Lazy turtles of Hajo

Journey PART IX

Ha ha, that's probably a bad way of writing a title, but at this time, nothing better is coming to mind.
So after traveling to outskirts of Guwhati for more then 50 minutes, we arrived at this place called Hajo. Well contrary to popular belief Assam is predominantly a hindu state and most population is religious. Sapota must admit that he has developed a strong dislike for hindu pilgrims mostly because of Pundas and kind of environment there.
So here at Hajo there is a so-called lake,which is more like a dirty pond and it is believed that feeding fishes at pond is considered sacred. So we bought some biscuit and start throwing biscuits in pond, in no time there was many fishes and turtles at the spot. Most of these turtles and fishes have grown fat and goddamn lazy, they just want everything to be thrown in their mouths
We went to this ancient shiv temple with a plate full of some articles like garlands and "Prasad", Priest assumed we were there for rituals, so they started troubling us. But Sapota is a hard nut and has advanced training in dealing with these things, so sapota did not succumb and used his Bakarchodee skills to persuade pandas that he knows much more than those guys.

Anyway this temple was quite old temple, a very typical one situated at height and stepway to reach it, with beggars sitting along steps. This temple has strange sculpts of British soldiers guarding temple, which made sapota think about their relevance?

Anyway, next we see couple of temples, which they say are mostly from era of Pandavs.
There was this temple called KedarNath, yes! really they call this with same name.
Next we saw this HUGE "something" called Bhimthaal(Bheem's Plate literally) , they say Bheem used to eat in this thing!!!

Assam is quite a humid place, so after this visit we moved quickly back to Gautam's place, which brought Sapota's journey of North East to an end. Still many place in Assam, Arunachal, Sikkim and Nagaland were left unvisited.

Rendezvous with Mighty Brahmputra

Journey PART V
Sapota is always in awe of water bodies for many reason, one of them is sapota can't swim; the other is the kind of might, force and depth water bodies have, that inspires sapota to become an artist and keep appreciating the marvels of nature. Brahmaputra is one those few river, which awe-inspires sapota. One may feel that Sapota is some kind of freak obsessed with a bloody river, Well, that is not the case, sapota just loves nature and its beauty.
Guwhati is one of those big cities who are situated on the bank of mighty rivers. It is believed that all major civilizations have started on the banks of mighty rivers. So here we went to see this larger-than-life river and as expected, it was huge. It was much much bigger than any river sapota have ever seen in his life; Ganges seemed like a stream as compared to brahmaputra, and to add to this let me tell u that Brahmputra is only 1/3rd its actual size in Guwhati, To actually see how big Brahmputra is, one has to go to Tezpur.


Somewhere in upper Assam, Brahmaputra has an island called as Majuli island. Majuli is world's largest island in a river!!!
Well Sapota wanted to sit besides the river for long time and keep watching its beauty, but unfortunate enough, Guwhati don't have that kind of bank, where u can actually sit and watch. The water appears muddy, but still look pleasant and much cleaner than rivers in other part of country, at Tezpur the water is clear and transparent, which is real color of the river. Brahmputra is also know as sorrow of Assam. The volume of water in river is magnanimous and it rains too heavily in North-east, so during entire monsoon, river keeps this place in state of flood. Sapota wished if he knew swimming, but to his dismay, he was told its very very dangerous to swim in this river, although, otherwise very silent, but brahmputra has very sharp underwater currents, which are sufficiently powerful to sink a boat.
Some small islands with thick range of trees were adding to the beauty of this place. Entire experience was exhilarating, inspite of humid heat of Assam, bank of river were cool and pleasant. God has blessed Assam with rich flora and fauna and this river adds ornamental beauty to this green state.

hot water and tea gardens

Journey PART IV
Garam Pani(literally Hot water) seems like one of the crudest naming conventions adopted, but in Asom it was pretty know place. So during this visit Sapota visited Golaghat, where he had some nice Assamese experiences. The first one worth mentioning is the hotel Nambor(sound like "number" being screwed badly), where we stayed appeared like some kind of resort.


So when in golaghat Sapota took a trip to garampani. Garampani is nothing, but natural hot water spring in the midst of a jungle. Well place was really hot and since Assam is humid, sapota had a tough time. Garam Pani is situated at border of KarbiOngLong and Golaghat. The jungle in this area is real dense and scary and to add to this, sapota discovered that this place has ULFA's Head quarter nearby. But sapota still went inside the place(off course not too deep) and clicked some snaps. The Flora and fauna of this place actually very rich, but due to all this tension, the place looks totally deserted.



Next day sapota went to see Numaligarh, this place has one of the biggest oil refineries in Area called as NRL. The other beautiful thing about this place is Tea Gardens. Tea gardens are one of the most beautiful creation of nature groomed by man. Tea Garden on the slope of a hill appears like a thick green matters, pure eye candy.

By the end of the day, sapota went to see some temple, forget the name(poor memory, u see) which has trees of some biological importance. These trees are declared as heritage fauna for the reason that they stand for a very long time and they are home of large honeybees. The Hives on these are huge, which means much much larger than any honey-beehive, one has ever seen. But sapota was unlucky, there were no hive due to rains.


At evening(okay actually night, its nite here at 5:30), Sapota was looking at dark highway and wondering if some bunch of elephant come out, but as usual nothing happened. Saopta kept looking at this board on highway and thinking about..... on a lonesome highway east of.....