Hitchhiking in India

Adventures in a Train and Journey to Aizawl

The journey from Agartala to Aizawl in Mizoram was not a direct one.  We had to visit one of the main attractions of Tripura on the way – Unakoti. Part of the journey is described in this post but here is the detailed info –

We started from Agartala early in the morning and took the first train to the Station Kumarghat. We were relieved at the idea of boarding a train as we were totally got sick of buses (sitting in the last seats might be the culprit) 

After the initial curious looks and questions from the local travelers, we somehow got ourselves acquainted with them. One most common response that we got from locals throughout our Tripura trip when we told that we were tourists is that there is nothing to see in Tripura and inturn they come to Hyderabad. Perceptions, may be. 

One thing that we learnt during our travels is that no matter how extensive is your research on your destination, a local always knows the best. It was again proved when we reached Kailasher from Kumarghat. A local showed a small eatout tucked away in a corner where the food was really delicious. After the breakfast cum lunch cum dinner (we had only one meal that day) we started to find some means of transport to Unakoti. Asked a couple of Auto-wallas who seeing our backpacks demanded exorbitant prices from us. Unable to bargain, we moved along to another place. We saw a shop owner who could speak hindi and asked him the cheapest way to reach Uakoti. A Cab driver came along from the tax stand and asked a price much lesser than the autos. After confirming that the price was modest and realizing that we had no other option, we agreed to go along with him.

Unakoti was an experience in itself. The sculptures of Lord Shiva can’t be described in words. It’s a not-to-miss place in Tripura. But it’s not a place for people with Knee pains or any other kind of Arthritis. The steps are very steep and so many that we are literally wet after reaching the top. I had remove my T-shirt and travel rest of my journey just like that to get back to normal self. After Unakoti, we got the Dharmanagar Railway station to catch a train to Silchar. As usual in these parts of the country, the train was delayed by three hours. We had nothing else to do but put on the geeky avatars on and open the Net book and start blogging. The result – Lots more Curious looks, puzzled faces and questions from some who were dare enough to do so.

The train journey from Dharmanagar to Silchar, as we found out later, was one with an adventure as well. To start with, there were no lights in the train. For every 10 minutes, the security would come with flash lights and checking if anything was suspicious. Every station the train stops, the cops shout to keep the doors closed from inside. Midst all the action, there were things happening in the same compartment as ours, which happen in dark places – prostitution. Then things happened which are a natural extension. Cops came raiding, tried to bully every one in the compartment. Luckily there was a CRPF guy sitting before us and he could somehow tell the cop that we are not part of the racket. Meanwhile Ajay was sound asleep and was no clue of whats going on.

We got down in Silchar around midnight and first thing we did was to run to the Waiting Room to find place to sleep. The scenes from In Pursuit of happiness were flashing in my mind as we were scrambling for place to sleep for the night. Being inexperienced in these matters, we ended up with no place and had to sleep in the chairs. But that was fine with us.

Next morning we started immediately by 5:00 in the morning and went to the Taxi Stand where we can catch a taxi to Aizawl. As usual ,we got the last seats even in the Tata Sumo and after spending a taxing 7 hours in the Sumo, we reached Aizawl. 

More Pictures from Tripura

The Grandeur in itself - Ujjayanta Palace

Another of the Royal Palace cum State Assembly

A typical village street - I loved the ambience of the villages in Tripura more than the city of Agartala

Fishes outside the Ujjayanta Palace. Loved the Hustle bustle of the fish market

Boats to go to Neer Mahal 

The inner courtyards of Neer Mahal

The famous Mata Bari/ Tripura Sundari Temple

Kamalasagar - the lake that has three sides Bangladesh and one side India…a surreal experiece

The India - Bangladesh Border - two countries separated just by a barb wire

Splendid Sculptures from Unakoti

Traveling in Tripura

I can describe our travels in Tripura in two words - We sweated. Oh, you want more than that - We sweated, A Lot.

Of course, you guys want more that. Tripura has been a complete change from Meghalaya - the weather, dominant culture, everything here has been very different. The first sentence gave you a fair indication of how the weather here is - it’s humid, very humid. And for both of us, it’s been very hard to cope here. We’re used to the dry heat of Hyderabad and humidity is just unbearable. Anyway, enough about the weather. There are other things different about Tripura too. There are a lot of Bengalis here – it doesn’t feel like we are in the north east at all! That was quite a surprise for us. Apparently, there are a lot of people who crossed over (illegally) from the Bangladesh border and settled down here. The numbers have come down after the Indian army built a fence at the border. Another contrasting feature of Tripura is that the elevation above sea level is very less and the region is mostly flat (there are some hilly places in north Tripura). However, there still are lots of trees everywhere and lots of lakes around. Meaning nice views wherever you go.

Our first stop on reaching Agartala (the state capital) was G.B Bazar where our host lives. Got out of our stinking clothes and cleaned up after our marathon bus ride. It was already afternoon, so we didn’t intend to do much that day. Went to the Ujjayanta palace in the evening and whiled our evening away. It has been some time since I sat in a park in peace and saw people coming just to spend an evening there – instead of running, walking, etc – reminded me of my childhood days actually. This former palace now houses the Tripura state assembly too, so the entrance is restricted till evening 5pm. Unfortunately, the building was being renovated at the time we visited and so wasn’t a great sight to see. Inder still managed to get a great shot of the palace link.

We had big plans for our second day in Agartala – we would try to cover the Neermahal palace, Tripura Sundari temple, Kamala sagar lake and the Sipahijala wildlife sanctuary. All these places were closer than 55km from Agartala, but with our budget constraints, we had to take public transport and that takes a lot of time.

We first went to Neermahal – a palace in the midst of a lake. You reach the lake after a short walk from a town called Melaghar. The walk was enchanting – just 10m from a busy roadway, the street transformed into an idyllic village scene with palm and coconut trees, bamboo fences and paddy spread on the road. The local fishermen’s society operates a boat service to the palace but they needed 10 passengers to take the boat out. While we were waiting for other tourists to arrive, we made small talk with a soldier from CRPF whose team had come here for an outing. There a lot of birds resting on the water hyacinth on the short boat ride, although our lack of any ornithological intelligence meant all we could tell was the colors of the birds. The palace itself isn’t much to speak about – it is empty and not maintained in a great shape. Our next destination was the Kali or Tripura Sundari temple near Udaipur. This temple is one of the 51 shakti pithas and the idol here was installed in 1501. Since it was a Sunday, there was an animal sacrifice ritual going on as well. The sudden rain (which provided us relief from the sweltering heat) did not dampen the spirit of devotees in the temple at all! After spending a little while in the temple, we proceeded to Udaipur bus stand so that we could go to our most anticipated destination – Kamala sagar lake. This is an artificial lake, right on the Indian border with Bangladesh. To get to the lake, we had to first get down at the highway and take another transport to the lake. As with all of our travels in Tripura, this small journey was more beautiful than the destination itself. It was the first time either of us had visited any of India’s borders, living in the South of India means we’re quite far from the land borders. It was pretty exciting to finally be at one, but also funny that borders are such insignificant places – all you have is a fence and some soldiers. Well, borders are built by men, what else would you expect?

One wing of Neermahal palace

You have row boats too at Neermahal

The Tripura Sundari temple, Udaipur

It was already dark and we did not have any more time to visit the Sipahijala wildlife sanctuary that day. Instead, we put it on our schedule for the next day and spent our entire day lazing in the canteen there. The wildlife sanctuary is huge - the distance from the gate to the zoo, canteen, deer park and other attractions is about 5km! Needless to say, taking an auto till there was going to blow a big hole in our budget and so we walked the entire distance in the sun.

Dancing elephants in the sanctuary

The next day, it was time to say goodbye to Agartala. We thanked our host and started on our to Unakoti, which is famous for its rock cut sculptures. Getting there wasn’t easy – it meant we had to take a passenger train to Kumarghat, take a shared transport to Kailasher and then engage a taxi to Unakoti (which totally blew our budget for the day!). The sculptures were really beautiful – and to think that somebody would engrave them in such a difficult location – on the rocks in a valley – added to their mystique. Apparently the number of sculptures there is one less than one crore (10 million) and hence the name Unakoti (koti = crore).

The valleys at Unakoti

Two stage waterfall - if there is water. Unakoti

Since we had planned to get to Aizawl, Mizoram next we went on to Dharmanagar from Unakoti where we waited a couple of hours for the passenger train which would take us to Silchar. The train journey was a story in itself – no lights, 120km in 6hrs and other miscellaneous events. We had to spend the night at the waiting room in the railway station before getting started on our way to Aizawl.

Notes on Tripura –

• Unlike in Shillong, we couldn’t find a cheap Bengali food joint (until the last day) and had to manage with paranthas most of the time in Agartala.
• Although public transport is much cheaper in Agartala than in Shillong, we could not walk our way around the town much because of the extremely enervating weather.
• We used every possible transport available in Tripura – mini bus, auto rickshaw, cycle rickshaw, big auto rickshaw, jeep, sumo and even a train.
• Finally bought some Litchis.

Pictures from Tripura

Resplendent Ujjayanta palace - Agartala

Neermahal

All that stops you from crossing over to Bangladesh (border near Kamala Sagar lake)

Rock cut sculptures (Unakoti)

A day of the longest bus ride..yet

We were falling in love with Shillong and the beautiful girls there, but then we realized that the one thing that stays constant in a traveler’s life is change. We stayed 4 days and 4 nights in Shillong and covered almost all the city on foot and got used to the city so much that we were even able to guide routes to new people :) The only disappointment in the Shillong stay is that we couldn’t visit couple of places partly due to the weather constraints and partly the budget. The Cherrapunjee visit was a dampner of sorts. Though we were happy that we got the taste of the wettest place, the mist made the visibility zero and so were our chances of savoring the beautiful Waterfalls and picture perfect Sceneries.

The journey to Agartala from Shillong, though just 450 KM apart, is a slow 18 hour ride. Most of the journey is on the dangerous Jantia hill stretch, so we couldn’t risk asking truck drivers for rides. So, we did the next best thing, took a bus. We were told that it takes 18 hours to reach Agartala from Shillong and adding to the woes, we had the last seats possible on a bus - seats 40 and 41 on a 39 seater bus (don’t ask me how they have 40 , 41 on a 39 seater). Little did we knew that this was the least of our woes and the journey would end up much more than 18 hours.

After bidding farewell to our new found friends, we started to Agartala. The bus was already late by couple of hours. Meanwhile we had a nice little chat with another new found acquaintance who was a local. He, in his state of inebriation, narrated his perception of how Meghalaya should not be a part of the Indian Union (which in fact was not the only one we heard till now in this part of the country). The bus started around 19:00 and we were to stop in Agartala next day afternoon. After 3 days of walking and touring, we just couldn’t stop doze off the moment the bus started. I was sitting by the Window and Ajay to the aisle and to make the matters worse, i had the bumper of water trickling down on me from bus top. The view of the Shillong city in the night was spell binding. There were thunders in the sky continuously. I tried to capture the city with my camera and you know what will be the result of a picture taken with high exposure, from the last seat of a bumpy bus ride - here it is 

Next morning we woke to the news that there was a landslide and it might take some very long time to clean it up. We had no water, no food, it was unbearably humid and were sweating like a sieve. The drivers blocked the road on both sides not making it possible for the other side trucks to go and it made matters worse. 

The bus took off after some 10 hours after stopping and we laid like logs in the bus totally exhausted until he reached a hotel sometime in the evening. After stuffing ourselves with food like someone who hasn’t been eaten for days, we set off again only to stop near Kumarghat, in North Tripura. The bus stops here as all the buses are allowed inside the Tripura forests only during specific times of the day. Lucky for us we could arrange our accommodation in Agartala from there (thats a different post!) 

The ghats of the Tripura were indeed very scenic. But you have CRPF and TSR men with their Guns on every turn in the forests. After 41 hours of grueling Bus ride, we reached Agartala. May be because of the Shillong effect or we were totally exhausted by the bus ride, I felt the City of Agartala a just another Indian City unlike Shillong which has it’s own culture and character.

Almost forgot to tell, We got free accommodation even in Agartala, in a Church near G.B Bazaar.