Arunachal 1

Arunachal. The farthest state in north east of sovereign nation called India. My India.It shares its borders on north with China, on west with Bhutan and on east with Burma. Once you say Arunachal it connotes distance for somebody staying like me, on this side of India. And that's it.  Far, distant, distant in every aspect. Travel, language, people, culture. every thing. 

There is nothing that directly connects Itanagar its capital or Bomdilla or Tawang its major towns to the rest of India. Recently Army has built a highway that reduces the distance to Tawang which goes through Bhutan but is only for the use of army. Common man has to take a tortuous hilly road starting from Tezpur in Assam. Taking in to consideration its strategic international position, a bit precarious one, even genuine Indian citizen from other parts has to take special permit from Army to enter Arunachal , Known as ILP. [Inner Line permit]. 

Though tortuous, narrow, hilly, treacherous whatever you may call, but the road from Tezpur to Bomdilla is just picturesque. Slopes on one side and deep valleys on the other all the way to Bomdilla never allow you to sit idle. Surprise to me was, it has heavy plantation of banana trees on its slopes. A very rare sight on any other mountains in other parts of India. Entire slopes of mountains after mountains are covered with these wild bananas. Surprisingly hardly any bore fruits. Normally banana plantations are mostly done for commercial purpose but here nature had it in bounties without any caring eye taking care of the most devoured fruit all over the world.. After inquiring around it turned out that most of the plants are males and the female plants are rare to come by. Mostly spread by asexual route known as sucker. The fruit has bigger seeds than the normal banana and tastes almost the same. Just to add to knowledge even if wild bananas are not taken in to account India is the largest producer of bananas. Hurrey !

Out of literally thousands, we could locate this rare one in the deep jungles some where on the way.

Picture post card scenery does not cease to wow ! As we climbed higher and higher mother nature unfolded her treasure in heaps and bounds. Trees bereft of leaves stood tall against the cloudy sky while the mountain ranges chided clouds to touch them at the summit. which obviously they could not.

After many mountains up and many valleys down we reached the peak on the road to Tawang,Sela pass, named after a brave woman accomplice of brave Indian Rifleman Jaswant Singh of Garwhal regiment, martyr of Indochina war of 1962. Sella pass was totally under snow. At 13700 meters in March it was not unexpected. Unexpected was the skidding of one of our vehicles. Roads were absolutely slippery as snow had turned into ice and was not allowing the tyres to have the grip.More the driver tried to move , more it skidded and started its march towards the slopes of  deep valley on the Right. We held our breaths, many hands went up in the air to pray and Montoo the ace driver of our bus jumped out and singlehandedly managed the show. His skill to maneuver the vehicle was par excellence and he executed it like a magician with swift hands, and once the bus hit the right tracks every body heaved a sigh of relief and shouted hip hip hurray for Montoo.

The lake on the other side of the pass, also known as Sela lake, is very beautiful sight to watch very soothing to the eyes.It's mostly frozen in winter, so much so that one can ski/skate on it. For us the climate was just right, though snowing heavily it was not as cold for shiver to reach the bones. So the Sela lake was still not frozen. But some one probably heard it and cursed because as we climbed down at Jaswant memorial to have small snack and tea, cold caught us like nothing before. My hands were shaking so much that half of the tea spilled out of the cup.Hastily I wore the gloves and held the smallish cup in two hands, a task by itself, but to  take it to the lips was a mammoth effort.

Rifleman Jaswant Singh had no one to help when Chinese Army descended upon Sela pass in 1962 17th Nov. He, barely in his 20s ,along with his two female accomplices Sela and Noora, fought a valiant battle and killed more than 250 Chinese soldiers. Chinese were so flummoxed that they  failed to understand from where the guns were being fired in reality there was only one. He gave up only after all the ammunition was over and breathed his last under a tree that's still worshiped. This memorial is built to commemorate his valor. His mother received his full pay till the date he would have retired, unfortunately she died before, so his niece inherited the honor.
By the time we reached Tawang it was getting dark though only around 4 or 4.40 in the clock. Somebody said, 'It's East.' Yes it was east.