Here we are in Guwahati at last! The journey from Siliguri till here has been an adventure in itself. What could have been done in a straightforward fashion by taking a direct train or bus, was instead done in 2 truck and 3 bus rides. Did we stick to our budget, oh yes - till we got to Guwahati. And then, in one shot, we overshot the budget! But let’s start from the beginning to get a good perspective.
We took a train to Kolkota and then onwards to Siliguri. We spent that journey mostly doing nothing - other than waiting for the charging points (in the train) to get free so we could get our phones to stay alive. I did realize a few things though the traffic in Hyderabad isn’t the worst - when compared to that on the stretch from Howrah to Sealdah. Siliguri was heaven - the weather was such a relief after the dry heat of Hyderabad and the sticky humid weather while we passed Orissa and Kolkota.
And, we had a king’s treatment waiting for us too! Our host (via Couchsurfing) in Siliguri - Mr. Suvasish Paul, put us up at the Siliguri Club (a health club with gym, pool, squash and what not facilities) and even sent the manager Mr. Suman Dey to pick us up from the train station. After we had a royal breakfast and a nice lunch on top of it, we were got ready to tackle our next assignment - talk to the local press! Mr. Paul had called some of the local folks to the club so that they could learn about the start of our adventure. The list if TV Channels that interviewed us are: News Time, ANI, 24 Ghanta, E-TV and Aaj Kal. Tune into these channels. We might show up any time.
We got a lot of interviews done and then got flagged off by Mr. Rattan Singh who is a runner and won India a bronze at a previous Commonwealth Games summit. Got a feeling of starting a race seeing the flag off.
Our first ride was on a bike from Siliguri club to Highway by Suman and his friend. After saying our goodbyes and thanks, we were finally on our own and ready to try our hand at hitchhiking!
Now, the advice on the internet for Hitchhiking was pretty clear about one thing - stand at a location which will allow a vehicle to safely stop - but here we were on a 2 lane highway where 2 trucks can hardly go parallelly. After waiting for 15 minutes and some weird looks of the locals, we could convince one truck to pick us up. The Rice truck was heading from Siliguri to Birpada.
Since he could not drop us all the way to Guwahati, he put us down near a dhaba (roadside food place) where supposedly trucks heading towards Guwahati will stop. But, unfortunately that wasn’t the case. We had our dinner there and tried to ask for rides, which we could not convert. The glimpse of sensitivity of the place was visible to us. Two hitchhikers with huge backpacks made the people quite cagey and after some time the owner of the dhaba asked us what we were trying to do and where are we from. Once he knew that we are from South of India, he told us that all the truckers from the South stop at a hotel (Hotel Sangam) 3 km further down the highway and suggested us to try our luck there. With nothing left to do, we started to walk towards Hotel Sangam. The walk to the hotel in the pitch dark with torches on was a deed in itself.
After reaching Sangam hotel, the worries seemed unabated as the manager, who was visibly uncomfortable seeing us with our backpacks, did not give us a room to stay. We were told that he has to ask the police to give us a room as he is not sure who we were and where we are from. After dilly dallying for some time we saw a truck from AP (Andhra Pradesh - the state where we are from) we went and spoke to the driver. To our surprise we saw many truck drivers who are from AP. After speaking to them in our mother tongue and ensuring them that we are not to be scared of, they offered us to give a ride.
There was one more problem. The trucks have a crossing to do to at the Assam Border and to be allowed to pass into Assam, they have to stay there for 5-6 hours. We started at around 4 in the morning and reached Assam Border village of Srirampur at around 8 in the morning. After that we did the mistake of crossing the border by ourselves and taking a bus to Guwahati,
After we were politely asked who the hell we were by the security forces, we took a ticket to Bongaigaon as there were no direct buses to Guwahati. After couple of hours of traveling through the interiors of Assam’s sensitive area of Bodoland, we were pushed on to another bus which, as we were told, was traveling to Bongaigaon. After another couple of hours of grueling ride through the interiors, we reached the place we least wanted to be - Kokrajhar. We were told the previous day that there were some disturbances in that area and was told to avoid that place. Realising this, without wasting anytime, we boarded another bus which was not going to Bongaigaon but to Rangoi. A place much nearer to Guwahati. After 4 hours of what cannot be termed a decent travel, we reached Rangoi. We took a shared auto to Guwahati for which we had to spend in the auto for more than an hour.
The views were worthy of the effort we took. There is so much water in Assam. Water parallel to the road. All the houses had little culverts to reach on to the road. More like Kerala.
After 15 hours of grueling ride we reached the outskirts of Guwahati. The icing on the cake was that our host in Guwahati had to leave for Nagaland and we were left with no accommodation. But he helped us book a hotel room in the downtown area of silpukhuri. We had to shell out an amount which made a huge dent in out 150aDay budget.
What did we do after reaching the hotel room - slept like logs.