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traveling around, India
sanyasins, seekers, travellers, companions,life lovers...

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Sunday, November 23, 2008

Guwahati

Twenty hours after we set off from Osho-Nisarga we reached Guwahati, the capital of Assam (a state in the northeast part of India – a map will be posted soon). This involved an overnight 12 hour bus ride from Dharamsala to Delhi, and a 3 hour flight from Delhi north east to Guwahati.

We expected the weather to be about the same or colder then what we experienced in Dharamsala but to our pleasant surprise it is warm here! In fact we landed to a wonderful 28C, total t-shirt weather. The evenings get cooler, but a light sweater or just a long-sleeve is fine. We were sooo relieved!!! As we quickly shed a few layers in the cab ride into town, we noticed that the countryside was filled with palm and banana trees, sprinkled with tall bamboo, and was thoroughly lush and green with a strong red coloured earth. Beautiful and inviting. However, we are so far east that the sun keeps a noticeably different schedule. It is pitch dark by 5pm and the sun starts rising just after 515am.

Guwahati as a town is actually on the uglier side; concrete buildings with lots of open sewer canals. But it provided a wonderful first for me… the opportunity to walk around for hours! In the 5 years I have lived in India I have never spent hours walking around, going everywhere I aimed to go on foot and not getting in any kind of transport all day. Even the flyovers had sidewalks – we went over 2 of them! It is interesting to see how many goods here are carried on people’s shoulder using a balance kind of system, as in a bamboo stick across the shoulder and two baskets hung on either side with the goods… I haven’t seen that in other parts of India, reminds me of Southeast Asia in fact. As do the vegetable markets on the sides of the flyovers, and the human drawn wheeled carriages carrying passengers short distances.

Guwahati is situated on the southern bank of the Brahmaputra river, and when we approached the bank we found earth that looked like a cracked desert of grey clay. Nisarga was convinced he was going to sink through.

As we walked we stopped here and there and tried something being sold or prepared by the roadside, like coconut, starfruit, cane juice, or a piece of fried river fish. I loved watching Nisarga curiously try all kinds of street food things, the same man with whom 6-months ago I was drinking wine and eating cheese, and sunbathing on the beaches of Nice. Bless him!

Guwahati also provided Nisarga with something he absolutely loves: fresh fruit juice! A guy on the corner of the road, there from 6am until 10pm, with a few fruits and a manual juicer; no water or sugar added, just pure juice. Nisarga was in heaven. He swore he could live here just for this. We went to him in the morning and the evening, filling up our one litre water bottles each time. 60 rupees to fill up a one-litre bottle, that’s less than 1 euro. It really was heavenly!!!

Another interesting thing about being here is that we did not see another foreign looking face except when we went for dinner. Walking around out and about all day, and we didn’t bump into another foreign tourist. And since most tourists not travelling with package tours use the same travel bible, the lonely planet travel guide, we tend to end up at the same places – especially when there are just a few restaurants listed/ recommended for the whole city.

This is the first time I am somewhere in India I have not been before, in well over a year. And it is also the first time that Nisarga and I are travelling around in India together (so far we have been based in Mcleodganj, and we travelled around Spain together but not in India). And it is the first time I will be travelling around a state and region without the comfort of a hired car and driver; this has always been the case when I travelled for work, with my family when they came to visit, and with friends when we have travelled in a group. Needless to say my first two days in Guwahati I was a bit tense; my reaction to the unknown and to the unsure. But by the time we got our bus tickets to Kaziranga, and our next bottle of fresh orange, pineapple and pomegranate juice, I was feeling much more at ease.

for all our pictures from assam, go to: http://picasaweb.google.com/nisargaanddeepa/Assam#

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