Maiden Visit to North-East

On the holy day of Eid and at the end of the holy month of Ramadan I intend to begin to share my maiden journey to North-East part of India that I under took in the month of May 2016. Though this work should have been in the form of diary but keeping track of dates regularly was simply beyond me temperamentally. Hence I have divided my experiences into three phases. The first phase comprising of my journey to Guwahati and Shillong and the adjoining areas. The second phase consists of my stay at Patna as a part of pilgrimage to the birth place of Guru Gobind Singhji and the last and final phase of my visit to Punjab. So on this holy day I begin the first phase of my journey from the notes that I took down in a notebook.

Phase-I

Our journey for Guwahati to participate in International Convention of SPIC-MACAY to be held at Guwahati from May 9-15,2016 commenced with boarding the train from Chittorgarh to Kota on May 5,2016 which was only a short journey of about 3 hrs and 45 minutes. As our train for Guwahati was on 7^th May, 2016 , so we ( I alongwith my wife) stayed for one day at the residence of our niece whose husband was working in Container Corporation of India at Kota. I was a nice pleasant stay as we got opportunity to play with our granddaughter Anvi, who is merely 16 months old. During our stay at Kota we also visited a park containing replicas of wonders of the world like Collysium of Rome, Eiffiel tower of Paris, India’s Taj Mahal, Christ the Redeemer of South Africa and Leaning Tower of Pisa. On the morning of 7^th May,2016 we reached early in the morning as our train for Guwahati was at 7.30 a.m due to the efforts of our son-in-law Prashant who took all thr trouble of getting early in the morning and driving us to station in time. At the railway station there were a number of boys and girls from Chittorgarh and some more from Kota itself who were accompanying us to Guwahati. Train was late by half an hour weather was getting hotter but we were lucky to get seats in AC coach of the train as I believed that in India it is best to travel in an AC coach of Indian Railways particularly during the summers as it is comparatively safer and comfortable. Some of our friends were traveling by non AC coach also and their experience in this blistering heat, atleast during the day, were not pleasant. But as our train entered Uttar Pradesh and proceeded through the Central Part of India I was disillusioned about the safety even in an AC coach as all type of vendors selling food items, fruits to electronic gadgets, freely entered and left the coach at will and there was no body t stop them. Even railway staffers also felt free to travel in that coach though I felt that they were not entitled to travel in that coach. As train entered Uttar Pradesh and moved towards Kanpur it stopped at a lonely station, which from its appearance did not look to be its stop. Perhaps train stopped as some other train was coming from the other station. When I looked out of the window of the coach I found the name of the station to be strange as its name was Fafund, which in Hindi means moss grown on rotten and stale things.  Night fell as train entered Kanpur. Next morning we woke up with coming of Varanasi – the holy city for Hindus- that got its name from the two rivers bordering it – River Varuna and River Assi. Varuna is another name for river Ganga while River Assi has been reduced to a mere trickle in some parts of the town. As train left the station of Varanasi it crossed the river Varuna on a long and strong bridge showing some of the Ghats, for which this ancient town is known for, and which are situated on the banks of the river. After a couple of hours train entered Bihar with the coming of its capital town Patna and the darkness of the second night fell at Kishanganj which was the last town of Bihar. During the night train progressed through the state of Bengal and nearly at midnight it entered the state of Assam with the coming of New Jalpaiguri. After it train, passing through the station of Bongigaon and Kamakhaya reached Guwahat, our final destination, nearly in time on the morning of 9^th May, 2016.