Friday 14 December 2012

Tribes and Tribulations

Seasons greetings

Its been so long now since I wrote a blog post im going to have to skim through quite a lot. I reckon it was Darjeeling which was over a month ago time is really flying by and soon it will be Christmas. Even out here I heard Slade for the first time yesterday made be a bit nostalgic. Sad to say I think it will be my first Christmas without Fairy Tale of New York gutted.

So I will get down to it I have now been to 4 of the 7 Tribal states and have one more to visit for which i don't need a special permit. I am currently staying with a family in Aizawl in Mizoram. He is the teacher of Ganesh a guy i met on the bus in Assam who invited me to come and visit. Unfortunately his family have literally no space in their house so i couldn't stay there instead he fixed me up with his teacher nearby. Its kind of been a recurring theme in Nagaland, Assam, Meghalaya i have either lived with or been doted on by some family who takes me under their wing. Its really amazing such nice people.

After Darjeeling I had a brief sojourn into Sikkim did a bit of walking in the amazing countryside and had my first experience of Diwali in India although Sikkim has quite a large Buddhist population so it was not nearly as intense as other places. I pretty much blitzed through Sikkim which was a bit of a shame but it was unavoidable at the time as my plan was to make it to Kolkatta for the cricket which has obviously not happened now. From Sikkim it was 26 hours on a bus to Assam then another 12 hours the next day onto the island of Majuli which is the biggest river island in India. The place is a spiritual centre for Hindus as well as being the most laid back and chilled place I think I have visited. I had gone there for a festival but the dates I had been told were wrong so I stayed for four days taking leisurely cycle rides to different Satras and then just lying under the palm trees watching the sunrise and sunset. Awesome stuff. Unfortunately the boat ride out is slightly less relaxing. I had to take the ferry four times in the end as I left and then came back for the correct days of the festival. It involves the single most unstable and overloaded ferry I have ever seen which was a bit of a nightmare. Especially the first one as I sat on the roof and the slightest movement kept edging me towards a dip in the river. Its the first time I have seen the locals look worried!! I have some photos and when I get some faster internet I will upload them.

From Majuli I took another backbreaking twelve hour bus ride to Nagaland. This was the main purpose of me going to the north east as this year was the first year you could visit as a solo traveler and not as part of a tour group. I arrived in Mon which is like the biggest frontier town ever having watched everyone carrying guns, machetes and spears in all the villages we passed through. I had heard stories about the nagas being dangerous and to watch out, but as ever the hospitality shown to the random English guy rocking up with nowhere to stay was second to none. As its winter here it gets dark so early around 4 so I always seem to arrive in the dark which sucks as it makes things so much harder. In Nagaland it was pretty much a permanent black out of electricity as well which didn't help. Anyway i got fixed up with a naga family who looked after me and sent their son out to drive me around the tribal villages on his motor bike. The villages still stay pretty traditional and in some of them the older men had face tattoos which signifies they took part in head hunting raids back in the day. A couple of the villages had some skulls and various traditional artefacts so it was pretty interesting. Every village has a different language so even for my guide it was a bit of a problem communicating. Its a really crazy place, pretty much no one had a job and the son who took me around kept bringing me back to his other house (away from his parents) which was a massive drinking den for the local guys. Nagaland is a dry state due to it being overtly christian but everyone guys, girls everyone drinks like a fish. So rather than getting the tax revenue all the money goes to the smugglers. On the way in the police had searched my bags but they obviously do a lousy job or just get bribed. Having rum thrust in your face at 9am having a few glasses then being driven on twisty roads by a guy who is drunk and also huffing opium was a little bit nerve racking but i got to see everything and I am still in one piece. Not wanting to push my luck any further I had to say my goodbyes and again experience the torture of a packed jeep ride for fourteen hours. My record so far is twenty people in a jeep which was impressive considering there are only 8 seats. I really don't remember anything like this last time i went traveling literally every place I have been going to is 12-14 hours so it takes a day to get over it. Fortunately I have one more 16 hour night bus then the blessed relief of train journeys. Cant wait!!

But even if the travel is bad the destinations are worth it. Hornbill festival is  newish creation intent on preserving the rich heritage of a rapidly changing population. It is also the one time when all the Naga tribes come together and it is 7 days of dancing, singing, eating all dressed up in the traditional clothes. It is by far the most photogenic festival I have seen and the three days I was there flew by just being entranced by everything and making the most of the availability of beef. The nagas eat everything which meant I got to try larvae for the first time. Lovely stuff. The war dances and even the wrestling competition was spectacular. One American guy had a go and got completely hammered into the ground which kind of dissuaded me. The festival takes part in Kohima the capital of Nagaland and the scene of one of the bloodiest battles of WWII. It is as far west as Japan made it in the entire war and kind of marked a turning point like el-Alamein for the Germans. The famous phrase 'when you go home tell them of us, for your tomorrow we gave our today' was written in blood on a rock in the centre of town at Garrison hill and has since been re-engraved by the war cemetery. There is also a museum of the battle which was just incredible especially the photos there was nothing left when the siege had ended. Definitely worth some time of Wikipedia if you don't know much about it.

Kohima doesn't have many hotels and what little they do have gets booked by tour groups months in advance so I just decided to turn up without even trying to book. I had to see the festival so even if I slept in a park it had to be done. Again luckily and completely by chance I stumbled into a restaurant rather than a hotel whilst looking for rooms and one of the guys Robin ran a girls hostel for a college and being Christmas everyone was away so I stayed instead. I can add this to my collection of random accommodations. I also made friends with the people at the restaurant who made me dinner every day and I didn't have to eat rice either. It also turned out Robin knew pretty much everyone their was to know in Kohima so we had all sorts of interesting experiences like hanging out with one of Nagalands biggest bands, getting priority for the Hornbill rock concert which has loads of bands from around India, as well as the last night when we had to leave because he initially thought some of his friends had been taken by insurgents but it later transpired they had robbed a petrol station. Nagaland was strange like that they are completely different to Indians and I would go as far as to say they despise Indians which is why they are fighting for and want independence. Yet because they are a collection of tribes their loyalty always goes back to the villages so the independence movement has collapsed and has now been divided up into different factions that fight each other rather than as a united force. They have so much potential there but nobody wants to invest because of the security situation and numerous other reasons. I loved it and have been made to promise I will go back, so next year hopefully I can get the opportunity as long as the permit situation doesn't change.

And from Nagaland it was onto Shillong which is a dump, then to Nongrhiat an unexpected wonder of a place at the bottom of a secluded valley just a few kms from Cherrapunjee famous for being the official wettest place on earth. I had heard it was nice and worth seeing, lonely planet had said it was worth a day trip and nothing more (a piece of advice lonely planet India especially for the North East is the biggest waste of space ever) but I stayed one night and there were lots of people who had stayed for weeks. Nongrhiat has an infectious atmosphere of complete tranquility and is the site of living root bridges where villagers have used the roots of trees, twisted them together and formed living bridges across these stunning jungle covered gorges. It took two hours to hike down and it was so nice and peaceful such a contrast to the noise and stress of all the towns. There was also a river for swimming and chilling out two minutes from the guesthouse, managed to get in some cliff diving as well. As always happens the one time I book something I want to change my plans but unfortunately I could only do the one night as there were no more buses to Aizawl for a week. Before I had to leave I managed to hike up to a promontory overlooking the fourth highest waterfall in the world and ride in the back of a truck over the Meghalayan moors. Seriously it looks exactly like Scotland except with tribal people, really spectacular stuff.

And now I am in Aizawl catching up with some jobs and eating lots. I finally managed to post a parcel here after spending nearly two days and enlisting a string of helpers in Shillong. No idea why but they wanted the parcel wrapped in cloth, stitched up and sealed in medieval fashion with wax. Not entirely sure if it will make it home as it is a pair of Naga traditional machetes know as Daos but we will see.

Not entirely sure how long I will be here my friend wants it to be a month but I want to head down to Bangladesh by the middle of next week. Who knows.

Anyway have a Merry Christmas if I don't write again before the 25th. Have a good one