind: Experiencing India's North East

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 2^nd 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.