Day 4 – Jakrem

The previous night we decided that we were going to Jakrem as none of us had ever seen a hot water spring. As usual, we left early in the morning and we left quite early as we had to come back to Shillong and then leave for Guwahati and we were told by Paarth’s parents that we better reach Guwahati before dark.

We started our journey, the driver had never gone to Jakrem before, though he is a regular in the Guwahati-Shillong route. So, he was not sure about the route to Jakrem. So, we had to stop at many places and ask for the route. The way again was full of scenic beauty and in this journey, we saw a lot of villages also, so we got to know more about the people of Meghalaya and the life there.

We reached the hot water spring and at first, we could not guess where the hot water was, because we saw a big stream of water flowing, which was of course not hot water. We then realized that the hot water was pipe-lined into a few bathrooms. We then found the source of the hot water, that was between 2 rocks and decided that we will directly jump into the source.

Jakrem

But we thought that it won’t be fun if we go into hot water first. So, we all jumped into the ice-cold water stream! For a few seconds, I could not feel anything, my whole body went numb. That was the coldest water that I had ventured into in my life. We played in the water for some time, by the way, we were taking bath after 4 days. Then we went to the hot water spring and jumped into the hot water there. Paarth could not bare the heat in the water and got a few burns on his body. We had a nice time there in Jakrem and left the place.

Hot water spring (bluish green water)

We then went to the guest house in Shillong and packed up all the things and loaded them into our Sumo. Then, we again went to the Police Bazaar as there were a few things that were to be exchanged, had lunch there and started for Guwahati. The journey was very calm as everybody fell asleep fast. When we were just about to leave Meghalaya, people started realizing the fact that Alcohol is really cheap there. And some people said they wanted to taste wine. So, we stopped near a wine shop and bought some red wine for people in college. There are a lot of wine shops near the Assam-Meghalaya border. One out of every 5 shops is definitely a wine shop!

We reached the army Cantt in Guwahati at around 8pm, had dinner and started planning for the next day in Guwahati.

Day 1 – Guwahati

It was raining in Guwahati. As soon as we reached Guwahati, there was an army truck waiting to take people to the cantonment from the railway station and we got into that truck. After a journey of around 1 hour, we reached the Narangi cantonment and we were taken to the place we were to stay. It was like a guest house, and was just next to the Officers’ Mess of EME. There were two rooms (rather appartments) which was booked by Parth’s dad for us. That is where we got the theme of our trip “The Kukri Wars” as somebody quoted a famous dialog of an infamous film “aadha kukri idhar, aadha kukri udhar”. It was a really nice place and everybody started to relax. Then a person from the Officers’ Mess came and told us to get ready and have breakfast which was kept in one of the rooms and as soon as he left, we all attacked the sandwiches and it was over within seconds.

outside the guest house

Parth’s dad came to see all of us and asked our plans. We decided to go to Umananda Island on the Brahmaputra and Fancy Bazaar, just next to the river bank near Umananda. We had our lunch

in the Mess and visited Parth’s house and met his mom, brother, grandfather and left for Umananda in the army truck that had brought us to the Cantonment. There is a rule that there will be 4 jawans in the truck apart from the driver and a navigator whenever the truck leaves the Cantonment area. So the four jawans with their SLR rifles were there in the truck with us, which kind of felt odd (for us, useless people). The navigator that day, turned out a kannu to our surprise as well!

Umananda island is supposedly at the narrowest part of the Brahmaputra, and even that seemed to be very far away! Then we understood the might of the Brahmaputra. We took a ferry and sat on top of it and enjoyed the ride to Umananda. It is one of the few places where Golden Langurs are found. We tried to click some snaps with them, but they refused to cooperate with us. There was also a temple on the island and we visited it and left Umananda.

We then went to Fancy Bazaar and some of us did some shopping there and that is where we recognized Vijay as the best bargainer among us. We returned back to our rooms in Narangi and then walked all the way to Parth’s house, which was atleast 3km from there. We had nice dinner, thanks to Parth’s mom and then returned back to our rooms, excited about the next day. We kept chatting for hours and with Patil’s jokes, we were up till atleast 2 in the morning.

in Umananda

in the truck

The SHILLONG trip

We guys probably made the best use of Durga Puja vacations out of the four years in college this time, as we visited Scotland of the East, SHILLONG.

First there was a lot of confusion when we decided to visit Shillong, about the no of people who would be interested and about the places to visit, the amount of money that would get spent there, etc. Then after we jotted down a plan, we got an overwhelming response and people whom we didn’t even expect started raising their hands to the plan.

After a lot of discussion about the maximum no of people that can go so that the trip is economical and not a burden on our part, we decided that only 9 of us were going: Jaideep, Tushar, Patil, Nishant, Santosh, Parth, Vijay, Alok and myself. I, at first booked the tickets online without knowing the fact that wait-listed e-tickets get canceled automatically on the day of the journey if it doesn’t get confirmed before the previous night! We came to know about this very late too, on 30th September and had to book Tatkal tickets for the 6th of October (which I did online again early in the morning on 1st Oct). Our original plan was for to leave on 5th. So we had to cancel the return tickets as well and booked it for the 11th.

We left for Burdwan from Durgapur on the 6th after a jobless and boring week. We guys called Durgapur Kabul and Burdwan Kandahar during that trip. We left Durgapur early and reached Burdwanat around 3. It was really hot there. We had 2 hours left for the train Saraighat Express to arrive. So we passed some time in the ATM (thanks to SBI). Then we went to a sweet shop nearby and sat there for more than 1 hour and ate very little. The shopkeeper got really pissed of and he went to the extent of switching off the fan. So we had to move out of the shop as well. Then we came to the station and waited on our platform before the train finally arrived at around 5pm.

The train journey to Guwahati was a very short one as compared to the long 36-hour journeys in Howrah-Yeshwantpur Experss that I am used to. When we were nearing Guwahati, we witnessed some beautiful scenery and we imagined the next few days to come, which made us even more eager to visit our destination of the trip.