I have been going on tour during April-May and explore new places. This has been my hobby since about 1970s. I can do this largely because I have a childhood friend from Germany who is also as much interested as I am in going to places. It is true that one cannot go alone exploring places. If you have a partner who has similar interest, it becomes more interesting and productive.
This year our direction was north east part of India. I have been going to Europe for the last three years continuously due to certain difficulties of my friend to make this long haul to India. This year I found her very much prepared for such a tedious journey. She agreed to come to India and we decided to go to a territory which South Indians do not prefer to visit. There were more reasons than one why I chose that area. First there aren’t any more places for us to visit in India. We have already covered the entire India from Danushkodi/Kanyakumari to Ladakh and from Diu Jaisalmeir and Amritsar upto Sikkim and Kalkatta.. We have visited Central India. The only area we had not visited was North East. Always in the South, people would raise their eye brows when anyone says that he would be going to North East. It is considered by a few as a problematic area. People in the South always think it is not safe to travel to that part of India. In fact earlier when we thought of going there, we were discouraged by our peers in Mangalore. But his time I said come what may, we should go there. I started planning my visit accordingly.
I wanted to club my North East visit with Bhutan. We have already traveled to Darjeeling, Sikkim and Nepal and hence we thought it would be a good idea to go to Buutan and see the natural panoramic places there and also see their culture which the Bhutanese Government has been jealously guarding to maintain its originality. But the policy of Buutanese Government is very discouraging so far as tourism is concerned. They have a peculiar policy. Perhaps may be in the interest of their country. That is, if any westerner wants to visit their State, the visitor should pay $350 a day to the state. It is like toll tax. If you want to enter Bhutan, first deposit this amount and then enter. It is checked at the border. No doubt it covers the expenses of the traveler but there are other expenses the visitor/traveler should meet. A person does not need so much of money for his daily need. My friend and I thought over it and found that it was not a friendly clause for a traveler and hence we decided to skip Bhutan. It was a disappointing decision but we had no other alternative but to give up Bhutan visit. Instead along with North East, we added Sunderbans in 24 Paraganas of West Bengal. So this year, we decided to head towards North-East of India.
Planning is most crucial to any travel and it is even more important for our trip to North East as one has to cruise to the other end of India. The map shows that Mangalore and Gauhauti in Assam are almost at two ends of this country. My friend from German would come only for 2 or three weeks and within that period one should visit as many places as possible. So when I looked up the air connectivity to North East, I found that there was one convenient flight from Bangalore to Gauhati which would take about 3 hours15 mts from Bangalore. One cannot forget the time required for reaching Bangalore from Mangalore. It is about an hour’s flight. But to reach Dubai from Mangalore, it takes only 2 ½ hrs. One can estimate the distance from Mangalore to Assam. It is 2301 kms.from Mangalore to Gauhati.
Being a place which we have been discouraged to visit, I decided to get my programme arranged through a travel agency. Therefore I made a thorough study of offers of various travel agents and ultimately I settled on one ravel agent who gave me a good offer for 6 days and five nights. The visits would include Kaziranga Wild Life Santuary, Chirapunji, Shillong and Gauhati. I was particular of visiting Kaziranga as that is a household name in this part of the world. Perhaps if I had settled for Manasa Wild Life Sanctuary, perhaps one could have seen more wild animals but that would not have given the same satisfaction as that of Kaziranga Wild life Sanctuary. I did not know that Kaziranga is closed for visitors after 9th May till September. Very rarely the ravel agents will tell you this. I got hat information from one travel agent when I was interacting with him about my visit, though he had included visit to Kaziranga.
Visiting only Assam/Meghalaya, Arunachal etc. may not be sufficient and hence I wanted to link one more place to this trip. What better place could I have thought of other than Sundarbans in 24 Paraganas of West Bengal. It is famous for its unique type of tigers and for mangroves. For that I contacted another agent from Sundrbans only and thus clubbed my visit to these two places.
I made study of all the airlines flying from Bangalore to North East.. My friend was to arrive at Bangalore BIA at around 2 a.m and I had to meet her there and then proceed for our onward journey. The first flight and the only direct flight to Gauhauti from Bangalore was at 7.45 am. To go to Sunderbans from Gauhauti, one has to go to Kalkatta from where the road journey would take about 4.30 hrs. One has to drive for about 3 hours, then cross a river in a boat and then proceed to Sunderbans. Thus our journey to Gauhati commenced when we boarded the plane at Bangalore International Airport for Gauhati.