Someone once said fear is only temporary, but regrets last forever. Lying on my bed in the city of Guwahati, double-tapping for a red heart to pop up on beautiful travel pictures on Instagram always made me want to travel. But never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that travelling to Sadiya, the land of the rising sun in Assam, would open a completely new chapter of learning for me. Thanks to my wise decision of taking up social work as a career option, I got a chance to travel to Sadiya for a week.
Seven of us travelled to Sadiya – Ambikapur to be more precise – to a village called Eknong Sonowal Gaon. We were to stay in the rural camp of North-East Affected Area Development Society. The Au Naturel beauty that surrounds and is within this village, is just going to linger on for a very long time in my mind. Reaching this place wasn’t easy – because as luck would have it, we lost our directions as we entered Tezu, Arunachal Pradesh. Flustered out of my wits, all my plans of a rural practicum seemed to be going farther away. The only support we had at that time was each other’s company. What stayed with me from the ‘evening we got lost’ was sitting on the road and watching the foothills of the snow-clad Himalayan peaks.
We finally managed to reach Ambikapur, where our worst nightmare was creepily waiting. There was No electricity, No drinking water, Only fire wood for cooking (which was actually quite nice as it kept us warm), No market nearby to buy vegetables from, and Only one house to charge our phones.
Don’t get me wrong. This is in no way to highlight the negation of basic necessities in some rural areas of Assam, but to let people know that there is so much in life to appreciate, something that we don’t realise living in the comfort of cities. In those 15 days, I learnt much more that what I expected. The seven of us found ourselves actually communicating, thanking nature and most importantly being grateful for all that we had at that particular point in our journey.
I came to a point where there was a need to document this experience to relive it every time I read what we could hold onto as memories. It is our assumption that remote corners of the North-East wouldn’t probably have much to provide. It is our assumption that only the “conventional holiday points” could be the best place to chill, but then there are places like this to discover, where we walked through an open forested area and there was no light anywhere – except the FIREFLIES.
When was the last time you saw a firefly in your town/city? But here, there were fireflies all around. It felt as if I was in a fairyland, with tiny stars falling on earth.
If you indeed plan to travel and experience what we did, these details may come in handy:
Rural Camp: North-East Affected Area Development Society
How to reach: Take a train from Guwahati till Tinsukia and then a traveller to Ambikapur district in Sadiya.
There is not much to do in Xodiya (Sadiya), but once you reach and find yourself in nature’s lap, you’ll see what what i talking about – it is an experience that we miss out on living in our comfortable city lives. The greens, the life, the love, the humility and above all peace and tranquillity.
Rhea Hussain
This 22-year-old political science graduate is a self-proclaimed fitness freak with a love for collecting books and smelling them incessantly. A few things that she digs are crunching on ice cubes, binging on momos and travelling. She has an unconditional affection for dogs. Although she says that she does not have a philosophy in life, but she believes that "happiness is subjective, so never compare".
