Once upon a long time ago in Arunachal...

Its raining outside and the weather is what most people would describe as gloomy and correctly so. I however have been born and brought up in Shillong where gloomy days are the norm. Let me assure that once you have spent 16 years of your life waking up to a dull day and then mustering the courage to get to school/college, you are set for life. I digress. What this day reminds me of is my trips to Arunachal where my dad was on a "punishment" transfer for not having stooped to the general level of lowlifes as exist in India's government institutions.

He had to stay in Arunachal while we were in Shillong and it was not an ideal scenario. The bright spot in all of this however was that we had our winter vacations in Arunachal. The first few days there were mind numbing for us city folks.. no TV, a small town with absolutely nothing worth talking about, dumb people all around speaking a language we did not understand. That was not a great start to any vacation but we soon settled into a routine. My routine being the following.. wake up, mild exercise , break fast, swinging from rope to pole (yes, I tied a rope to a pole so sue me), lunch, sleep, read a few old comics, play cards, dinner and sleep. Don't get me wrong, I loved to laze around like that but what I hated most was the lack of ANY intellectual stimulation.

My dad had become friends with a few town folks and we decided to go on a picnic once. Its then that I realized that entire Arunachal is just a BIG, BIG picnic spot. You can drive you car through the trees and through dried up river beds and within a couple of hours you will be away from any sign of civilization. The only sounds being the steady rhythm of a sparkling river broken occasionally by the chirping of a bird. The rivers, with water so clear that you could drink it straight without any apprehension, seemed straight out of a poets dream. It was just awesome but the best part was the feeling that this was just the tip of the iceberg... that feeling was justified when we went to a place called Diban.

Diban, a place which was pretty far off from our place and we had to travel via car for quite some time to get there. The motivation for the trip was the trip itself and that beats any other motivation any day. The roads ( where they existed) were horrible and in most places we were just driving around rocky river beds, sand dunes, forests and what not. My family is pretty travel hardened so we endured pretty well and surprisingly even our dog who was the unfortunate passenger in a Maruti Gypsy's rearmost interior remained intact. Then came a bridge which seemed to have been constructed out of twigs.. yes twigs not logs. That's not all, entire sections were missing and there was a raging river some 1000 feet beneath. Hold on.. and there was an over turned truck right down there which looked like it had fallen off the bridge a couple of hours ago AND to top it all there was a sign "CROSS AT YOUR OWN RISK". That bridge was our only way and as the car edged along I remember just looking ahead. No one spoke a word. The car hobbled along. If God was impressed by prayers we would have got the Nobel prize for praying that day. We got off that bridge in one piece.

The next hurdle was a mountain road, just wide enough for a car, no crash barriers and a 1500 feet drop. Unfortunately, that was not the scary part. The scary part was the fact that there was a freaking waterfall gushing straight over the road and it looked powerful enough to jolt the car right down the precipice. Our driver ( who I regard as the only guy on the planet who can give Vin Diesel a run for his money) put the gypsy in the 4 wheel drive mode, asked us to get down and crawl to the other side of the waterfall while he tried to drive "through" the waterfall. Crazy right? Ha.. WRONG. We did a quick back of the envelope calculation and figured out that a lighter car would be easier to topple over so we decided to stay put in the car and drive through the waterfall. Whoa!! Was that Einstein running out of his grave?? Anyways, we did get through in one piece but we were completely shaken by the journey. No one spoke a word but we knew that everyone was thinking the same thing... nothing is worth taking such a big risk for.. least of all a pleasure trip.

Then we saw Diban. To be precise we saw the resort that we were to put up in. One look and then we just looked at each other. Everyone was grinning from ear to ear. I only remember thinking that if I had died and woken up in that place I would have taken that to be heaven. It was just that, a slice of heaven tucked away in a God forsaken place. Irony is the divine sense of humor and I have learnt to appreciate it. The resort looked something like a old Mogul era building but the wondrous part was that it was situated on an island. An island formed between two rivers, one river was the Digaru and I forget the name of the other. The striking feature of the rivers was that one was deep blue in color while the other was green and they merged just a few miles in front of the resort and then continued flowing around it. Forests all round and the distinct feeling that the forest was filled with tigers and wolves was just so exciting (Diban is a Tiger reserve). It felt so good to be alive. It was a short and sweet trip for us but one that I will remember for ever. It is funny how the things that leave a lasting impression on you sometimes have such humble beginnings.