These days, among my long list of friends' WhatsApp status updates, there are two kinds of people. Those who do not have any travel pics to update to their status, and those who keep updating their status with lots of travel pics, but with the hashtag #throwback. :D
Yeah that's life for most of us right now. If we are not under lockdown, we are under travel restrictions or living in fear of transmissions, and so we continue to stay at home.
Last month, 1st October, when everything was finally starting to look good in Mizoram (this was before the recent surge in CoVid-19 positive cases after schools reopened on October 16th), we decided to visit our farm in Kolasib.
The last time I visited Kolasib was 4 years ago!
Here's my detailed blog update from 2016 [Fishing, the Mizo way], talking about our Kolasib visit with other family members and how we spent the day catching fishes from our pond, known as "Dil sah" in Mizo, and our Mizo traditional practice of eating a meal at a farm. Do read the link above to know about those interesting details.
So for the next 4 years, while I was away at a faraway land working on game concepts and designs, my family in Mizoram was busy redeveloping our entire farm (in the blog link above). We had already spent [family secret] of rupees as we're planning to convert the farm into a [family secret] destination. Cousin Mapari and hubby U Zamtea had been doing an excellent work of overseeing the work as they live in Kolasib.
And so that day, at 6 AM, cousin Dingkima arrived at our house as we needed two drivers.
Our gang consisted of Dingkima and his two lovely daughters Sarah and Abigail, along with my sister and nieces Naomi and Abigail (also).
They of course were in the comfortable SUV, while Zorema and I were in the bumpy old pick-up as we were carrying heavy farm equipments.
A brief road-side stop at Serkhan after passing the town of Lungdai just to take this breathtaking picture of the scenery. Beautiful naw?
We stopped again just before reaching Zanlawn because little Abigail was road-sick :D.
And of course the ladies had to take the ceremonial group photo for their respective Instagram and Facebook updates. :D
We finally left the winding old Aizawl - Silchar road and joined NH-306 near Kawnpui, known as Sairang road.
We faced all sorts of weather in that journey alone, from light drizzle and heavy downpour to misty road and scorching hot sun, lolz.
As always, Kawnpui road was... difficult. :D
What was really sad on that journey was that, all the roadside restaurants (that shall no longer be referred to as "hotel cum restaurant", as directed by the Department of Tourism, Mizoram), were all closed. Even the ones we used to look forward to at Bualpui had their shutters down.
This was because of the ongoing pandemic.
Here's an old image from my last visit to Kolasib [Fishing, the Mizo way] where we had an absolutely scrumptious meal at Bualpui.
As we drove past the closed restaurants one after the other, I realized how selfish I had been. Initially, I was lamenting the financial loss we incurred because of the continuous lockdown as all the ongoing work at our farm stopped and now we would have to spend a large sum of money again to redo most of the work, not to mention a large portion of our raw materials were now rendered useless.
But despite our heavy losses, we are still privileged, in the sense that we can still survive. It's not like our lives will come to an abrupt end. These roadside restaurant owners on the other hand, many of them are operating to earn their daily bread, managing whatever they can to keep their business open and saving whatever amount they can for other purposes, like maybe buying new tables and chairs to give customers a better experience, or even saving up for their children's school education. For them it can very well mean the end. Sad indeed.
Not the most comforting moment to reach an epiphany.
As we solemnly progressed towards Kolasib, scattered houses started appearing on either sides of the road, and the density increased further and further, until we finally entered a concrete jungle with bustling activities and swarming traffic. Welcome to Kolasib.
We drove directly to U Zamtea and U Mapari's house, where we refreshed and ate the tiffin we carried from home.
After a fulfilling meal, we relaxed a bit, ate Kolasib kuhva hring, relieved ourselves, etc., and finally we left for our farm, with U Zamtea leading the convoy in his car. At Rengtekawn, we diverted from Bilkhawthlir route and drove towards Bairabi. Such a picturesque drive!
We soon reached "Zero Point", and from there we took the left again towards Bairabi, and finally reached our farm after a few minutes.
Ahhhhh, hello farm!
Walking across the farm was a problem, as the ground was still wet with pockets of streams everywhere, some of them even ankle-deep.
However, this was not a problem for yours truly, who bravely waded through the water, while keeping my arms perpendicular to my body so as to minimize friction and streamline the velocity of the fluid mechanics at optimum saturation. Yeah, science, biyatch. :P
What months of lockdown can do to an ongoing construction. *crie*
We decided to chill and swim at one of the many streams because it was extremely hot and humid. Though it was extremely shallow, we were able to immerse our entire body by lying down. It was such a cool and refreshing relief!
One Tree Hill. I saw this single lonely tree while I was in the stream above and immediately took a picture because somehow there seems to be this charm and aura resonating around it.
After an hour or two of frolicking, we got down to business and roamed around the farm noting down all the work that was still required to do, along with the old work that must be redone because of the lockdown.
Finally we opened our farm storehouse and inspected our raw materials like balu (sand), rawra (stone), thir ban (iron rods), dâp (thatched walls), etc etc., and noted down how many were left, how many were damaged, and how many were salvageable.
Once our work was done, it was time to head back to Kolasib. U Zamtea took us for a short drive to this river nearby where we could wash away all the sand and pebbles that got inside our underwear. :D
However, upon closer examination, we could see a group of guys, around 10 of them, probably in their 20s, cooking (known as "bailemchhuan" in Mizo) food and having a merry time right on the riverbank.
We could see them openly drinking, which we highly doubted was "water", talking boisterously and laughing loudly. Since our group consisted of mostly young women, we decided to take a rain check and avoid going down. Yeah I know we shouldn't have profiled them, nothing would have probably happened too, but sometimes it is better to be safe than sorry.
As we drove back towards Kolasib, Zorema and I took the lead, and the funniest thing happened.
We missed the turn at Zero Point, and just kept driving straight! :D The other cars were way behind us, so they didn't see us take the wrong route either.
Eventually we both realized we were seeing new constructions and road patterns that we definitely didn't see on our way earlier, lolz. And then we saw this non-Mizo dude walking on the road, and hoping that he speaks Hindi, I asked him if this was the way to Kolasib in Hindi, and then he replied in fluent Mizo that it's the opposite direction! :D :D :D :D
Had we gone straight, we would have apparently reached Saihapui K, near the Assam-Mizoram border. :D And so we took a U-turn and soon enough reached Zero Point again and took the correct route.
With the recent news about the border dispute between Mizoram - Assam and the clash in Saihapui V, I was like, dayymm I was near that place recently! But then I looked on the map and realized Saihapui K and Saihapui V are actually very far apart from each other. I think it is quite odd by Mizoram's standard to have two similar locations to be this far apart.
As we progressed towards Rengtekawn, we saw this roadside eatery that apparently didn't get the memo from the Tourism Department about not using the word "cum" anymore. :D
Yeah, I would like to order some cum, please. :D :P
The others had a great laugh when we reached U Zamtea and U Mapari's house and told them that we took a wrong turn. We relaxed for a bit, while having refreshments and snacks, and eventually it was time to head back to Aizawl. With curfew imposed in Aizawl at 8:30 PM, we had to reach our house much before that because Zorema and Dingkima had to go home from there again.
The ride back was just as beautiful as before.
We stopped briefly at "Lung nupa" spot to take a few pictures.
Truly awesome the view was.
It was dark by the time we reached Zanlawn. I saw a couple of roadside vegetable vendors opening their stalls late and playing cards to while away the time, which I think is very cute.
We kept driving through the dark and misty road, being cautious while at the same time continuously checking to see the time.
Eventually, we reached our house at around 8:10 PM, and Zorema and Dingkima immediately got into their two-wheelers and rushed home as well.
And so, that was a wonderful and memorable trip to Kolasib, not just because it was a necessary trip to make but because it was also a much needed and stress relieving break after all these months of lockdowns and travel restrictions.
And it was super safe too, the way we all stayed inside our vehicles with windows up the whole time, no interactions with any of the people along the way (except for maybe that non-Mizo guy we asked directions near Saihapui K), no contact with anybody as we didn't stop to eat or even buy cigarettes or kuhva hring at the roadside shops, I think it would be fair to say we had much less social contact than had we stayed in Aizawl and gone outside to buy groceries.
Do stay tuned for new updates, take care for now everyone, cheers.
