INDIA: MONKS, TRIBES & RHINOS IV

Posted January 20, 2008

Today the plan was to get to Itanagar one way or the other. We considered bus, train and helicopter, but as we were told the pilot’s mood is temperamental, we decided a sleeper train would be the best way of getting there, despite the 9 hour journey. Train travel in India is often the best way of observing Indian life and the vast swathes of colourful land in this intensely diverse country.

The Arunachal Express surprisingly doesn’t go from Guwahati so we had to catch a train to Rangia (1 hour)… there were no seats in general class, so we ended up in the military carriage, and soon got chatting to a serviceman from Kanpur, who had been serving in Assam for the past few years.

We arrived into Rangia shortly after 1pm only to find out that the new scheduled time for the Arunachal Express was 7:15pm! Rangia is a small village with only a few stalls. We quickly located the only Punjabi restaurant opposite the station (Restaurant Sher-e-Punjab). After eating, we found out what travel writing was really about… sitting in the back of a simple village restaurant typing away on a laptop! We spent the next 3-4 hours finalising the structure of the website and putting together content. It was actually hard work! The site will hopefully be up in the next few weeks.

We hoped to get a sleeper, only to find out that there was only one sleeper carriage, instead of the normal three… the sleeper carriage was packed but 4 guys were great and offered to sit instead of sleep to accommodate us. So far everyone has been incredibly hospitable and been genuinely interested in our endeavours to make this region better known. We had the odd altercation with the ticket inspector, and were occasionally woken up by the sound of vendors yelling everything from ‘garam chai’ (hot tea) to ‘joota polish’ (shoe polish).

At around midnight some guys disembarked, so we were finally able to collapse on the hard slabs that were our beds for the remainder of the night. Neither of us got any real sleep and arrived at 4.30am at Harmuty train station, a small non-descript village close to Arunachal Pradesh… we waited there for an hour along with other passengers until the first sign of light and then trotted off with our luggage along with the others, as if on an early morning military exercise. It was fascinating to see the other side of this booming country… the sound of waking roosters and the silhouette of village huts and cows roaming the dusty streets. From the main road, we finally caught a shared jeep for the 10 minute trip to the Arunachal Pradesh border.

– Rahul

This blog is part of an Off-The-Beaten-Track Travel Diary. Click on the links below to navigate through this journey.