The Eastern End of India

Sadarghat Bridge, Silchar, the only bridge across the Barak River at Silchar. This is a 'double decker' bridge i.e. a bridge built on top of another bride. I presume there must be some problems at the middle of the bridge, so the trusty engineers just built a bridge on top of the existing bridge to tie over the gap! Can't think of a better answer, lemme know if you know the actual reason. This type of construction seems typical around here. There's another across the Barak near Badarpur on the way to Guwahati which is a 'triple decker'!!!

Here’re some photos of the place we spent a lot of time in recently, our adopted home in India, Silchar.

This was where we sat huddled in front of a computer, any computer with an internet connection, every day at 3pm for our daily ritual of trying to obtain an online appointment at Guwahati’s passport office. (Read the previous entry and you’ll know that we failed miserably and ended up driving all the way to Guwahati for nothing.) This is where we’re at now, waiting for the police to verify that Anu is an actual person and not a figment of our imagination, so that her passport can be reissued. How a figment of the imagination can hold an existing passport containing so many visas and stamps that the passport is almost full, somehow doesn’t strike the passport officers’ minds as odd??

While Silchar is not exactly the eastern most point of India, it is the eastern end of India’s National Highway East-West Corridor Project (which traverses the entire width of India). It is the main city on the Barak Valley and the gateway to the states of Mizoram, Tripura and Manipur. It is also a melting pot of the diverse people and religions of the region, so much so that although it is located in Assam, the official language and lingua franca of the region is Bengali, of the Sylheti dialect (and not Assamese). This is where you can easily find broccoli, pucuk pakis and petai in the roadside markets. (Try asking for that outside North East India, and you’ll almost definitely draw a blank). While the rest of India sits around and rant about the lack of rain, it’s been raining dogs and cats here for the past 2 weeks. Assam by the way, has always had no problems with water shortage. This place is so conducive for habitation that it forms a favourite breeding ground for our blood sucking friends, the mosquitoes. They love this place so much that they have a singing contest everyday (…local joke going around). I don’t find it very amusing, especially when every inch of my exposed (and part of my unexposed) skin is covered with mosquito stings.


Silchar City, Cachar, Assam


Justin with his buggy at the alley in front of our house, Silchar


Karishma, Anu and Justin at our front yard


Anu's sister Rekha (right), a cousin sister from the father's side and her daughter, Nandini at our living room


A pond near our house. Ponds are typical of Bengali areas (due to their affinity for fish, maybe?) Nice to look at, but a very likely source of all those little blood sucking critters!


Justin at the Nepali temple in Silchar