April 11th Ziro to Mejuli island

Thursday started early after pouring rain all night.  It was still raining in the morning after we set off with Lawrence and Bishal. Lawrence had asked to have his wife accompany us 40 kilometers till we changed guides. We had said no because of the seat belt issue and the back area being full of all luggage, so there was not enough space. The distance we were to carry him was now much farther than the 40 km that we were going to carry him and his wife and was more or less back to the second plan where we would pick up our new guide Bumoni at the town of Lakhimpur 23 kilometers before the ferry port of Balighat to Mejuli  Island. Ziro had been cold all the nights we were there, and we had worn not only our fleeces and vests, but a scarf over our heads. The electric heater had only worked intermittently when there was electric power, and gave off a feeble heat at best. We were ready to being heading down to the plains where it was warmer. We curved, chugged and careened along the road, stopping to check out different birds.  Again we saw hunters but rarely any weavers.

We stopped for lunch around noon at a small roadside restaurant and had a fairly quick meal.  If you order rice you will get at least 3 other accompaniments with it (a thali like meal), but if you order a parotha, you will get only one accompaniment. Ordering can be quite easy.  We are greatly missing our salads and fruits, as we are very cautious as it relates to food and water. 

We passed through the state borders of Arunachal and Assam without incident. Our connection with Bompier went smoothly and Lawrence went off on his way back to Arunachal.  Bishal and Lawrence had argued over the time to leave in the morning – Bishal wanting earlier and Lawrence later – we had compromised but as Bishal had stated, the road from Lakhimpur to the ferry was very bad, being narrow and full of potholes and lots of traffic of various modes of transportation, all causing havoc.  We reached the first of the two ferries for the day, and as it only took 3 cars, we were delighted that we were the last one on the boat.  US safety standards do not apply to these ferries in terms of life jackets, load occupancy etc.  We decided to stand on the deck versus sitting in the car or going down to a lower deck, in order to have a better survival chance in case of accident. This first ferry ride was 45 minutes, at which point we offloaded onto a sand bar and drove along for ten minutes before getting to the next (even smaller) ferry. That ferry only takes one car at a time and is made of two wooden boats held together with bamboo and planks of wood.  We were then pulled by a rope across the narrow shallow channel  (just 2 feet deep at this time) to the town of Garamur.

our two boats tied together pull across the river ferry...

As we were driving from the ferry area sandbank to the main island road, we saw many houses of the Missing tribe and you could hear the clack clack of a loom.  We stopped to inspect one weaver’s handwork on her loom set up under her house.  As we drove through the rest of the island we were to see many looms set up under the houses with either women working on them or else set up with some weaving in process. Leslie had admired many handloomed sarees and skirts on the ferry, and had been informed on asking that was the Missing tribe style. 

Lovely to see so many looms under the houses!

We stopped at the Ghormur Satra (monastery)  to see the namghar (prayer hall). Medjuli  island is the heart of the neo-Vaishnavite philosophy which overly simplified is the worshiping of Vishnu, the Hindu god know for Preservation. One of the monks opened up the inner sanctum which hosted an eternal flame. He blessed us with a flower and some holy flower water that one was to sip (only a pretense on our part) and then put the remainder on one’s head, which we did.

We were taken to the Ygdrasill Bamboo Guest cottage which is near the town of Garamur on the west side of the island not to far from where our ferry had landed. This guest house is basically 2 bamboo thatched hut cottages perched on concrete pylons over a marshy, bird filled lake. The shower was the old bucket routine and we enjoyed a warm water rinse before dinner. Our home stay host was an ex-tour guide Bader, who spoke quite good English. Though Bader said it was not necessary to sleep under a mosquito net, we requested that one be put over the bed as we had seen mosquitos since arriving.  As the whole large room, which included our eating area and out back the bathroom, was really open air both from the roof eaves area and also all the wide cracks in the bamboo floor, there was no point in trying to plug in some of our electrical mosquito zappers, which was just as well as there was only battery powered electricity that was intermittent.

Jacquard Loom - cardboard cards

Card maker for the loom

After a quick cup of tea we went out to look at the local weaving cooperative. For the first time we saw a more “industrialized” cottage industry of weaving where a chain of punched cards with weaving patterns were used to speed up the process of selecting the threads.   This is by guiding the warp thread so that the weft will either lie above or below it. The sequence of raised and lowered threads is what creates a pattern in the textile. Leslie had heard from a weaver in CM in Stitches that these jacquard looms were the basis from which computers were developed. 

We told Bader what an excellent meal he had served and then, we he had left,  proceeded to eat one of our two remaining biscuit packs, since we needed something sweet.

Colorful Mising hand woven clothing for sale



Tucked up in her sleep sack

We did not get much sleep as during the night there was an electrical storm that was at first only flashes of lightening (Leslie wondered who was outside our cottage shining a flash light around as the light filtered through the bamboo walls) and then it became a full storm.  After the storm there was a loud alarm like sound that made Leslie think I had gone to the bathroom with our little bodyalarm (alarm, light, seat-belt cutter gadget) and had inadvertently pushed the alarm button instead of the light.  This had happened once before in Mon and we had not been able to turn it off so had to muffle it under our luggage.  As she went to leap out of bed to assist me she found me right there.  Still concerned about the noise she now was convinced it was our Nuk-Alert going off and that something must have happened in the Korean standoff.  Needless to say in the end it was recognized that the noise was just screaming cicadas but neither of us had a good nights sleep!