BRAVING DECEMBER IN ARUNACHAL - 1

Finally on the Christmas day of 2008 we boarded the train from sealdah to reach our destination, the snow-clad peaks of Arunachal. 3 brave souls Me, Bose & Pritam, despite many constraints (read that budget-constraint, time-constraint, health-constraint) & also braving many warnings (almost all the expert-travelers warned us that December wasn’t the ‘Right’ time to visit Arunachal & not to mention the usual family & boss warnings) we were finally at the sealdah station at the crack of dawn to avail the train to Guwahati. After traveling for nearly 24 hours in the overcrowded train we finally reached our destination Guwahati, but our first experience wasn’t actually gateway-to-heaven like! Just coming out of the railway station we pitted at a local panshop & the keeper robbed of 50 odd rupees. Anyways braving this early setback on a really early morning we found out that we have to travel to the new bus stand to avail the bus to Tezpur, which is the base to travel to Arunachal. So taking a bus from the station we reached the ‘Inter-State Bus Station’. It was newly build, quite spacious & efficient also as we booked our tickets in the luxury bus going to Tezpur.

Day1 : Tezpur (26th Dec)

Traveling through famous tea-gardens of Assam & also surprisingly smooth roads we finally reached Tezpur at around 2pm. We firstly made our arrangements for the night stay in an average-fairing hotel & then came out in search of lunch. It wasn’t easy to get as it was nearly 3.30pm by then & most of the eateries were closed. Finally we did find a restaurant & it was offering meal plates at really cheap rates. So, after done fighting with hunger, we went to the traveling agents to book our journey to Bomdilla (our first stop in Arunachal). Majority of the agents were providing a package tour to Arunachal but as our budget wasn’t permitting that we decided to stick with our plan to just book an off-roader up till Bomdilla. The agent tried to plead with us to take a package trip, but we were quite adamant. Little did we realized back then that we were headed for disaster. Anyways, completing the bookings, we strolled through the city, enjoying its nice late-evening atmosphere, visiting the local markets, eateries, pubs etc.
At around 8.30 pm just when we were back in our hotel rooms, it started raining heavily. Actually before that the weather was really hot. Though one expectsAssam to be quite a cool place (that also in December) we were sweating profusely throughout the day! But the rain cooled down things a bit, but it continued to rain cats-n-dogs till late at night.

Contd. In Later Parts ……

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