Mizoram - Continued

After reaching Aizawl I had haircut and a rough shave without shaving cream. We took a cab to hostel. Lot of people from other places had arrived by this time. Meanwhile one of Bangalorean Suman Pai went to Ridhil. I felt 550 km travel for a lake is too much. But there are no other places to spend time. I had a nice bath and food and got introduced to other trekkers. Sandip and Bikas from Kolkatta were very sweet and nice. Few other people Biplap, Lav Singh, Sanjay also got introduced. I was getting bored as it was like a picnic.

Next day we planned to visit Aizawl and do some shopping. After tea we all went for a walking and took some good photos. Still it was 7:30. Time passes very slow in mizo as we got up early at 5 and have nothing to do. Am still not out of that routine.
Me and Biplap went to browsing center to check mails and spent an hour. Then we went to state museum and almost all trekkers were there. Later went to a restaurant David's Kitchen to try mizo dishes. Vegetarians had a tough time in finding the dish and the bamboo shoot curry was with a different taste and couldnt eat fully.

After that our journey to Aizawl Taj Mahal begun. Biplap left us and only we four Me,Sandip,Bikas and Sudanshu went there. Sudanshu collected details about that and took a bus to Bangkawn (All the mizo names are difficult to remember and pronounce, so plz bear with the names). From there we were bargaining for taxi for 50 Rs to reach Taj mahal. None came and so we started walking the hill. It was a climb up and it was about 2.5 kms. Sandip was giving comments allover the time and in the middle we got a bus which drop to a place nearby. We all reached and it was again 500 m walk to Taj Mahal.




Some brief introduction about Taj Mahal. The actual name is Paradise and mizo by affection started calling Taj Mahal. It is a memorial for a dear wife and his son. The husband runs institutions. It looked like a poor Tajmahal as it can never be matche to Taj Mahal. But his determination of building a memorial for his dead wife and son shows his kindness or wealth? It was two storied structure. The basement had the wife and son rested and the first floor the belongings of them. It is not a excellent structure but the view towards the mountains is awesome. We took few photos and we saw some school students visiting this place very often.

After our disappointed trip to Aizawl Taj Mahal we went to Aizawl hiring a cab. We skipped the Millenium mall because Sudanshu wasnt interested and were roaming here and there before we caught bus to hostel. We had a small briefing about the trek and the camp leader was explaining about the cave and the trek path. After dinnner to kill time we again went for a walk and got introduced to Cawitha from Bangalore. YHAI manager informed that there would be kickboxing places in Aizawl but as outsider, people might change their attention to us and wouldnt be safe. So we skipped the kick boxing stuff.

Mizoram looked like western ghats for me. Weather is much similar and few days were really hot. Bamboo and Plantain were found everywhere. All over Mizoram it was amazingly calm and peace. Most of the places women work and very few shops had men working. Mizo is a open society and they give equal status to women. I found few condom disposal dustbins inside a college, which surprised me. There are lot of HIV patients in Mizoram. They are well educated but not in English. They are very clean and I have seen people washing the floor even at night. There is quite lot of traffic in Aizawl but they dont honk like other places in India. Women smoke in public and there are dustbins allover the place. Even small villages have dustbins and people throw their garbage only there. Same is the case for urinals. There are lot of public toilets and people use them. Each house have facility for rainwater storage. Even Mizoram receives lot of rain and because of the terrain there is scarcity of water. So people have really big rain water tanks infront of their house. They love music and are highly fashioned. There are lot of yamaha bikes too. Its very difficult to spot old people. Do they look young or they die early ? People are relatively short compared to other Indians.

Morning we deposited extra luggage in hostel and started to trek. We were flagged off by Chief Secretary of Mizoram. We were taken by 2 mini buses and we were taken to places like state NCC training camp and university to spend time.

Basically the trek route on first day is very less distance so the YHAI made itinerary including all these. Finally by noon we reached a bridge where we started trekking. We had lunch at the bridge and the river was small and the current was strong. The guides didnt allowed to get inside the river. All our guides are college students who volunteers for treks. Few of their names are Zira, Puiya, Moses.



I started trek as the last man and picked up my speed. I was in slippers as usual and people were questioning about leeches and my stability with slippers.