June 14-18, 2015: Calcutta to Bangkok to Saipan

I was up about 6 on the morning of the 14th in Calcutta.  I went out to the street in front of my hotel for an egg and bread breakfast cooked by a vendor, one of several, right on the sidewalk.  After breakfast I took a short walk under a bright sun and a blue sky.  About 7:30 I left on a taxi to the airport through the relatively light traffic of a Sunday morning. 

My flight to Bangkok, on IndiGo at a cost of $123, took off at 11.  The sky was too hazy and cloudy to see much from the plane.  We landed in Bangkok about 3 after a two and a half hour flight.  From the airport I took the metro and then a taxi to the hotel in the Banglamphu neighborhood near the Chao Phraya River where I usually stay in Bangkok.  Rain started to fall as I arrived at the hotel.  I ate delicious Pad Thai for dinner about 5:30 from one of the many outdoor vendors in the neighborhood.  The rain stopped, though the air was still very humid.  I walked to Khao San Road and back.  Considerably fewer foreign tourists were on the streets than when I had been here the previous November.

I left the hotel about 7 the next morning and took the Chao Phraya river boat and then the metro to Bumrungrad Hospital for my annual physical and other medical and dental appointments.  Leaving the hospital, I walked north to a canal and took a canal boat west to the end of the line, and then walked from there back to my hotel. 

The next morning about 10 I hired a taxi to take me back to Bumrungrad for my ten year colonoscopy.  I took a taxi back to my hotel about 7 and then a van to the airport at 9. 

My Air China flight to Beijing, the first of three flights back to Saipan, left at 1:40 in the morning.  I slept on the flight, which arrived in Beijing just after 7 on a sunny morning.  It took me until 9 to sort out the transfer to my next flights.  I had hoped to find the NBA finals game on television somewhere, but didn't.  The airport had few places to eat, too.  I had expected the services at Beijing's modern airport to be more extensive.  It didn't seem very busy, either.  I had a long layover and spent the day reading newspapers and a book.  Rain fell in the afternoon and then the sky cleared. 

My Asiana flight to Incheon in Korea left at 4:15 in the afternoon, flying mostly over the sea.  It arrived at 6:45 and I left at 9:15 on another Asiana flight, a 747 full of Korean tourists, to Saipan.  We encountered lots of turbulence over southern South Korea and over the island of Kyushu in Japan. 

The plane landed in Saipan at 2 in the morning on the 18th.  My car was waiting at the airport and I drove home , arriving before 3 and going to bed shortly after. 

June 9-13, 2015: Cooch Behar and Calcutta

Well before dawn on the 9th, about 2:30 in the morning, I was awakened in my hotel room in Guwahati by heavy rain, thunder, and lightning.  More rain fell after I woke up for good after dawn and it was still sprinkling as I walked to the train station.  My 9:45 train, coming from the east, was delayed until 11.  More rain fell while I waited, but no rain fell during the train trip. 

The train crossed the Brahmaputra on the bridge west of Guwahati that I had seen from the hilltop above the Kamakhya temple the afternoon before.  The train continued a short distance to the north before turning west through the green countryside under a cloudy sky, though there was some sun in the afternoon.  Much of the countryside was flooded.  There seemed to be water everywhere.  The monsoon, which starts in late May or early June, hits the south of India and the northeast of India before other regions.  The temperature was only in the 80's, but the air was very humid.  The fast train made few stops and reached New Cooch Behar station about 4. 

I took a 15 minute tempo ride into Cooch Behar and was deposited near the huge palace, behind an impressive gate and fences enclosing not only the palace but also wide lawns and ponds, in the center of town.  I found a hotel and looked around town.  I walked back to the palace and watched the sun set behind it.  I walked to a government building with a statue of a former maharaja in front.  Across the street a bunch of kids, most wearing yellow swim caps, were being taught to swim in a tank.  Nearby a man was making a bombastic speech over a loudspeaker to a small crowd.  Incredible honking of horns resounded through the city streets, seemingly even more than usual in India.

During the night I was awakened about 1 by heavy rain, thunder, and lightning.  The lightning was very close.  I got up about 7 and soon after it rained heavily again, a long downpour with more thunder and lightning.   Quite an impressive performance.  I watched the third game of the NBA finals in my hotel room.  The rain finally stopped, though the sky remained very cloudy and the air very humid. 

About 10:30, after breakfast, I walked to the palace.  I first wandered through the extensive grounds, with big, wet lawns, ponds, and lots of flowers.  The two story, red and white, Italianate palace is certainly impressive.  The Maharaja of Cooch Behar, whose princely state was located just north of what is now the northwestern part of Bangladesh, completed this domed palace in 1887.  After a 1897 earthquake the ruined third floor was removed.  The palace is huge, about 400 feet long along the front by about 300 feet wide along the sides.  I walked all the way around it and then entered it just as it started to rain again.  Soon, it was raining fairly hard, but eventually it stopped.  The sky stayed very cloudy.

The palace is now a museum, with interesting exhibits on the people of north Bengal.  (Cooch Behar is just west of the Assam-West Bengal state border.)  Other rooms have portraits of maharajas and maharanis, paintings, and maps.  The billiard room is full of old furnishings.  The durbar room, under the dome, has the Cooch Behar state seal on the floor in pietra dura.  On the walls are interesting photos, including photos of tiger and rhino hunts.  I spent about three hours wandering around the palace and grounds.

From the palace I walked back to my hotel to get my backpack and then took a tempo to the train station.  My train arrived about 2:30, but then waited an hour before getting going again.  The carriages were crowded, and I didn't have a reserved seat, but some friendly guys let me wedge in on their seat, six of us on one bench.  When the train finally got going again at 3:30, it headed west under a cloudy sky through very green countryside, with tea gardens to be seen.  Again, there was lots of flooding.  The rivers we passed were all very full, including the wide Teesta, which flows down from Sikkim, just to the north, to join the Brahmaputra in Bangladesh (though the Indians use most of the water before it reaches Bangladesh, at least in the dry season).  Along the route I saw rice being grown, some green, some already yellow.  At 6 the train reached my destination, New Jalpaiguri, and I took a rickshaw to a nearby hotel.

The next morning at 8 I left on a train for Calcutta, 350 miles south.  I had traveled this train route only two years before, after spending time in Darjeeling and Sikkim, but at night.  This time I had a window seat in a chair car on the Kanchanjunga Express, named after the mountain, the world's third highest, on the Sikkim-Nepal border.  The train, starting in Guwahati, left New Jalpaiguri only ten minutes late, with a light rain falling.  The rain soon stopped, but the sky was cloudy all day. 

We passed tea estates at first and then somewhat monotonous flat agricultural land, very wet country, with lots of ponds and puddles.  It took the train almost four minutes to cross the swollen Ganges over the Farraka Barrage, with water rushing in torrents through most of the gates of the barrage.  The countryside was much drier south of the Ganges, with no puddles and a few ponds.  The monsoon was already in full force in north West Bengal, but not in the south.  Nearing Calcutta the countryside was wet again.  No rain fell, though there was much lightning to the south in a leaden sky.  I saw about 20 streaks of lightning from the train, an impressive display.

The sky was dark by 6:30 and soon after the train crossed the Hooghly over a long bridge.  The train had been on time, but once in Calcutta it moved very slowly.  For a whole half hour it didn't move at all.  Rain began to fall.  The train slowly crept to the station, finally arriving at 8:30, an hour late.  I was in a carriage at the back of the train, about 25 carriages from the locomotive, and had a long walk to the huge main hall of the station and the exit.  A massive crowd filled the station.  A light rain fell.  I read in the newspaper the next day that the rain had begun falling in Calcutta that day about 5, breaking a long heat spell. 

I couldn't get an auto rickshaw at the station.  Rain was still falling and there was massive confusion as train passengers tried to get transport from the station.  I read the next day in the newspaper that there had been a one day taxi strike, making all transport hard to find.  I tried finding the right bus to take me near the hotel where I usually stay in Calcutta, but gave up and started walking.  The rain stopped, but water continued to drip on Calcutta's often precarious sidewalks.  I reached the hotel at 9:45, but it was full, as I expected.  I tried several more and all were full.  Finally, I found a hotel with a room, but for 2500 rupees, almost $40.  At least it was air conditioned.  I checked in about 10:15 and went to a good restaurant where I usually eat in Calcutta for a late dinner.  I got to bed shortly before midnight.

Despite the expensive hotel, the television in my room didn't carry the Warriors' game the next morning.  I spent the morning in my air conditioned room, except for a short foray for breakfast, and then moved to the friendly hotel where I usually stay, where the rooms are 600 rupees, less than $10, a night.  The day was sunny, hot, and humid, but cooler than the weather Calcutta had had for several days during the heat wave broken by the storm. 

I read the newspapers in my hotel and then walked to the air conditioned Oxford Bookstore, an excellent bookstore.  Afterwards I walked around the area, passing the grand old Indian Museum and many dilapidated old colonial buildings.  I got a haircut.  It seemed a little strange seeing so many foreign tourists, after having seen so few in the northeast.  The night was hot, my hotel room cooled by a fan.

The next morning was sunny at first.  I read the newspapers and had breakfast and decided to take a walk downtown.  I always enjoy walking through downtown Calcutta, with its busy streets and sidewalks and a multitude of glorious colonial buildings, most now in a state of disrepair.  I started walking about 11 under a cloudy sky.  Rain soon began to fall, but only for about 20 minutes.  Thereafter, it was cloudy and humid.  I made my way to the center and stopped in at St. Andrew's Church.  I walked past the Writers Building and the Post Office. 

The sky darkened as I got to St. John's Church about 2.  A heavy downpour, with thunder, lasted for about 15 minutes, with light rain thereafter.  I sat under the overhang at the entrance to the church and enjoyed the cool air during the storm.  When the heavy rain stopped I wandered around the big church and its grounds and then started back to my hotel under an umbrella, getting there about 4:30.  I walked in the rain to the Oxford Bookstore and bought about $40 worth of books on India.  The rain continued until about nightfall.  The high temperature that day was about 95 degrees, but highs had been about 104 degrees before the rain broke the heat spell.  My hotel room felt much cooler that night.

June 5-8, 2015: Dimapur and Guwahati

In Imphal on the morning of the 5th I watched the first game of the NBA finals in my hotel room and then, at 11, left on a van bound for Dimapur in Nagaland, via Imphal and then west into the lowlands near the Assam border.  The van got a slow start, picking up other passengers in Imphal.  A misty rain fell at first, then the sun came out, but soon the sky was cloudy.  The day was hot but temperatures cooled as we ascended into the green hills to a little over 6000 feet before reaching Kohima, at about 5000 feet, about 3.  The mountaintops near Kohima were all clouded up. 

From Kohima the van headed west down to Dimapur, the last part of the descent through a beautiful narrow green valley just before the hot and humid plains.  My altimeter gave Dimapur's altitude as 700 feet.  We arrived just before dark and I searched for a hotel in the dark.  I thought I had found a good one and checked in.  The front desk clerk sang "Yes, Jesus Loves Me" to himself as he checked me in.  I had a miserable night there, with little sleep.  While the room looked good, the fan had no force at all and mosquitos swarmed in through the open, unscreened windows.  The next morning I had maybe a hundred mosquito bites.

I was up at 6:30 the next morning and couldn't find any day buses to Guwahati, so I bought an unreserved ticket on the train to Guwahati leaving at 7:30.  It cost all of 90 rupees, about $1.40, for the six hour journey west to Guwahati.  To my surprise the unreserved carriage at the front of the train had plenty of room.  A shy little boy and his family sat in front of me.  A friendly old man dressed all in white and with a cane sat next to me.  He read a religious book and kept trying to speak Hindi to me.  The carriage never got too crowded.

Under cloudy skies the train passed through green countryside, hilly in places.  Some rain fell.  I saw cattle, buffalo, and some large birds, painted storks I think.  I saw rice being planted in one spot.  The sky brightened a bit as we neared Guwahati through a very pretty hilly area.  I had a view of the Brahmaputra, looking flooded.  The train arrived in Guwahati, the capital of Assam with more than 800,000 people, about 1:30 and I found a hotel near the train station. 

About 3 I walked to the banks of the Brahmaputra, less than a mile north of the train station.  The river was very high and fast-moving, with wooded islands midstream.  I walked along it, passing two mansions with green lawns in front, now inhabited by the Chief Justice and an Associate Justice of the Guwahati High Court, the highest court not only in Assam, but also Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, and Mizoram.  The colonial era domed High Court Building itself is nearby, fronting a large tank ringed by a park with statues.  I ate dinner in a new modern outdoor and indoor dining facility in another little park which seemed to be frequented by Guwahati's middle classes.  The night was warm and humid.

The next morning I walked under a sunny sky to the Assam State Museum, getting there as it opened at 10.  The day was hot and I spent a good deal of it at the air conditioned museum, leaving after 4.  The museum was pretty good, with an excellent statuary collection and interesting tribal cultures displays.  One room, sponsored by an NGO, had newspaper articles, books, and films on women in northeast India, focusing in part on rape.  Leaving the museum, I walked around town a bit and to the river at sunset.  Not a breeze blew, even on the river, on a hot night. 

The next morning I watched the second game of  the NBA finals in my room from 5:30 to 8:30, had breakfast, and then caught a bus west through the city and along the Brahmaputra for about four miles, where I got off and took a van about two miles up a wooded hill to the Kamakhya temple near the top.  I arrived about 10:30  This temple is located at another one of the 51 spots where Sati's body parts fell to earth as Shiva did his dance of destruction.  I have been to several other of these spots, in Calcutta, in Kangra in Himachal Pradesh, and recently in Mizoram, plus probably some others.  Here it was her yoni, or vulva, that fell to earth, and so this temple is important for the sensual tantric worship of female spiritual power, or so I've read.  It certainly is an interesting place and I spent most of the rest of the day there. 

At the center is a long low temple building with a typical Assamese beehive shaped shikhara (tower) at one end, over the inner sanctum.  Interesting statues and bas reliefs adorn the temple and lots of colorful people, including sadhus, milled around.  Many of the people stood or sat in an enclosed walkway, like a long cage, waiting patiently in line to get to the inner sanctum.  Sacrificial baby goats, some with ribbons tied around the neck, were tied up near the back of the temple.  One white one was sprinkled with red powder.  As I wandered around the temple complex, I didn't see any sacrifices, though I did hear bleating and see one headless goat with its tail still flopping.  Its body was then hung up, skinned, and cut up.  I noticed that the number of goats slowly diminished over the morning and afternoon. 

I wandered all around and sat and watched here and there.  People and priests were friendly.  I think I may have seen one other foreign tourist.  I entered the dark rooms of the temple west of the inner sanctum, where some worshippers and their priests were conducting pujas.  In a tank off to the side of the temple some of the worshippers bathed.  The inner sanctuary was closed from 1 to 3, but people were still in the caged queue waiting for it to reopen.  About 2 I sat off to the side and ate a lunch of cookies and water. 

At 3 I paid 101 rupees, a little over a dollar and a half, to get into a faster queue to see the inner sanctum.  It still took 45 minutes and was slow and humid, though there were some fans. I walked along with a friendly family from Bombay.  Finally, we walked down a narrow stairway into the dark inner sanctum.  The yoni, or rather the representation of it (there are lots of yonis in temples, as there are lots of lingams), was wet and covered with flowers.  I was told to touch it, which I did, as did everyone, and I was told to drink the water in little pools on it, which I declined, though it seemed everyone else did.

Outside again, I wandered around a bit more.  I noticed several white pigeons colored pink on the exterior of the temple below the shikhara and near the statues and bas reliefs.  I also noticed several big, odd looking goats resting on the pavement near the temple.  They didn't seem destined for sacrifice, at least not yet. 

Sometime after 4 I walked up the road to the top of the hill, at about 1000 feet elevation, according to my altimeter, 800 feet higher than downtown Guwahati.  A shabby temple sat on the top, but the views of the Brahmaputra flowing just below the hill and to the east and west were great.  The hilltop also has great views of Guwahati just upriver and a big bridge over the Brahmaputra just downriver.  Mosquitoes were thick up on the hilltop.  I noticed them all over my feet.  I enjoyed the views and then walked back to the temple, where I caught a van and then a bus back to Guwahati.

May 28 - June 4, 2015: Manipur - Imphal, Moirang, Ukhrul, and Moreh

In Kohima on the morning of the 28th I watched the second half of the Warriors game, after the hotel's electricity was restored about 8, and went back to the war cemetery one more time about 9:30.  The sun was out, but not for long.  I looked around and talked with a Spaniard traveling on a bike until about 11, and then had another momo lunch before taking a bus to a chaotic sumo stand near Kohima's south end. 

At noon I left on a sumo heading south to the little town of Mao, just beyond the Nagaland-Manipur border.  The scenic drive wrapped around Mt. Japvo, 10,000 feet high, just south of Kohima.  We had great views over the green hills to the east.  The 20 mile trip took less than an hour.  From Mao, at about 5500 feet elevation, I soon left on another sumo heading 25 miles further south to the town of Senapati, at about 3200 feet.  On the way we passed rice terraces, at first planted on hillsides and later, nearing Senapati, in a narrow, almost flat valley just to the east of the road. 

In both Mao and Senapati I saw posters for the NPF (Naga People's Party), the dominant political party in Nagaland with a strong presence in northern Manipur, where many Nagas live.  In fact, some Nagas want an independent Greater Nagaland including not only the present state of Nagaland, but also portions of Manipur, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and Burma. 

No sumos were going from Senapati further south to Imphal, the Manipur state capital, apparently because they all had been hired for electioneering.  Elections for ADCs (autonomous district councils) in the minority areas in the hills were scheduled for a few days later.  About 3:30 I finally left with eight others crammed into an auto rickshaw for the final 35 miles to Imphal.  The rickshaw was slow and afforded poor views.  I could see the rice terraces in the narrow flat valley just to the east.  The valley expanded just before we reached Imphal, at about 2500 feet elevation in Manipur's central basin, ringed by hills.  The sun was shining, with some clouds in the sky.  I noticed the hills were much higher to the west than to the east.  About 5:15 we arrived in the sprawling, not particularly attractive city of Imphal, with about a quarter of a million people.  I checked into a relatively fancy hotel, with a room, after a discount, at 1370 rupees, almost $22, a night.

Manipur's dominant tribe is the Meithei, who look far more southeast Asian than Indian, but adopted Hinduism relatively recently, in the 18th century I think.  There are many other tribes, including the Naga, Kuki (apparently the same people as the Chin in Burma and the Mizo in Mizoram), Tangkhul, and Kabul.  Insurgencies have raged over the decades against India and the dominant Meitheis, and apparently even between Manipur's minority tribes.  I've read that the Nagas and Kukis fought against each other.  As recently as 2009 there were four hundred militancy-related deaths in Manipur and until just recently tourists, usually flying rather than driving to Imphal, were restricted to Imphal and nearby areas.  It was considered by far India's most dangerous northeastern state. 

I was glad to make it to Manipur, something I couldn't have counted on when I first started extensive travels in India in 2010.  Arriving in Manipur also meant that I now had been to all of India's 29 states, though Telangana, the newest state, formed out of Andhra Pradesh in 2014, wasn't yet a state when I was there.

About 7 the next morning I walked along wet streets but under sunny skies to Khwairamband, a huge market, both indoor and outdoor, run by 3000 Meithei women.  Almost all the vendors are women (I remember one man holding up a goose that was for sale when I was trying to take a photo of it), and very friendly.  I didn't see any other tourists there.  Fruit, vegetables, fish, and flowers were on sale, along with household items. fabric, pottery, and much else.  The flower sellers had heaps of flowers in front of them.  Some of the sellers were stringing flowers together into garlands.  The women selling flowers were particularly friendly, wanting me to include them in the photos I was taking of the flowers, which I was more than happy to do, and wanting to see the results.  They gave me some flowers, jasmine, champak, and a small marigold, and insisted that I wedge them behind my ears, which seemed to please other vendors as I walked through the market.  Many of the vendors asked me for photos.  The market spreads out through newly constructed market buildings, streets, and vacant lots.  I wandered around until about 9:30, when I returned to my hotel for the breakfast included in the room price.  The hotel breakfast was a little odd, with a chocolate flavored cereal served with hot milk, hard boiled eggs, potato wedges, fruit, and juice. 

After breakfast I walked to the Kangla, a huge fortified compound, the former palace and grounds of the maharajas of Manipur until British conquest in 1891.  Five Britons were beheaded in the Kangla in 1891, which prompted the British to retaliate.  The grounds are very pretty, with big lawns, including a polo field, ponds, and lots of trees and flowers.  Flame trees full of orange-red blossoms and other trees, some with yellow blossoms and others with blue-violet blossoms, add lots of color.  Almost all the buildings are new or restored.  They include small palace buildings, temples, and a few colonial bungalows, including the Slim Bungalow, the house of  Field Marshal Slim, the British commander in Imphal during the battle in 1944.  Until only about ten years before, the Assam Rifles were resident in the Kangla.  One pavilion, glassed in, contains a very long boat formerly paddled on nearby Loktak Lake.  Quite a few school children in groups were on the grounds on a hot and humid day.

I left the Kangla and walked to the very interesting Manipur State Museum, with weapons, jewelry, paintings of the Manipuri maharajas, mannequins of Manipuri warriors, two stuffed sloth bears, two stuffed leopards, a huge stuffed tiger, and much else.  The musical instrument section classified the instruments as chordophones (stringed), membranophones (drums), aerophones (wind), and idiophones (gongs, cymbals)!  Outside a 1962 Chevrolet Biscayne Impala was parked under a shelter.  A sign said it was the government car of the Lieutenant Governor and then the Governor from 1966 to 1984.  (Manipur had a Lieutenant Governor when it was a territory.  When it became a state in 1972, he was replaced by a Governor.)  I spent about two hours in the museum and left about 4.

I walked to the nearby Shaheed Minar, a modern monument in a little park next to a polo ground.  (Manipuris claim to have invented polo.)  The monument commemorates Manipuri resistance to the British on the site where the Manipuri generals who had executed the five Britons were themselves executed, by hanging, by the British in 1891.  I sat in the crowded little park for a while and later stopped by the women's market on the way back to my hotel.  The market was still very busy.  I watched the crowds and the vendors, especially the fish sellers.  A light rain began to fall.

The next morning I took a short walk through the women's market around 8.  The morning was sunny and already hot.  Fewer vendors were selling their wares, perhaps because it was a Saturday.  I went back to my hotel for breakfast (more chocolate cereal with hot milk) and to read the newspapers.

About 11 I took an auto rickshaw to the Imphal's war cemetery.  Unlike the war cemetery in Kohima, this one is not terraced, but flat, as Imphal is in the middle of a flat valley.  All the graves are in one big plot.  It is like the cemetery in Kohima in all other respects, with flowers at the headstones and several flowering trees,  It was hot there under the sun.  There are over 1600 graves, mostly British, but also including 220 Indian Christian soldiers, three Chinese soldiers, and 80 Commonwealth air force personnel.  One hundred forty graves contained unidentified bodies.  A white cross stood over the graves and a white block of stone was inscribed "Their name liveth forevermore." 

A plaque described the battle of Imphal and included a photo of British and Indian troops, some from Imphal and some from Kohima, meeting at Kilometer 109 on the Imphal-Kohima road in late June 1944.  Kohima had been besieged by the Japanese starting in late March 1944.  The British and Indian troops were encircled, but unlike in Kohima they had an airport and could receive supplies and reinforcements by air.  The plaque said the Japanese began their retreat in late May and ultimately 30,000 of their 85,000 troops were killed. 

I walked southeast from the war cemetery to another war cemetery, also maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and called the Indian Army War Cemetery.  It is similarly designed and maintained, with 820 graves of Indians and Africans.  A cenotaph lists the names of more than 860 Indian Hindus and Sikhs whose bodies had been cremated.  I read that the two separate cemeteries had been started during the battle.  There were fewer flowers planted at the headstones and the neighboring area wasn't as nice as that around the other war cemetery.  In fact, just outside the fence were a few ragged gravesites of local people.  No one but me was at the cemetery.  A plaque said that at the end of the war the Indian Army consisted of 2.5 million troops, including 34,500 British officers and 8300 Indian officers.  About 3 I took an auto rickshaw back to my hotel.

The sun was out the next morning as I took an auto rickshaw to the bus stand for Ukhrul, a town to the northeast in the hills.  No buses were going to Ukhrul because of the ADC elections the next day, so I took an auto rickshaw to the bus stand for Moirang.  I left on a bus for Moirang, less than 30 miles south of Imphal, after 11.  The route to Moirang is flat, passing the airport and eventually the western shore of Loktak Lake, a large lake at the southern end of Manipur's central basin.  High hills rise to the west.  I arrived about noon and got a decent hotel in that small town.   

I walked under the hot sun to the town's INA museum.  The INA (Indian National Army) was formed out of Indian Army prisoners of war (captured in Singapore, Malaya, and Burma) recruited by the Japanese during World War II to fight against Britain, ostensively for the independence of India.  It seems they were more of a propaganda effort than an important fighting force, though they did participate in the 1944 Japanese invasion of Manipur.  In April 1944 they raised their flag in Moirang, which is what the museum celebrates.  Although less than 50,000 Indians served in the INA, while 2.5 million served with the British in the Indian Army, it is the INA that modern India celebrates.  The museum itself is more about the INA's leader, Subhas Chandra Bose, a somewhat comical looking figure:  pudgy, with round horn rimmed glasses, but dressed in a khaki uniform. A statue of Bose stands outside the museum.  Inside are interesting artifacts, photographs, letters, and proclamations.  After I had looked around, the director of the museum invited me into his office for tea. 

From the museum I walked to the Thangjing temple, devoted to a pre-Hindu deity.  The temple, new and unfinished, was nothing special, but in front of it rose approximately 30 very high bamboo poles dangling colorful spiral pennants.  I looked around and watched the worshippers, one of which gave me some bananas.  Eventually I sat behind some older women, who sat all on one side, by seniority. Older men did the same on the other side. 

A guy sitting next to me, the son of one of the women, proposed to take me in his car to Sendra Island in Lake Loktak, with views out over the lake.  We left about 4 on the short drive, reaching Sendra via a causeway.  The island, looking like a hill over the lake, was full of people.  The views out over the lake, filled with clumps of vegetation, were great.  I saw a few boats being paddled on the lake, perhaps fishermen.  The sun, behind clouds, emitted visible rays of sunshine onto the lake. We drove to a bar on the causeway for beer and chicken and then drove back to the temple as the post-sunset sky was filled with red clouds. 

Darkness had fallen and the temple now was much more active, with dancing (a sort of marching dance) and music.  The dancers had great costumes.  This was the last day of a 41 day festival honoring the pre-Hindu god Thangjing.  A teenage guy helped me get close to take photos, through the dancers and musicians were rarely in any good light.  He also warned me when not to get too close!  Lots of candles were lit all around the temple grounds.  While I wandered around, two tourism officials spotted me (I was the only foreigner there) and took photos of me for some newspaper or tourist publication.  I was told the festival finale would be sometime after 11, but I left about 7.  It took almost a half hour to walk back to my hotel.  On the way I passed lots of candles that had been lit and set on the ground in places.  Back at the hotel I talked with a man, from Imphal I think, who was headed into the hills of southwestern Manipur the next day to serve as an election official.  He was an interesting guy and told me Hinduism had been introduced into Manipur only in the 18th century.

I didn't do much the next day after having had stomach troubles the night before.  I spent the day at the hotel, reading and relaxing.  The morning was sunny and hot, but in the afternoon the wind blew and rain fell, a welcome respite from the heat, before the sun came out again.

Before 8 the next morning I caught the bus coming through Moirang and heading to Imphal.  The sun was out as we headed north to Imphal, with good views of the hills to the west.  We arrived in Imphal about 9 and I took an auto rickshaw to the Ukhrul bus stand and about 9:30 left on a van for Ukhrul, about 50 miles away in the hills to the northeast.  Ukhrul is the first town Stillwell reached during his retreat from Burma in 1942.  The road was good in the valley, but much poorer as we rose into the hills.  Lots of military buses and other military vehicles that had been on election duty the day before passed us.  One vehicle had a manned machine gun on top.  The hills were not as scenic as I hoped. 

We reached Ukhrul, a dusty town on hilltops at about 6100 feet elevation, at about 12:30.  I checked into a nice hotel and looked around town.  The townspeople are mostly Naga and I saw lots of election posters for the NPF and independent Naga candidates.  I saw one poster of a Naga running under the banner of the BJP, India's ruling party.  I walked through town from hilltop to hilltop, with views out to the hills outside town, as far as a church with a yard full of many varieties of bright colored flowers.  As I looked around the pastor came over to say hello.  With the power out, I ate a candlelight dinner in a small restaurant where I was the only customer.  My room at the hotel had a Gideon Bible.

Under cloudy skies I left Ukhrul the next morning at 10:30 on a van bound for Imphal, arriving about 1.  By then it was sunny and warm.  I spent the afternoon doing errands, including buying a plane ticket from Calcutta to Bangkok from a friendly and helpful travel agent, from whom I later bought a train ticket from New Jalpaiguri to Calcutta. 

The next day was sunny all day.  I had decided to take a day trip to Moreh on the border with Burma, 70 miles southeast of Imphal.  I had hoped to cross via that border post from Burma to India earlier in the year, but obtaining a permit from the Burmese proved too difficult and expensive.  The van to Moreh left at 7:30.  The first half of the trip was flat, in the valley, but the second half was in the hills, rising to about 5000 feet elevation.  The paved road is in good condition and there were good, but hazy, views over the scenic green hills. 

On the way the van was stopped twice at army checkpoints, each time for about ten minutes, while soldiers fairly thoroughly checked the van.  They pulled out the driver seat and checked the spare tire.  They probed the van's doors and sides with thin metal wires. 

The day was hot and got hotter as we descended to Moreh, at only about 900 feet elevation, according to my altimeter.  We had good views over the plains of Burma to the east just before we reached Moreh, arriving there about 11.  I spent only about half an hour in that hot, ugly town.  The border is about two miles east of town. 

I headed back to Imphal in another van, with extensive vehicle checks again on the way back.  The next morning I read in the newspaper, the Imphal Free Press, that earlier on the morning I had traveled to Moreh an ambush had killed 17 soldiers and injured 16 on a road just a little south of the road we had traveled.  The fighting was reported to have started at 6 in the morning and to have lasted three or four hours.  Responsibility for the attack was claimed, the newspaper reported, by "the NSCN/GPRN, KYKL and the KCP," without explaining what those acronyms stood for.  I got back to Imphal about 3 and spent some more time at the women's market. 

May 22-27, 2015: Nagaland - Mokokchung and Kohima

In Mon on the 22nd I was up at 4:30 for an early breakfast before walking to the sumo stand at 5:30.  At 6:10 I left on a sumo bound for Mokokchung, to the southeast, via Sonari in Assam.  I had hoped to take a more direct route through the hills of Nagaland, but apparently it is faster to make the circuitous route through Assam rather than take the poor roads through Nagaland.  The ride was comfortable in an uncrowded sumo under skies alternately sunny and cloudy. 

Heading back northwest to Sonari, we passed the border about 8:30 and reached Sonari about 9.  After a meal break we started again at 9:30, heading southwest through Assam past lots of tea estates.  After the small town of Nazira we headed south, then west on narrow, very poor roads, past more tea estates, until we reached a good paved road just north of the state border.  A sign at the border gave the distance to Mokokchung as 90 kilometers (55 miles) and the distance to Kohima, the Nagaland state capital, as 240 kilometers (150 miles). 

From the border at about 500 feet elevation the sumo headed southeast into the hills of Nagaland.  The very good road eventually veered more to the southwest before reaching Mokokchung.  The road went up and down, rising as high as 4500 feet, passing many hilltop villages in the distance.  We had good views, though they were hazy, especially to the west. 

About 3:30 we reached Mokokchung, a hilly town set along several ridges and the shallow valleys in between, at about 4000 feet elevation at the town center.  I had a steep climb, about 300 feet, to a very nice hotel where I got a big room for 1000 rupees, about $16, a night. I walked back to the town center and walked around.  A huge modern church dominates the main intersection.  People were quite modernly, and fashionably, attired compared to Mon. 

Walking back to my hotel about 5, I met a man named Nakshi who told me he was a government "block officer" stationed in Mokokchung, but originally from Dimapur in southwest Nagaland in the lowlands right next to the Assam border.  He invited me into his house for tea and bananas.  I had a good dinner back at the hotel and afterwards a hot water bucket bath.  A hotel generator kept the electricity on. 

I had breakfast the next morning only after I'd watched the Cleveland vs. Atlanta NBA semifinal game on the television in my room.  About 8:30 I walked up a nearby hill higher than the hill my hotel was on.  On its peak I climbed an observation tower 50 feet high, with good views over the town and countryside. Below the tower lay a very long and thick log drum, with a slit in the middle.

About 9:30 a guy from the hotel who was getting off work took me to his village of Ungma on a hill three miles north of Mokochung.  I spent about four hours wandering around the pretty little village, much more modern than Longwa or the other villages I'd seen in the north of Nagaland.  The houses are of more modern style, with metal, not thatched, roofs.  I visited a modern style morung with interesting carvings on its exterior and a big slit log drum next to it.  In front of the morang stands a metal statue of three Naga warriors. 

From the village center I walked generally down through the village under sunny skies.  I passed a cemetery with pig sties next to it.  I watched some kids playing soccer, and playing it very well.  Many houses had flowers in their yards and flowers grew along the road.  I eventually made my way down to an open market at the base of the hill, next to an archway over the road welcoming visitors to Ungma, and took a bus back from there about 2.  I spent most of the rest of the afternoon at my hotel.  There really wasn't much to see in Mokokchung.

The next day was a Sunday, with no buses or sumos.  I spent most of the day at the hotel.  In the morning I watched the first half of the Warriors' game before the electricity went off.  It seems the hotel turns on its generator only at night.  Later in the day when the electricity was back on I watched news and bits of movies.  About 3:30 I took a walk to another hill in town with an observation tower, this one looking over the downtown and beyond.  The day had been alternately sunny and cloudy, but it was cloudy now.  I stayed up there a while enjoying the views.  I could see the village of Ungma atop its hill which I had visited the day before.  I got back to the hotel about 5:30. 

That night I watched the big cricket final of the IPL, the Indian Professional League, with the Mumbai Indians playing the Chennai Super Kings, starting at 8.  The night was rainy, with the electricity going off at times.  I turned the game off at 11, with Mumbai way ahead.  I read the next day they won by 41.  I've grown to enjoy cricket in India.  And I enjoyed the commercials.  Indians have an obsession with light skin, with beauty products for women such as a skin cream called Fair and Lovely.  During the cricket match there were commercials for skin creams for men:  one called Fair and Lovely Men Fairness Cream and another called Fair and Handsome.

I was up at 5 the next morning and at the bus station at 5:30.  Rain began to fall as I got there.  My bus for Kohima, about 95 miles south, left at 6 and was uncrowded.  The road at first was in good condition, perhaps as far as the town of Wokha, just after we passed a river at about 1100 feet elevation.  We made a half hour meal stop in Wokha about 9, with rain falling.  The road became much worse, full of potholes.  We traveled up and down through the hills, only getting as high as 4500 feet.  We had some sun, some clouds, some rain, and some fog.  We reached Kohima at 1:30, but the last mile, through heavy traffic in town, took more than half an hour.  I noticed a a sign for Billy Graham Road.  I got off the bus about 2 and, after some difficulty found a good, though expensive (for India), hotel, with a room, after a discount, for 1350 rupees (more than $21) a night. 

Kohima is a very hilly city, with an elevation of about 5000 feet, though, of course, with great variations around the city.  It has about 100,000 people spread out over its hills.  The busy center is on a saddle between two large hills.  This saddle is a pass through which the highway from Imphal in the state of Manipur, to the south, passes on its way to Dimapur on the plains to the west.  In 1944 during World War II the Japanese invaded India via Manipur and got as far as Kohima on their way to the plains of India.  For almost three months, starting in early April, a terrific battle raged, with something like 10,000 dead.  The British and Indians were besieged on Garrison Hill in Kohima for a couple of weeks before they were relieved by troops advancing from Dimapur.  It took weeks more to clear the Japanese from Kohima and the hills around Kohima, and then push them back into Manipur.  Troops advancing from Kohima and from Imphal, which had also been surrounded by the Japanese, finally met up in late June. 

About 3:30 I walked to Kohima's beautifully landscaped War Cemetery, laid out on terraces on Garrison Hill, its foot at a busy traffic intersection on the Imphal-Dimapur road.  I had time for only a brief look at it, as it closed at 4.  I wandered around nearby until about 5 under cloudy skies.

The next morning I was up at 6:30 for the Warriors' game.  I ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant during halftime.  After the game ended, after 9, I walked back to the cemetery and spent more than two hours there.  The sun was out at first, but then the sky clouded up.  The cemetery must have twenty or so terraces, up the sides of the hill, with rows of identically sized white tombstones on green lawns.  Bright flowers grow next to the tombstones and terrace walls.  The cemetery is impeccably maintained.  A large white cross stands at the low end of the cemetery, just above an intersection with a traffic cop in a small gazebo.  Nearby one plaque describes the course of the battle while another, a memorial plaque, is inscribed, "When you go home, tell them of us and say, For your tomorrow, we gave our today." 

The terraces hold the graves of more than 1420 soldiers, most of them British, but  also a few Australians and Canadians and more than 330 Indians.  At the top end is another white cross and the outline of a tennis court.  Some of the heaviest fighting during the siege took place here, at the site of the Deputy Commissioner's bungalow and tennis court, and the fighting here is sometimes called the Battle of the Tennis Court.  A small cherry tree grows nearby, commemorating a cherry tree that held a British sniper.  Just beyond the tennis court are a few more headstones and at the far end of the cemetery a large stone cenotaph inscribed with the names of 1900 Indian soldiers whose bodies were cremated. 

I ate a momo lunch about noon and then walked to the excellent State Museum, with clothes, jewelry, weapons, and much else.  I stayed inside until it closed at 3:30, and then spent some time on the grounds, with great views of the city, including the war cemetery, the saddle before it, and the hills all around.  The sky was still cloudy, and had been ever since it clouded over in mid-morning.  I took the bus back to near my hotel and spent some time in an internet café, somewhat rare in northeast India.

The next morning, a sunny morning, I walked to a small tank from the battle on display in a grove of cedars just off the road to Imphal.  It was labeled a "Lee Grant" tank, American made, with two guns protruding from the turret, one much larger than the other.  It had tumbled down the slope during fighting and been disabled, its occupants barely escaping from the Japanese. 

I walked up the slope of the hill, through the cedars, to a mostly residential neighborhood on Garrison Hill and to a small hotel in a wooden building said to be the Deputy Commissioner's bungalow.  I asked the folks working there if it was the same bungalow as the one from the battle, and they didn't know.  I doubt it would have survived the battle and it was quite a distance from the tennis court.  Perhaps it was the Deputy Commissioner's bungalow, but a new one built right after the war in a different location. It did look like a colonial residence and was furnished like one, with old furniture, Naga artifacts, and the like. The garden was full of flowers.  I wandered around inside and sat for a while on a sofa reading a 1926 book on the Nagas found on one of the bookshelves. 

I walked down the slope of the hill, taking a different route than the one I had come up, passing the gate leading to the Raj Bhavan, a big house now housing the state governor.  (State governors are appointed by the Prime Minister in Delhi and are largely, but not completely, ceremonial.  Chief ministers are the heads of state governments.)  I came to a view of the upper end of the cemetery, with the cenotaph and the big white cross visible through the trees.  A small gulch lay between where I was and the back of the cemetery. I made my way down and to lunch.  One the way I met two other foreign tourists, one German and one British, the first foreign tourists I had met since I was in Tawang, 37 days earlier.

After lunch I tried to find a share taxi to Khonoma, a village about 12 miles northwest of Kohima and the site of finally successful siege of the Angami Naga by the British in 1879, but I couldn't find one.  I also tried to find one to Kisama, six miles down the Imphal road, where there is a cultural center of some sort, but I was unsuccessful at that, too.  Instead, I spent a couple of more hours at the war cemetery looking around, at the headstones, flowers, and views.  The sky was now cloudy and a light rain fell at times. 

May 16-21, 2015: Nagaland - Mon and Longwa

On the 16th I headed from Dibrugarh to the state of Nagaland along the border with Burma.  Under a cloudy sky, though considerably brighter than the day before, I left on a small bus a little after 8:30 that headed east and then northeast to Sonari, about 30 miles away.  We passed tea estates and areas flooded by the rains.  Many houses were connected by bamboo bridges over water channels to the road running in front of them.  The rains had overflowed the channels, flooding the yards of the houses.  Fishing nets were strung in the channels. 

The bus reached Sonari about 10 and I had a three hour wait for a sumo heading to Mon in Nagaland, 40 miles southeast.  Sonari was sunny and humid.  The restaurant at the sumo stand looked particularly unappetizing, so I just bought some potato chips and spent the time reading and talking to some of the Naga guys around.  The sumo left about 1 and soon reached the state border at about 420 feet elevation, only about 50 feet more than at Sonari.  The terrain in Nagaland was flat at first, with views of hills in the distance.  The sky clouded up again.

Before we reached the hills we had to stop at an army checkpoint.  About 25 soldiers were strung out along the road, most with automatic rifles.  One soldier had a mortar and another a shoulder fired weapon.  While my passport was being checked and the details written down, I talked with a soldier from the far away state of Haryana, north of Delhi.  He said a fifteen year old ceasefire had been broken a month earlier by one of thirty insurgent groups "to gain attention" and that 12 soldiers had been killed, though "we killed some of them."

The Nagas, fearsome warriors and headhunters in the past, had never been ruled by Indians and only grudgingly accepted, after inflicting several defeats on the British, a light-handed British rule, aided by missionaries who converted them to Christianity.  After India's independence, they resisted Indian authority, often violently, and the Indian army acted with its usual lack of restraint.  There have been ceasefires over the years and it seems most, but certainly not all, Nagas accept being part of India.  The state was only open to tourism in 2000.  There are 20 different Naga tribes.

We climbed into the hills going very slowly on a terrible potholed road.  We climbed as high as 3200 feet under heavy clouds, and even fog in places, but no rain.  We passed houses with bamboo walls and thatched roofs, and some with metal roofs.  I saw Nagas along the road with baskets on their backs and carrying daos (a sort of machete). 

The sumo reached Mon, spread out over several hills at about 2300 feet in the town center and looking out over a valley below the town and to the south, at 4:30.  I had a hard time finding a hotel, searching along the hilly streets for about an hour.  Finally, a guy on a motorcycle gave me a ride to the very nice Helsa Cottage, where I got a room for 1000 rupees, about $16, a night.  The balcony in front of my room had a good view of part of the town and the valley beyond and below.  I think I was the only guest.  The family that ran the hotel was very friendly and fixed me a delicious chicken dinner in their little restaurant.  I dined alone, first by candlelight until the electricity came on after 7.

The next day was cloudy and gray all day, often with low clouds.  The hotel prepared a very good breakfast and I sat and stood on the hotel balcony in front of my room until about 10 watching clouds swirl around the town and the valley below and talking to an interesting guy from the village of Longwa on the border with Burma.  He works as a tourist guide when there are tourists in need of a guide and, though I didn't want to hire a guide, he was very helpful with suggestions on where to go and about Nagaland in general.  He told me "long" means "stone" and "wa" means "axe."  His name, he told me, is Long Hee, with "hee" meaning "precious."

About 10 I set off for a walk around town.  While the center has concrete buildings, most of the town is more like a large village, with bamboo walled houses with thatched roofs spread out over hills.  The people were very friendly as I wandered around.  One little girl liked posing for photos and her grandfather came out, having decided he wanted to be photographed, too.  He donned a traditional Naga vest over his shirt, a bead necklace, and a hat with fur and boar tusks on it.  Carrying an old rifle, he posed standing and sitting on a little stool.  His daughter-in-law spoke good English and told me she was 20 and that her three children were 6, 4, and 1.  Two other kids were in the earthen yard of their house.  After I had taken several photos of the grandfather and shown them to him, he took off his vest and shirt to show me his tattoos.  The family was very friendly.

I walked out into the countryside beyond the town a short way and spotted a few slash and burn fields on the green hillsides. Everything was very green. I walked back through town, with a little rain as I reached my hotel about 1:30.  I headed off on another walk about 3:30, walking to hilltops in town for the views, but low clouds hung everywhere.  It was a Sunday afternoon and I saw people leaving churches.  Some girls were wearing high heels. I got back to the hotel about 5 and had another good chicken dinner after dark.

I was up at 5:20 the next morning for an early breakfast before walking down to the sumo stand about 6:30, passing uniformed school children on the way.  At 7:45 I left on an old, cramped sumo headed southeast to the village of Longwa, about 25 miles away and right on the India-Burma border.  Lots of school kids and soldiers were on the town streets as we left.   I enjoyed the pretty drive up and down through the hills to Longwa, passing forest, cleared fields, and even some grasslands.  Twice we crossed rivers, one about three miles from Mon and the other about fifteen miles from Mon.  We rose to about 3000 feet elevation as we passed near the village of Tangnya about ten miles from Mon.  The village of Phumching, with about 4000 people, was at about 2500 feet and about 18 miles from Mon. 

Long before we arrived I could see Longwa on the crest of the ridge that is the border with Burma.  The sumo wound its way up the ridge, stopping at an army checkpost before the village.  We arrived about 10 and I was shown to Jeilei's Homestay in the concrete house of Jeilei and his wife and family.  Most of the houses in the village are made of wood and bamboo with thatched roofs.  I was shown my small, dark, but comfortable room and then sat by the fire in the kitchen, the biggest room in the house, with a concrete floor and a fire right on the floor. 

The village is strung out along the ridge that is the border between India and Burma, with almost all the houses on the Indian side.  There are great views in both directions, east to Burma and west to India.  From Longwa you can see six villages on hilltops to the west in India.  There is no border post, but there is a frequently used path that leads down into Burma.  The green hills to the east, in Burma, are covered with agricultural fields, and some houses, the fields tended by the people of Longwa.  I walked through the village along the paved road to its end just beyond the village.  Most of the houses in the village are large rectangles made of wood and bamboo with thatched roofs, all very picturesque.  A big, ugly concrete church stands in a big flat clearing on the ridge.  A sign said it was built in 2004, but it hasn't been kept in good shape, with many broken windows.  Wooden pews, more like benches, are scattered inside. 

I reached the end of the paved road (marked as Kilometer 42 (from Mon), ,just beyond the north end of the village, with a great view of Burma below.  I ate some peanuts and cookies.  A small army base, with a tower, clings to the ridge further north.  Many Nagas live in Burma and many of the Indian Naga insurgents retreat to Burma.  The Burmese Nagas, too, resent Burmese rule, but Burma has too many problems with many other of its minority people and pretty much leaves the Nagas alone. 

Rain fell starting at about 12:30 and lasting for about an hour, and I sheltered under the eaves of an empty building near the end of the road.  When the rain stopped, I headed back, first in fog and then under clouds.  I stopped to look at the church and then walked on to the king's house, on a flat clearing further south on the ridge.  His house is supposed to be half in India and half in Burma.  It is large and made of wood and bamboo, with a thatched roof.  Some of the thick log posts inside are carved, covered with figures.  The front room has a dirt floor and must take up about half the house.  In front of the wall that separates the front room from the rest of the house burned a fire, with the king and three other men sitting on small stools around it.  They invited me in to look around and showed me some necklaces of animal teeth and beads, wooden masks, carved boxes, and other items that they undoubtedly hoped I might buy. 

Over the fire hung, from the ceiling, an enormous dead vulture, recently killed, I was told, and now blackened by the fire's smoke.  It was quite gruesome.  On the walls hung a multitude of deer, buffalo, and mithun skulls.  I looked around and then sat by the fire until about 5.  One man was tying fur to a bamboo strip to make a hat.  Another man showed me a completed hat with fur and a white feather.  An old man came in with a blanket and slept in a corner near the fire.  The king, a young guy, left.  I sat watching the man working on the hat.  One of the men had an infant tied to his back.  They were quiet but very friendly, and I was served black tea.

I started back about 5 in a dense fog, which cleared about the time I reached the area near the homestay.  I could make out the disk of the setting sun through the clouds, and then the clouds cleared and the wind came up, revealing great views.  I watched the sun set over the hills in India.  Dusk was cold.  I can't remember but I think the elevation was around 4000 feet.  A lot of little kids around had bare feet. 

Soon men and women were arriving in droves up the path on the Burmese side, returning from a day's work in the fields. Many women had baskets on their backs full of firewood.  Some of the women were barefoot.  At least a couple of men had old rifles, while at least three had spears.  Many carried daos.  They came up the path to the paved road, with my homestay just down from the side of the road, and then trudged off to their houses.  I saw one old man with long, blackened teeth from some animal wedged through his pierced earlobes.

At the homestay I had a chicken dinner in the kitchen, prepared over the fire.  Before dinner, I watched a guy (not Jeilei) helping prepare the dinner.  He used a mortar to grind onions, ginger, chilis, and chicken intestines together.  A one legged dog wandered around, occasionally biting his fleas.  Several young men ate along with Jeelei, his wife, and me. The electricity was out and I went to bed before 9. 

I was up the next morning about 5:30, a sunny morning with few clouds.  I watched scores of villagers headed to the fields in Burma, walking down the muddy path with baskets on their backs, the straps over their foreheads.  I saw some uniformed kids heading to school, but it seemed more kids were heading down to the fields than to school.  I got a lot of strange looks from the folks heading down to the fields, some friendly.  Little kids seemed particularly intrigued by my hairy legs.  I had a less than thrilling chapatti and dhal breakfast and waited around the homestay and road overlooking it, with great views in both directions, for Jeilei to take me to a hill with a 1970 concrete boundary marker.  We left about 9:30, climbing about 400 feet to get to the top of the hill, a little south of the village.  The hill did have great views of Longwa and the green countryside.  The sky was clouding up.

I walked down and through the quiet village.  The king's house was deserted.  Near it, down the slope just a bit on the Burmese side was a gravesite under a roof.  One grave was that of the previous king, born in 1959 and died in February 2015.  He had become king as a child in 1972.  On display around the grave were some personal items of his, including some beaded items and a hat.  The grave next to his was of a man, perhaps his brother, born in 1960 and died in 2014. 

A rainstorm hit about 12:30, lasting for about an hour, and I waited it out inside a deserted morung, a traditional men's house, with carved pillars and a long slit drum inside.  During headhunting days the Nagas displayed their trophy heads in morungs.  After the rain stopped, I continued walking around the village and saw a man with a heavily tattooed face, the tattoos resembling a buffalo head, with horns.  After the sun reappeared I found a shady path along the Burmese side of the ridge, with great views over the green hills in Burma.  The sun stayed out for the rest of the afternoon.  Late in the afternoon I watched as well over a hundred men and women, maybe a couple of hundred of them, trudged up the path from the fields in Burma, some just before dark.  The sun set into a cloud about ten minutes to 6, and I stayed out on the road watching the villagers returning from the fields for another half hour. 

After dinner in the kitchen I took a welcome hot water bucket bath (the water heated over the fire in the kitchen) and then sat around the fire in the kitchen with Jeilei and seven others (perhaps relatives or workers in his fields, or both) until almost 10.  They drank black tea.  Jeilei and another guy worked on making drinking cups out of sections of bamboo about a foot high.

 The next morning was sunny, with some clouds.  I was up about 6:30 and watched uniformed school children heading to school and many more villagers heading down to the fields in Burma.  After eating another chapatti and dhal breakfast I saw an old, wiry, bare chested man with a fur hat, a basket on his back, and a dao. 

About 9 I took a walk, seeking the house of Wangchet the gunmaker.  I found it, with an old woman with a beaded necklace and a child in front.  I was invited in.  Wangchet was working on a gun next to the fire.  An old man with very only a very few black teeth sat nearby.  A rifle stock was held in a vise and Wangchet was using a saw and chisels to fit a metal trigger mechanism to it.  Another guy was boiling a strip of cloth permeated with opium in a big metal spoon.  I watched them both for a while, but never saw the opium preparer smoke it.  Someone led me up to the king's house.

Three or four old men sat inside by the fire preparing opium.  One of them, a skinny old guy with a tattooed face, was fantastically attired, with a fur hat, long black animal teeth lodged in holes in his pierced earlobes, a beaded necklace, and gaiters covering his shins and calves.  I sat down with them and watched them prepare and smoke the opium.  The opium was impregnated in strips of cloth, and small sections of the strips were cut off and then placed in a large metal spoon.  The spoon was heated over the fire to leach the opium from the cloth.  When sufficient had leached out, a little plate with a bit of grass was placed on the fire, and when the grass was heated it was placed in the spoon to soak up the liquid opium.  The opium-soaked grass was then placed in a bamboo pipe, that is, a section of bamboo probably a little less than a foot long and two or three inches in diameter.  Wedged into the side of the bamboo is a bowl made of wood, I think, where the opium-soaked grass is placed and lit with embers from the fire.  They were also drinking tea from bamboo cups.  They sat quietly, but were friendly, and let me take photos.  A large selection of handicrafts had been laid out on the dirt floor of the big room.  I sat and watched for about an hour and a half, and then walked back to Jeilei's.

I was back at Jeilei's at 11, the time he told me to be there for a walk he was going to take me on.  He arrived at 12:30.  We ate lunch, of sticky rice and tea, and then walked south of the village into hills, climbing about 500 feet to his jhum fields (fields prepared by slash and burn).  Corn, yams, and cardamom grew among tree stumps.  To reach the cardamom and to climb over the rail fences of other fields, we had to climb over log stairways, with notches in the logs for footing. A deserted hut sat in the middle of one jhum field, and we checked it out.  We passed woodcutters on the way, and in one of his fields two guys were pulling weeds.  At least one of them, I think, had been at dinner the night before.  A little above one of his jhum fields sat a big stack of stones.  He told me skulls were placed underneath, the trophy skulls that used to hang in morungs in the village. 

On the way back I stopped at another morung with interesting carvings and friendly little kids.  I walked back to the king's house, where three opium sodden men, including the king, sat around the fire inside.  I bought some necklaces and then walked to rocky view point, with great views over Burma, and then down to the head of the path coming from the Burmese agricultural fields.  The sky was cloudy now, but there was no rain.  I watched the villagers returning from the fields until about 6:15. 

I had a bony fish dinner.  After dinner a mechanic who had arrived from Mon prepared opium over the fire in the same manner as I had watched in the afternoon.  He and Jeilei smoked it.  The mechanic told me the cloth permeated with opium comes from Burma and sells in Mon for 800 rupees (less than $13) for a long strip, or 50 rupees (about 80 cents) for a small piece of the strip sufficient for one smoke.  He told me he smoked it for health.  I sat by the fire until after 10 and then went to bed.

A heavy rain, very loud on the metal roof of the homestay, woke me about 4 the next morning.  It rained off and on until about 7.  I watched school children heading for school and villagers heading to the fields in Burma in drippy weather, then had a dhal breakfast.  I bought a couple of necklaces from Jeilei and checked out his flintlock rifle hanging on the kitchen wall. 

About 10 I left on the sumo that had earlier arrived from Mon.  I think I might have stayed a day or two longer if the food had been better.  I had the window seat in front for the scenic trip back to Mon.  The sun was out when we left, but the sky clouded over on the way back.  Still, it was a beautiful trip.  I could still see Longwa on its ridge an hour after we had left. 

The sumo reached Mon at 12:15.  I had a long, steep walk up to the hotel where I had stayed before.  I met Long Hee there and we talked about Longwa.  He also explained to me a little about the confusing array of insurgent groups in Nagaland.  There is the NSCN(MI) and the NSCN(K) and the NSCN(U).  He wasn't sure what the acronym NSCN stood for (I later found out it stands for National Socialist Council of Nagaland), but he said the letters in parentheses stand for the names of the leaders, except for U which stands for "Unified.   He said the K faction is the one that had recently broken the ceasefire, but that it is now divided as it contains a pro-ceasefire faction.  I think there are other insurgent groups, but he said these are the three main ones in the Konyak area of Nagaland.  (Konyaks are one of the 20 Naga tribes, living in the north of Nagaland.) 

I asked the hotel manager if he could fix me one of his delicious breakfasts, though it was now early afternoon, and he did so.  I rested on the balcony in front of my room until after 4 and then took a walk around town under cloudy skies.  I noticed a derelict monument, though with some plastic flowers on it, commemorating victims (two men, I think) assassinated in 2005 by some NSCN faction.  On the monument are inscribed the words Herodotus recorded on the cenotaph at Thermopylae:  Go tell the Spartan, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie. 

I passed school children and a street side wooden booth with whole chickens hanging from its ceiling on my way to the small open air market in the town center.  In the market three old women with colorful beaded necklaces were selling dried, long-legged black frogs tied together in bunches.  They laughed at my photographing their frogs, but happily posed for photographs themselves and enjoyed seeing the photos.  I walked back to the balcony of my hotel where I listened in the dark to the town noise from below until the electricity came on at 7.  After another good dinner at that hotel I went to bed at 9.

May 13-15, 2015: Sibsagar

I left Tezu by van about 6:45 on the morning of the 13th under cloudy skies.  The van headed south on a paved road, crossed a long new bridge over a channel of the Lohit River, and then left the road and drove over sandy dirt tracks through grasslands to a ferry crossing at another, wider channel of the Lohit, arriving there about 7:30.  The ferry took 15 to 20 minutes to cross the fast moving river.  It motored first downriver and then upriver around a rocky, sandy island.  Just a bit upriver a long bridge, maybe three quarters of a mile long, was under construction. 

After a 20 minute meal stop, where I ate chana puri for breakfast, the van, about 8:30, headed south, then west on very poor roads to the small town of Chowkahm, and then southwest on a good paved road to the larger town of Namsai and the Arunachal Pradesh-Assam state border beyond.  In Assam we passed extensive tea estates, which had in fact begun to be seen in Arunachal Pradesh before crossing into Assam, and teeming, chaotic Indian towns along the highway.  A heavy rain started about 11, fifteen minutes or so before we reached Tinsukia, the van's destination.  The workers in the tea estates had umbrellas attached to the baskets on their backs.

In Tinsukia I waited in the van until the rain subsided and then grabbed my wet backpack from the roof and jumped on a nearby bus heading west to Dibrugarh, about 35 miles away on the south bank of the Brahmaputra.  The bus left at noon, with more rain and tea estates on the way to Dibrugarh.  I also saw lots of baby goats on the way.  Arriving in Dibrugarh about 1:30, with the rain now stopped, I hopped onto another bus heading to Sibsagar, about 45 miles south.  The bus was very slow, making lots of stops.  The sun came out, brightening the green landscape of tea estates and rice paddies.  We arrived in Sibsagar, with about 65,000 people, about 4 and I checked into a very nice hotel for 1000 rupees, about $16, a night.  Sibsagar is only about 30 miles east of Majuli Island in the Brahmaputra, where I had spent several days in early April, so I had almost completed a circuit around a long stretch of the Brahmaputra through Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.

For more than 600 years, from the 13th to 19th centuries, Sibsagar was the capital of the Ahom Dynasty that ruled Assam.  About 4:30 I walked to the temple complex in town just south of the large rectangular reservoir, built by an Ahom queen in 1734, that gives the city its name, derived from "waters of Shiva."  The towers rise south of the tank's southern bank, the tallest, Shivadol Mandir, in the middle, about 110 feet high.  It is said to be India's tallest Shiva temple.  The smaller temples on either side are dedicated to Vishnu and Durga. 

A group of Krishna devotees was singing and playing instruments in an open sided pavilion in front of the sanctuary under the tall tower.  Men played the instruments (two drummers, two cymbalists, and a violinist) while four women sang, one at a time.  One of the four singers had a harmonium hanging on a strap around her neck, and she played that, too.  They all, men and women, wore beautiful clothes.  The women sang with great emotion, waving their hands above their heads at times.  The performance was mesmerizing.  Occasionally, they danced, and often when one had finished singing she hugged some of the other singers or some of the women sitting in front of them.  I must have watched and listened to them for an hour or more.

I did walk into the dark, musty sanctuary under the tall tower.  Gods are carved in relief in places on the interior stone walls.  Near the center of the dark sanctuary, though it had electric lights, sat a priest next to a hole in the stone floor filled with flowers.  A chubby, bare chested guy came in and prayed next to the hole, spraying perfume around it and tossing flowers into it.  The frame of a large canopy stood over the hole and the whole center area of the sanctuary, and I noticed a pigeon resting on one of the metal cross poles.

I listened to the singers and musicians some more.  At about 6 a new group took the place of the earlier performers.  This group was all male, with a flutist in place of the violinist.  These singers, too, were very good.  I listened until about 6:30 and then left for a very good chicken and nan dinner in the restaurant of my hotel.

I relaxed the next morning at my hotel, reading newspapers and eating eggs and toast for breakfast.  About 10 I took a tempo about two and a half miles west to the royal Rang Ghar pavilion.  From this oval, two story pavilion Ahom monarchs watched buffalo and elephant fights.  I looked around inside and out, with some light rain falling.  The brick pavilion had interesting reliefs on its walls.  On the grounds a modern plaster statue depicted a buffalo fighting an elephant.  Another depicted a rhino fighting an unidentifiable, at least to me, animal.  The grounds were very green, with a big lawn, moss on the brick walls surrounding the compound, and beautiful flame trees.  As I left, baby goats, two of them just three weeks old, were being fed.

I walked past the nearby Golaghat, an Ahom stone ammunition dump not open to visitors, to the ruins of Talatal Ghar, a two story Ahom palace built by a mid-18th century Ahom king.  In front of the palace ruins a vendor was selling books and posters of the Ahom kings, Tai people who arrived from Yunnan in China in the 13th century and ruled Assam until 1826.  I wandered around the palace ruins, which were fairly interesting.  I met two Sikh tourists, one from nearby Jorhat and his uncle from Delhi, the first recognizable tourists I had met since I was in Tawang three and a half weeks earlier.  The sun was out and the air warm and humid, or as one of the Sikhs said, "sultry."

About 3 I took a tempo further west about six miles to Gaurisagar.  The folks in the tempo were friendly, especially two teenage girls heading home from school.  The sky clouded up again on the way.  In the little town of Gaurisagar I explored three temples from the 1720's similar to those in Sibsagar and also built next to a large tank.  They, too, had interesting bas reliefs.  While walking to Vishnudol, the third and largest of the three temples, I came across a beautifully attired eight year old girl practicing a traditional dance on the lawn of her house, accompanied by a drummer.  She was very good.  I watched, as did her proud mother and aunt. 

A guy on a motorcycle gave me a ride the short way along the edge of the tank to Vishnudol and we looked around, inside and out, as a light rain began to fall.  Again, it had interesting bas reliefs, both inside and out.  The motorcyclist then took me to a tea stop on the main road and then to a pavilion next door where the town was preparing to start a cultural presentation featuring Bihu dances.  Bihu is Assam's biggest traditional holiday, celebrated April 14-15. I don't know why they were doing it a month late.  I saw the eight year old girl again, preparing to perform with other girls in her dance group. 

I was the only foreigner there and was given a seat up front and introduced to several people.  The program started and I was introduced and brought up to the stage.  I was given a traditional Assamese white kerchief with red trimming, worn by men all over Assam, to put around my neck.  I made a short speech thanking them and saying how much I looked forward to seeing the performance and then was allowed to sit down again. 

The first performance was by about 15 boys, with dancing and singing and drumming.  Some girls joined them near the end.  After about half an hour, about 5:30, the guy who had brought me on his motorcycle told me I had better leave if I wanted to catch the last tempo back to Sibsagar.  A light rain was falling as the tempo left a little before 6, my fare of 15 rupees (about 25 cents) paid by the motorcyclist.  I got back to Sibsagar about 6:30 and had another good dinner.

I was up the next morning at 6:30.  A heavy rain was falling.  I read the newspapers and had breakfast.  The rain stopped before 10 and soon after 10 I walked to the bus station to see about buses.  None were leaving because of a strike, not by bus drivers but by tea workers seeking higher pay.  Most shops were shut, probably more for fear of damage than for solidarity with the tea workers. 

I walked to the temple complex and spent about three hours there, for a long time under dark, cloudy skies with some rain.  I wandered around all three temples, looking at the interesting bas reliefs and the temple activity and listening to the singers and musicians.  People were friendly.  No other tourists were around.  I walked back to my hotel as the sky brightened and spent part of the afternoon in an internet café.  Rain fell again. 

About 4 I walked back to the temple and stayed till about 6.  The same mesmerizing singers and musicians who had performed my first afternoon in Sibsagar were again performing, now before a bigger crowd.  I stood, and later sat, and watched and listened.  At times heavy rain fell, with thunder and lightning.

May 11-12, 2015: Pasighat and Tezu

The sky was cloudy on the morning of the 11th in Yingkiong when I left on an old, beat up sumo for Pasighat about 6:30.  I thought we would travel on the road along the winding Siang, as Pasighat is on the Siang, just before the river enters Assam and becomes the Brahmaputra.  Instead, we took a more direct route over poor roads, first heading uphill and southeast from Yingkiong, away from the river.  We passed through several Adi villages, including one named Simong, with the old folks sporting Moe Howard haircuts.  In fact, one of the men, wearing shorts and with a broken arm, in our sumo had that type of haircut. 

The sumo headed over the summit, between 4000 and 4500 feet in elevation, of the hills east of the Siang.  It then descended following the course of another river, the Yamna, flowing south to a confluence with the Siang.  Wooden fences lined the road in places as we passed fields and some houses, almost all with thatched roofs.  We crossed the river to its east bank at about 2100 feet elevation and passed by the  small town of Mariyang, about 30 miles from Yingkiong.  The road from Mariyang south along the river was unpleasant, the worst road yet in Arunachal Pradesh.  Under construction, it was very dusty, and our driver drove right behind another sumo raising clouds of dust rather than backing off a bit to avoid its dust. 

About 10 we crossed a tributary flowing into the Yamna and reached the small town of Siyat, not quite 15 miles from Mariyang, where we made a lunch stop for a little less than half an hour.  From Siyat it was less than 40 miles to Pasighat.  We continued south along that miserable, ugly road.  The road construction, with piles of dirt along the roadside, made views poor, though at places there was less construction.  We did get some good views of the fast moving whitewater Yamna.  The road was cut into a cliff just before we reached the Siang, at about 600 or 700 feet elevation.  The Yamna flows into the Siang just upriver, but we didn't see the confluence.

The road along the wide Siang was paved.  Jungle covered hills were on the opposite bank.  We reached flat terrain and then crossed the long bridge (765 meters I think, so about half a mile) over the Siang just three miles before Pasighat, where we arrived after 12:30.  The dusty town was hot and humid, at about 500 feet elevation.  I found a hotel with a somewhat interesting open market in front of it.  There wasn't much else to see in town and there was no electricity until 5. 

I was up before 5 the next morning for a sumo that left at 6 bound for Tezu to the east.  On the dashboard the sumo had statues of Hindu gods, two Christian crosses, and Tibetan prayer flags with Om Mani Padme Hum written on them in Tibetan, so I felt reasonably well protected unless Allah should feel slighted.  We again crossed the long bridge over the Siang and headed east on the wide paved road, now no longer along the Siang, which flows south from Pasighat.  Only about ten miles from the bridge the sumo turned off the paved road and traveled along much poorer dirt roads, even tracks.  One of the other passengers told me we were avoiding road work between Pasighat and Roing, a town more than half way from Pasighat to Tezu.

Under cloudy skies the sumo headed generally southeast through flat, green terrain and villages of thatched roofed houses.  We crossed streams, one by a wooden bridge that the driver had us walk over while he drove over it.  The flat countryside had some trees, but was mostly grass and scrub, all green.  A little after 8 we reached a wide river that we would have to take a small ferry across.  However, a guy was in the water about waist deep trying to repair the ferry's propeller.  The propeller repaired, the small ferry was loaded.  It had room for only two cars, driven onto the ferry over boards just wide enough for their wheels.  The cars sat atop the ferry's midsection with their front and back bumpers almost overhanging the gunwales.  Several motorcycles were also loaded, along with people, and the precariously loaded ferry took off for the other side.  It came back similarly loaded. 

We got our turn about 9, a five minute crossing, and then drove for about half an hour generally east to the wide Dibang River, flowing towards the Brahmaputra.  On its banks we made a 20 minute rice and pork lunch stop and then crossed the river by ferry about 10.  This ferry was a little larger than the previous one, though it also carried only  two cars, similarly loaded.  The ferry powered slowly upriver for about half an hour.  A little rain fell, but only briefly.  On the river we saw cows being loaded onto boats.  The river had many channels. 

After crossing the river the sumo headed further east on poor tracks for about half an hour until it reached a road heading north to Roing.  On the way to Roing the sumo stopped at an Arunachal Pradesh border post.  We had crossed the state line into Assam somewhere during our detour.  My permit had just expired, but the border guard either didn't notice or didn't care.  From the state border another 15 miles brought us to Roing, about noon.  From Roing the road southeast to Tezu, about 35 miles away, was in good condition, except at river crossings where it deteriorated to gravel among boulders.  We drove across on small bridges or through the shallow rivers next to substantial bridges being built. 

We arrived in Tezu about 1:30.  I wanted to go to Parasuramkund in the hills, about as far east as a foreigner is allowed to go in India, but there were no sumos.  Sumos to Parasuramkund for the next day had seats only in the far back, almost always very uncomfortable.  I checked into a hotel before a brief, but heavy, rainstorm.  I rested in my room and then took a late afternoon walk around town.  An officious policeman accosted me and insisted I register at the police station.  I walked through a residential section, all relatively modern, towards the Lohit River beyond the edge of town and then walked along some of its channels on soggy ground.  Back in the center I found a Tibetan restaurant and had momos for dinner,  The proprietor told me his father and grandfather had fled from Tibet and that there are 1500 Tibetans in a refugee camp outside town. 

May 6-10, 2015: Yingkiong and Tuting

From Aalo on the 6th I wanted to head north to Tuting on the Siang River (which is what the Brahmaputra is called in Arunachal Pradesh) not far from the border with Tibet.  (In Tibet the Siang is the called the Yarlung Tsangpo, Tibet's main river.)  Like Mechuka, Tuting has only recently been opened to foreign tourists.  It is a long trip from Aalo to Tuting, so I broke the trip at the town of Yingkiong, about 75 miles from Aalo and more than half way to Tuting.  The sumo for Yingkiong left at 11:30 on a warm, sunny day, with temperatures in the mid-80's.  I wondered if it was now sunny in Mechuka, too. 

The full sumo headed west from Aalo along the Yomgo River, although we didn't get many views of it once we passed the bridge I had walked to several days previously.  We did see the river again, now in a rocky gorge, as we crossed over it by a high bridge just before it flows into the Siang.  My altimeter showed the bridge to be at about 1000 feet elevation.  Long pedestrian suspension bridges crossed the Siang both above and below its confluence with the Yomgo.  The Siang at this spot is considerably below the road we traveled.  Here the river was wide and calm, with no whitewater. 

We drove up the west side of the Siang with great views of the river and its green canyon.  We passed through the town of Boleng, more than 25 miles from Aalo and about 2 reached a bridge over the Siang where the canyon of the Siang narrowed to a rock gorge, about 40 miles from Aalo.  The day had been sunny and warm, but dark clouds and thunder could be seen and heard to the north.  The wind starting blowing. 

We crossed the bridge and continued upriver, now on the east side of the river, and ran into a heavy downpour for about 15 minutes, with sprinkles thereafter.  On this side of the river, we had few views of it below, but could see extensive rice terraces on both sides of the river, maybe 200 feet or more above the river.  High mountains rise on either side of the river and I could see another road high above the river's west bank.  We passed, but didn't cross, another big bridge over the Siang about five miles from Yingkiong and reached the town after 4:30. 

Yingkiong is set high above the Siang, which can't be seen from the center.  My altimeter gave the elevation as about 1500 feet.  We had never been higher than 1800 feet on the route from Aalo.  Yongkiong, despite its location, is not a pretty town, with a roadside market and a few concrete buildings in its center.  A friendly young guy showed me to a hotel and a restaurant.  My backpack was again wet from being poorly covered on the roof. 

I looked around town a little before dark.  The people here are Adi.  The roadside market had various vegetables on sale, including mustard flowers and very long banana flowers.  Big mountains loomed across the river under an overcast sky.  The town seemed rather large and spread out, with few thatched roofs.  There wasn't much to see. 

I had a thukpa dinner in the company of a policeman from the Nocte tribe of Aruanchal Pradesh's Tirap District, bordering the state of Nagaland, but stationed in Yingkiong. He was very interesting and paid for my dinner without my knowing it before he left.  He said the Stillwell Road, built from India into Burma during World War II and which starts just north of Tirap, is now open for tourism, but only the very short portion in India.  The much longer portion in Burma is now abandoned, with no visitors allowed by the Burmese.  He also talked about headhunting and Nagaland.  The Nagas are former headhunters (and maybe the Nocte are, too) and some Nagas claim Tirap, along with several other areas, as part of a Greater Nagaland.

The sky was cloudy the next morning when my sumo left for Tuting about 6:30.  To my surprise, it traveled only five or ten minutes north and then dropped us off at a very long and narrow pedestrian suspension bridge across the wide Siang.  I walked across with my backpack while the bridge swayed back and forth.  The views upriver and downriver were great.  Wisps of clouds floated above the river. 

On the other side we transferred to another sumo and started north again about 7:30.  The drive was beautiful, with green hillsides towering above the river.  We climbed far above the river, reaching an elevation of about 3500 feet twice, both at villages.  About 11 we had a lunch stop, about the time the sun came out.  The road went up and down, but far above the river.  At the second village at about 3500 feet elevation, the river was more than 2000 feet below.  We traveled into several side valleys, with big streams running through them down to the Siang.  The road was very poor in places and the sky clouded over about 2.

About 3:15 we reached Tuting, about 90 miles from the suspension bridge.  I checked into a small hotel in the center of the spread out town, a quiet and pleasant town at an altitude of only about 1600 feet, which surprised me as Tuting is only about 20 miles from the border with Tibet.  But the mighty Siang cuts deeply into the mountains.  The town is a bit distant and above the river.  Big green hills surround it on all sides.  I caught a brief glimpse of some snowy peaks through the clouds.  I took a walk to the new airport under construction on a plateau above the river between the town and the river.  Walking back, I stopped to talk with a Tibetan born in Tuting.  His family came from just beyond the border in Tibet.  I had momos at a friendly hole-in-the-wall restaurant, the only one I found in town.  I took a cold water bucket bath and went to bed just after 8.  The power went off at 8:30, but later came back on.  My bed had no mosquito net, but then again there were no mosquitoes. 

I woke up the next morning about 4 and noticed the sky was already light.  I went back to sleep and woke up again about 5, with a dense fog covering everything.  I didn't get up until about 6.  It was still very foggy, but by 6:30 the rising sun had burned away all the fog.  Only a few clouds were in the sky.   From my hotel balcony I could see Buddhist and Donyi-Polo flags flying in town.  Tuting has both Memba and Adi people.  Children were playing below the hotel and I watched sumos leave, heading downriver. 

I ate breakfast and then about 8 walked up a little hill just beyond the town to a new gompa, belonging to the Nyingmapa sect of Tibetan Buddhism.  Inside the new main hall about 50 monks, almost all children, were chanting, led by a adult monk facing them, with a young adult or maybe a teenage monk sitting next to him in front of a microphone.  The young monks looked bored and I saw several yawns.  One had a prayer book open in front of him, the pages in Tibetan script.  I noticed the word "BOSS" written in pen on one page.  Two monks had telescopic horns maybe ten feet long.  Another two had two foot long Tibetan oboes.  Two more, one of which was a little kid, had conch shells.  Others had big drums.  The instruments were all put away before they finished, except the drums.  I watched the chanting monks for about 40 minutes, until they finished and all streamed out.

I looked around inside.  The hall had very interesting paintings on its walls and interesting ornaments.  The three big statues at the front of the hall had green, red, and blue lights on them.  One painting on the wall depicted a monk with dark glasses, but it didn't look like the Dalai Lama.  A few of the child monks filtered back into the main hall to look me over.  I saw them looking at my camera, so showed them some photos.  They didn't lock the hall until I left, about 9:30. 

I walked from the gompa past the airport trying to find a suspension bridge over the Siang to the village of Jide on the other side.  I got a little lost and ended up walking through the army camp near the airport.  A friendly soldier from Uttar Pradesh had another soldier bring me a glass of water and a glass of tea, and then gave me directions to the bridge.  Just before reaching the bridge I stopped at a gazebo and talked with a monk and others, all very friendly, who had just crossed the bridge.  The monk told me that Jide is mostly Adi while Tuting is both Memba and Adi.  He also told me he had helped paint the main hall in the gompa. 

I watched others cross the long, narrow, swaying suspension bridge, and then crossed it myself, with the Siang rapidly flowing below.  The bridge runs from a cliff on the Tuting side to the top of a huge boulder on the beach on the Jide side.  It is about 900 feet long, with the Jide end 60 feet lower than the Tuting end.  At its lowest point, the bridge is about 70 feet lower than the Tuting end.  Boys were playing on the beach and in the water on the Jide side.  I took the stairs down from the boulder to the flatter land, covered with rocks just above the beach, walked across it, and climbed up the cliff, via a steep path and stairs, to Jide, about 300 feet above the river.  Jide is a small village, with just a few wood and bamboo houses.

I walked through the quiet village to the fields beyond, walking generally north.  The Siang was to my left (west), but far enough away, and down, that I didn't see it, at least initially.  Further west, beyond the green hills west of Tuting I could see a snowy peak through the clouds.  I came across a friendly Adi family:  parents, two sons, and one daughter, working in the field in front of their house. The father was using a metal pole to turn up soil and his wife was picking up the clods of dirt and moving them to another part of the field.  Both wore rectangular bamboo wicker coverings that ran from head to waist to protect them from the sun.  I had never seen those before other than in museums.  I don't remember how they were attached to their bodies.  One of the sons spoke some English. I watched them for a while and then walked a short distance further and sat on a log in the shade of trees.  I ate two little packs of peanuts and drank a liter of water.  It was just past noon and the day was hot. 

I kept walking on the rutted dirt road, with absolutely no traffic, passing a few houses and not yet planted rice terraces.  The two boys from the field joined me for a while.  One told me that rice would be planted in June.  Butterflies fluttered across the road.  An old Adi man in a derelict house yelled at me and I asked the boys what he said.  They said he was drunk.  The road was often muddy and the sun was hot.  Stone walls lined it and there were many ponds and puddles.  I heard lots of frogs, but saw none.  I eventually was further north than Tuting gompa on the other bank and close enough to the Siang that I could see the raging river through the trees growing between the road and the river.  I crossed a bridge over a stream flowing into the Siang and then turned back, about 2:30, maybe two or three miles from Jide.  The road had been fairly level, rising a bit.

On the way back I passed the Adi family still working in their field and watched a friendly Adi man repairing a bamboo fence on a rise.  I reached Jide, still very quiet, about 3:45 and made my way down to the suspension bridge and crossed it.  There was quite a bit of foot traffic, so I lingered and took photos of folks crossing it.  I walked back to Tuting via the uncompleted airport.  I watched the sun set behind the hills about 4:30 and reached Tuting about 15 minutes later. 

I ordered dinner at the little restaurant, which I was told I had to do to get dinner, and then sat on the balcony of my hotel eating cookies and drinking about a liter of water while looking at the green hills to the east, still sunlit.  Towards 6 I noticed rain and thunder to the south, down the Siang River valley.  The sky had clouded up after sunset and I saw flashes of lightning and lightning bolts and heard thunder.  The wind came up, and then died down.  The rain never reached us.  I went to bed about 9, but didn't fall asleep until about 11.  My room was hot, in the 80's, and I needed a mosquito coil that night.  Before 11 I saw a gibbous moon rise, and I could see stars in the sky.

I was up about 5:30 the next morning.  It was foggy again, but quickly cleared.  The day was again sunny and hot.  About 7 I walked to the gompa.  In the main hall only about 20 or 25 child monks were chanting, led by a teenage monk in front clanging a wooden bell.  I listened and looked around until about 8 and then walked to an assemblage of prayer flags near the river.  Through the trees high above the bank I could see part of the road across the Siang I had walked the afternoon before. 

About 9 I walked to the suspension bridge and crossed it.  I walked down to the sandy bank of the Siang below the bridge.  The sand was very thick and the river water not too cold.  Looking up, I noticed that the suspension bridge had a definite tilt upriver.  On rocks were painted "408," "409," and "412," which I understood to be the altitude in meters and perhaps the high water mark of the river at times in the past.  Using those marks as a gauge, the river level was presently at about 405 meters, or about 1330 feet.  Three soldiers crossed the suspension bridge and walked down to join me on the beach.  They told me they were waiting for a helicopter and that two or three days of good weather was forecast. 

I walked downriver below the cliffs along the wide sandy and rocky expanse between the cliffs and the river to a large wooden raft moored to the bank with an old man either living or guarding it.  A mass of butterflies were on the muddy ground nearby.  I took a path up to the cliff and a rutted dirt road that became a path through scenic jungle with lots of ferns and eventually led to a decrepit suspension bridge over a very fast moving whitewater river flowing from the southeast.  Many of its floorboards were missing or broken.  I walked maybe a third of the way across, for the views, as I couldn't see much of the river from the thick jungle at the end of the bridge, and then retreated. 

From the bridge I followed another rutted dirt road that became a path through the jungle along the river, but inland from it with no views of it, until I reached an open area on a cliff above the river and near its confluence with the Siang.  I could see the confluence just downriver, with a big sand island in the river just before the river joins the Siang.  I sat on a log and ate some cookies.  The helicopter  flew by about 1:30.

I started back, but soon made my way through the trees to the rocky bank of the fast-moving stream and sat on a rock.  Upriver, fishing off rocks, stood a couple of men with long bamboo fishing poles.  Once again on the trail back, I could hear the river but not see it until I turned away from it.  I took some alternate paths and eventually made my way to Jide.  The little village was still very quiet, but I came across two little girls climbing over a rock wall.   One seemed momentarily startled after her descent when she saw me watching, but then carefully said, "What is your name?"  About 4 I crossed the suspension bridge and walked back to Tuting.  I sat on my balcony and drank lots of water.  No rain appeared to be falling downriver, at least not in sight. I had thukpa for dinner.  A few stars were out.

I was up after 5 the next morning.  There was no fog, but there were some low clouds that soon dispersed and there were high clouds, unlike the previous days.  I had breakfast and then left on a sumo for Yingkiong about 7, with a window seat on the left side, the side best for the views.  I enjoyed the beautiful journey under hazy and cloudy skies.  Soon after we left I could see the confluence of the rivers where I had been the afternoon before, more than 500 feet below the road.  On the trip south we crossed five big streams flowing into the Siang, each time driving deep into the side valleys the streams had carved.  I had great views of landslides and, of course, of the river and canyon all along.  The river was often 2000 feet or so below the road.  We made few stops other than a lunch stop about 11.  Rarely did the sumo travel faster than 15 miles per hour, usually 12 or 13.  We passed a cow-like animal called, I was told, a mithung and her calves. 

We reached the suspension bridge across the Siang upriver from Yingkiong about 2.  I again crossed the long, wobbly bridge over the Siang with my backpack and enjoyed the views upriver and downriver.  On the other side I took a very crowded auto rickshaw to Yingkiong, getting there about 2:30.  I checked into the same hotel as my previous visit and took a short walk around town.  The open market along the main road was just starting up.  I had an early momo dinner in the same friendly little restaurant as before and went to bed soon after 8, when the power went out.