Nights in the North-East - Manipur

A visit to the north-east is always special, more so perhaps because of the feeling that you are visiting a place that has over the years became an untouchable among all wavelengths of the Indian Tourism spectra. This is presently my fourth visit to the North-East but the first time I’m visiting Manipur. And the experience has been very very different from the earlier ones I’ve had in Assam and Tripura.

Manipur has been one of the states worst hit by insurgency in the North-East. The combined terrorism by the P.L.A. and the various other Mao-Manipuri (tribes having nothing to do with the communist fractions in the Central parts of the country) factions has torn this valley state which has a comparatively miniscule population of 24 lakhs. But the state also has a long historical significance in the Indian Freedom struggle with it being the state where the flag of independent India was hoisted for the first time by Netaji’s Indian National Army in 1944. Also, the people of Manipur were involved in a very bloody and violent war against the British in 1891. Ecologically speaking as well, the various natural parks with its rare flora and fauna are all factors that should have contributed in making it a tourism hub.

The most accessible place in Manipur is easily Imphal, its capital. One and a half hours by flight from Kolkata, it is perhaps the only habitat in the state that even comes close to the definition of a city. This capital of a mostly agrarian state is a small poverty struck place with a very low standard of living. And most surprisingly the people of this state have not woken up to the fact that their state can be a tourist hub. So the set-ups in hotels and restaurants are not exactly very friendly towards outsiders, with a very negligible percentage of the employees having even a working knowledge of Hindi or English.

Imphal city in itself has very few tourist attractions. There are two temples in the city- Iskon and Govindjee. Both of them happen to be Vaishnav temples with a completely different style of architecture (Iskon has a Thai architecture while Govindjee is very stereotype Hindu temple) and history (Iskon is just about a decade old while Govindjee is a few centuries old). This doublet forms the main visual attractions (and very nice ones at that) in this city. Located at peaceful corners of the city, it was a very nice experience interacting with the friendly devotees at those places.

Two of the most beautiful and unique places in Manipur are Loktak lake and Keibul Lamjao National Park. At a distance of about 48 kms from Imphal, Loktak lake is the only lake in the world in which the floating weeds have collected together to form solid floating islands. These islands are solid enough to support small houses built on them, but still are not stationary at a point. Keibul Lamjao National Park basically consists of these floating islands and is the last home of the Asian Dancing Deer. Moreover, the lotus forests in and around Loktak lake make the path worth the effort. The last point of the advent of the INA’s progress, (marked by a Japanese Martyr’s Memorial) and an INA museum on the way were additional incentives.

But then again, this happened. This is an exercept from the day’s ‘Sangai Express’, a local daily –

“Although it is almost a month since the Army’s Operation Summer Storm was called off, villagers in and around Loktak Lake are still gripped by a strong sense of insecurity.
The villagers, who returned to their homesteads after the operation, have not completely settled when tranquility of the area was shaken by the killing of eight non-local people inside Keibul Lamjao National Park followed by military operations…”

The Brochure released by the Manipur Government claims that both these places are “beautiful picnic spots” …


Loktak Lake - All of the green vegetation is floating but mostly hard enough to walk on ...


Fortunately or unfortunately, we were oblivious to this report or anything of Operation Summer Storm when we set out the next day for a tour of Loktak Lake and Keibul Lamjao. We had visited the government tourism office the previous day. In another stunning display of government apathy towards the state’s tourism prospects, the man in charge of the office could not talk in any language other than Manipuri and very broken Pidgin English. But even after getting through to him and telling him the purpose of our visit, we never heard a word about the present scenario of the Lake and the National Park.

Getting back to our nice little car trip, the first on our list for the day was a tribal temple. The last remnants of a pre-Hindu and pre-Christian Manipur, the quaint traditions of the mountain gods were drastically different from the valley ones. From the prasads of raw meat to the holy bamboos planted in remembrance of the spirits, it was a drastic shift from the standard.

The holy bamboos in the Tribal Temple

The next on the list was Loktak. The biggest island in Loktak is a permanent hilly one called Sendra. The brochure claimed that there’s a guest house on Sendra along with a watch-tower for photography enthusiasts. This is where we were in for our first big shock. The path leading up to Loktak, a few hundred meters from Sendra had a huge shooting range on a barren face of the hill with ‘SHOOT TO KILL’ in huge unfriendly white letters written above. As we approached the habited part of the island, we were shocked to see the entry to the guest house complex being flanked by barracks on all sides. We were allowed entry on producing our identifications and promising not to take photographs of the army establishment. The guest house, as we realized, had been taken over by the army and entry restricted. The watch-tower was still open, and photography allowed. The lake with its green floating islands was visible for miles around, but the restrictions placed by the Army prevented us from leaving the watch tower and inspecting them from a closer distance. The only fact that proved that the islands were not permanent was a cleaning operation being carried out by the government. We could see the water being exposed as soon as one layer of soil was removed. Beautiful as the place might have been once, the outposts all over the place stuck out like bruises from the beating the state is taking from insurgency.



A house built on one of the floating islands on Loktak Lake

We were rather edgy from the time we entered the place. But the tension in the air was considerably decreased when a huge group of small children flocked to the tower along with their teachers for a school trip. Talking to the kids cooled our nerves.

But nonetheless, we weren’t all that sad to see the back of the place. It was particularly pleasant as the road from the Lake to the INA museum was through the lotus fields. And the INA museum happened to be next on our list.

Our enthusiasm was short-lived. The museum happened to remain closed on Mondays (nowhere mentioned on the brochure or in our conversation with the Tourism Department employee the day before). Also half of the museum has been converted to Army quarters. BSF Jawans were seen patrolling the place. This also happened to be the first Museum I’ve seen with bunkers inside it.

As we were roaming around the museum, we met a couple of BSF soldiers from the town my mother is originally from. Talking to them, we came to know of the present state of Keibul Lamjao (“We are afraid of going to that place unless we have some strategic operations there. It’s been long closed for tourists”). Another spot near Loktak, an embankment on the small rivers draining into the lake (‘idyllic beautiful spot in the foothills of the mountains’ according to the brochure), was again closed for tourists. Apparently, two army personnel had been killed in the spot a few months ago.

Coming back to the museum. Standing derelict in the middle of the myriad rank and file of the army, the museum is in a state of stark neglect. It has also been a constant target of insurgents and the statue of Netaji in front of the museum was destroyed in a terrorist strike in 1993. It has been rebuilt since.



Bunkers inside the Museum

And the historic significance of the spot? Well there is only one small marble engraving beside a bunker telling that this was the spot where the flag of independent India was unfurled for the first time in Mainland India. In 1944.

History has been covered in the cobwebs of time and the murky shadows of human minds…

The last spot in our list for the day was the Sadu Chiru waterfalls. Deep in insurgent territory as it is, thankfully, the restrictions placed on tourists in this case are a bit lax. The way to the waterfalls consists of a small trek up a rather stiff terrain in the middle of a jungle, something that I was really looking forward to.

The road to the base of the hill (the point from which the trekking starts) runs through a tribal village. The warnings that we had received turned out to be pretty true. The village was closed to outsiders. The walls of the houses we could see were full of pretty ominous PLA propaganda. The car also passed through a very shady looking toll-office that had no hint of officialdom anywhere near it.



A very disheveled me during the trekking to the falls

The base of the hill was however, the first spot we saw fully free of any army or outsider presence. The trek was a beautiful experience rounded off with good local tea, made from seeds instead of leaves. Thankfully the few shops at the base were friendly towards tourists and gave no inkling of the turmoil in the villages a few hundred meters from the place.

One of the very unique features of Manipur is that the traditional Manipuri family is a matriarchal one. The family decisions and the final say are all taken by the matriarch or Ima as she is called in Manipuri. A living example of this long standing tradition is the Ima market in Imphal. As the name might suggest, the market is maintained and controlled fully by the female population of the society. Moving through the market can be very eerie for a guy at times, as you’ll often end up feeling uncomfortable in the seemingly alien surroundings.

The city of Imphal is at a distance of 110 kms from the Indo-Burmese border. The border town of Moreh is also a main trading outpost maintained by the army of both the countries. Being a trading outpost, people visiting the place are allowed to move 5 kms into Burmese territory, to a city called Tamu. This Tamu-Moreh trading post is a very important outpost for most of the north-east as it is the one-stop place for the entry of cheap Chinese and Thai items.

We however looked at this as an opportunity to visit Myanmar (albeit only one small town ) without going through the tedious bureaucratic red-tape of Visa applications and stuff. And like most other road-trips in the north-east, this one was supposed to be pretty picturesque as well, through the virgin forests and what not. Honestly, after the previous day’s experience, we were all very cynical about it all.

But then again the trip started off nicely enough with a beautiful hilly road and a driver who fancied himself to be a NASCAR race-driver. It was entertaining. Scary, but entertaining nonetheless.

But then, the Assam Rifles outposts started. We had been forewarned that the road had several such ‘outposts’, both official and unofficial for purposes more often unofficial than official. These outposts, which are maintained by the Assam Rifles and the Manipur Police are said to have the ability to make life a misery for the tourists and well, let me just say that they lived up to their reputation.

At each outpost, we had to disembark from our car, walk for a few hundred meters and wait while our car was checked. The driver was expected to rush off to ‘pay’ visits to the chief officer of the check-post. The amounts of the ‘gifts’ that the driver had to part with varied from post to post from Rs. 30-50, a sum that is not all that paltry when put in the perspective that this was repeated nearly 10 times on the way there. The Assam Rifles posts were at times content with just checking, but the Police outposts needed oiling to allow peaceful passage.

The really painful parts were observed for the times they observed our cameras. A small-time interrogation would follow, along with I.D. Proof being displayed for good measure. Then, they would demand to see our cameras and command us to delete all photos and footage of everything, be it the surroundings hills or a harmless pic of the road.

Irritating as it was, the news that we read in the papers during our stay there convinced us that it was all in good time. But the bare-faced corruption was really disheartening.

Anyways, 110 kms of mountain paths and 10 Assam-Rifles check-posts later, we finally reached Moreh. The town, all-in-all had the looks of a medieval fish-market. It did not have any electricity. The roads were teeming with people coming from Myanmar, laden with goods. After a few stops at the shops, we headed off to the border. After submitting our I.D. Proofs there, we entered Myanmar.



Lotus cultivation in the lakes

The nearest Burmese town (I prefer calling them Burmese as I find Myanmar-ese a irritatingly long term) is 5 kms from the border, a small town called Tamu. The roads on the Burmese side are maintained by the Border Police of both the countries. The town in itself was a clean little town, flush from the riches of the Trade route passing through it. Even then however, there was no electricity. The locals said that the place received electricity for one hour everyday in the evening.

But putting all of that aside, Tamu was the first place that I visited in this trip that was a true gourmet’s delight. In the small shops that lined the roadsides, true Burmese food in a net and clean package was available for reasonably cheap prices. A full delicious meal with traditional Burmese preparations of fish, beans, chicken and bamboo with a beautiful salad of mangoes and boiled Ladies Fingers had us all smacking our lips with delight!!! The menu, though surprisingly similar to a standard Indian restaurant in the items, varied greatly in the method of preparations. The people of Myanmar are said to resemble the Nagas much more than they do the Manipuris. That is said to be another major reason for the stark differences observed the boundary of the two…

As the afternoon progressed the restaurants began filling up with workers back from work. By the time we left the place, the banter over the Beer bottles had reached its crescendo. We had a couple of over-enthusiastic people bowing effusively as we left  .

The way back was more or less the same story with the generous sprinkling of check-posts being kind enough to make us take a walk every time we dozed off…

As we trudged into the hotel after the hard day of travels, the power went off for the umpteenth time. We heard later on that it was just a part of what was going to be a three-day long power cut in the city of Imphal…

The next day we caught a bus in the morning for Kohima, our next destination.

As the bus choked and spluttered its way out of Manipur, I found myself asking if I would like to come back here ever again.

And I answer myself, Yes, but in a better day.
But as far as tours to Manipur in the recent future are concerned …
“The juice is just not worth the squeeze…”

Clouds overshadow the Arakan Valleys