Brahmaputra

Finally got to go on the Brahmaputra, we hired a boat from the ferry terminal and went for a 2 hour trip up the river to investigate the river islands, and the 'hidden' communities along the banks of the brahmaputra. some barely clinging to the river banks. its a massive river, around Guwahati it is only 1-2km wide, but further up-stream it is upto 10km during the winter and double that during the summer monsoon season. It is difficult to understand the sheer scale of everything in india, not only the natural environment but also the social side as well which i hope has come out in some of the photos over the past 5 weeks?the boat crew and my guide got a little tired of the strange englishman asking to go closer to barren sand islands!
a view up the river
fishermen at work. i tried getting the boat closer but the river in this part was less than 2feet deep!

fishing on the banks of the river.

FAQ

How do i find my translators?

the whole trip is organised the day before departure. Either i will be cheeky and contact someone i met in guwahati and ask them for help or arupjyoti will contact someone he knows and ask them to help.

if these people cannot help, they will always know someone who can help. generally i have a local guide who organises a car for me. we then set off to the area of interest and along the way we will meet someone who has access to the community and/or knows the local dialect if that is an issue. Quite often the translators for tribal commuities etc are picked up along the road just by asking people. we have the situation before, where the tribal language is translated into assamese by one guy and then translated from assamese to english by my original guide.

basically we are constantly relying on the kindness of the local communities and so far i have only been told to bugger off once in 24 villages. which isnt bad going!

and finally some more photos from the northeast

guess who has to go next! i wouldnt have minded but they left me with all the equipment and anyone who has ever seen me play football will know how bad my balance is! but the ever helpful joyprakash was there to save me!
on a bamboo bridge, risk assessment also performed here. we watched a motorbike cross 5 minutes before we did so it was obviously safe!

some more photos from the north east

meeting the villagers.
the temporary village next to the river.
working dinner. after 12 hours in the field there is no rest, as i have to write up all my notes and draw some pretty pictures so i dont forget. Niladri was right about the food though - ive gotten fatter on account of 2 nan, half tandoori chicken and vegetable korma for dinner!

the sun setting over the Arunchal Pradesh Himalaya! A beautiful site. but the mountains are causing huge problems for the villages!
my translator in one of the villages!

North East Assam

I have just returned from the north-east of assam for some more village trips. I managed to visit some very interesting and very different places compared to south western locations. It was a surreal experience again, this time as i was accompanied on my outward journey by the superintendent of the police who was a very friendly man and took me along to a tea garden where the manager then insisted that i take some tea away with me

see the pics below.

bamboo bridging the gap in the road. it is used during floods, and hard to believe but the flood water often submerges this bridge which is 6 feet off the ground!
this is the National Highway 52 in Dhemaji district!
these buildings for 8 feet off the ground a couple of years ago, but the stilts have since been inundated with sand from the flooding which occurs every year!
this is how high from the ground the above buildings should be
the way to one of the villages! health and safety assessment was conducted and it was decided that it was incredibly safe!

field work a day in the life

i thought i would give you an idea of a typical field day, just so you all see i am doing some work and not just having a jolly! my days typically start at 5:00am when i am rudely awoken by my alarm and have to force some brekkie down before Bablu my friendly driver picks me up at 5:30. thankfully the sun rises at 5:00 at the moment so its not too dificult to get up, although its pretty chilly in the morning. we then drive to the district of interest for the day, and it can take between 1 and 4 hours to get to the villages depending on distance but more importantly on the quality of the roads. the holes in southampton are nothing compared to these!

i then normally arrive in a small town or large village where i meet a local guide and translator organised by Arupjyoti. this usually entails having tea and being questioned about my life back in the UK and why on earth i want to visit villages in assam. we then move into the villages, which is more driving on mixed roads, and even sometimes paths and tracks. we are regularly ejected from the car by Bablu as he sends his tiny car down 'holes' which often resemble craters on the moon, not a bad thing though as they always appear near the poorer villages which is a result for my research.

generally as we approach the villages of interest the guide starts asking local people for advice on who we can go and pester about their lives. this is where we end up picking up another 'fixer' who always knows just the person. once at the said persons home, we are invited in and have detailed discussions about the land and farming etc over another cup of tea (which is served about 10 times the heat of tea in the UK but drunk immediately - thats why indian people can eat spicy food as all their taste buds have been melted!).

the villages are always very friendly and enquire at length as to why i am in India. they are most impressed that my sister is a police officer, and on more than one occasion they have decided that they are wealthier than the watmough family because they own more cows and land!

we generally repeat the same pattern three or fours times in a day before lunch at about 2pm. so far every field visit i have been invited into someones house for lunch and tea. we then set off back to Guwahati, which takes considerable time as we have to drop off the by now fairly impressive team of fixers and translators (at one village the language was a tribal dialect that wasnt understood by my translator so we found someone who translate for the translator!). on the way back to guwahati we generally stop at an important site for my research such as a tea garden, reserved forest, irrigation project or wildlife sanctuary.

before generally arriving back at 6:00-7:00 pm. its then dinner - vegetable curry - and then data input times! it takes a long time for this last bit, as the name of the village in the census never matches that given by the villagers. though sometimes this is down to vanity as the villager changes the name to represent his/her family!

and now for all those who managed to get this far in the blog, some photos of my recent visit:...

me in a rice field.

rice fields... endless rice fields. they are different colours because they use different types for different purposes, some for eating, some for flour etc.
a monkey. who later was caught eating someones rice!
meeting some students at the school owned by my translator.

and again, adopting the toilet pose!

new addition to the team!

Gilbert has a new friend, he is twice the size of Gilbert and twice as noisy! but he is drastically reducing the number of bugs in my room so im pretty pleased.

field work

Hi all, well i cannot get a better picture of the rhino's. what can i say? they are quite rare and so dislike humans somewhat since they have poached them near to extinction! i shall try harder next time to catch a rhino and sit on his back and pose for a nice snap!

some more pictures added below: went back to see some different communities, they didnt speak any languages that my guides could speak so it was very observational! and resulted in the farming head man taking a dislike to my GPS!

posing for a picture with the family who answered my questions, took me on a tour of the village and then fed me! all very friendly.

Tha's better, thats Tetley! a Tea garden tour! unfortunately no tea for sale here!

elephant close up! looking for bananas but i only had 5 rupees!

elephant and his Mahout trundling down the highway! looks more comfortable than our car!

ploughing the fields ready for the 5th crop of the year!

rhinos

i saw some indian one horned rhinos in a wildlife sanctuary yesterday. they are quite rare apparently, and seeing them in this sanctuary is very rare. hence they were a long way away and you may have to take my word for it that they are rhinos!

field work visits

after a brilliant weekend with deb in shillong i went back into the field. visited some villages right on the river banks, and in one case practically in the river! its a fascinating place. one thing that strikes as strange is that no matter how poor the villagers are saying they are, and that they cannot produce enough food to sustain themselves, i can guarantee that a mobile phone will ring at some point during the meeting! the are everywhere!! it has taught me not to judge poverty from a western perspective. i think in Assam that mobile communications may be the first development tool, instead of representing a consumer culture like they do in the west.

anyways, ill try not to bore you all with the inner thoughts of a weary field tripper and give you some pretty pictures instead...

new rice crop planted and fishing nets in tribal village
making cloth in tribal village
inside an immigrant population village
immigrant population village is surrounded by the sands from the brahmaputra. it is based on the sand banks of the river and during the monsoon months becomes an island.
brick factory in an assamese village.

shillong

thats bangladesh over there!

Deb playing out in the hotel grounds!

British Public Transport is underused! we could do so much more with the resources we have!

I am back in Guwahati after the trip to Shillong. It was called the Scotland of the East when the British were in India. I think that is because it is so bloody cold in the winter! or maybe i have become used to 30 degree temperatures and 10 degrees now makes me shiver! think i will be struggling when i arrive back in London in december!

Deb's camera is much better than mine so he has lots more photos which i will steal when i meet him in Calcutta!

chatter

Hello all - (i say all there are only 5 people looking at this)

I thought i would use the blog to update everyone on the communication situation. I dont get internet in my room as i am having to use a professors log in details and they are restricted to the academic complex only, not hostel rooms. its a bit of a pain as it means with the time difference i cannot speak to people over skype very easily.

i am very well though and enjoying my time in india. I am hopeful of going into the field tomorrow, but i just to need to finalise a few things and make sure everything is ok.

Deb is coming to Guwahati on Saturday and we are taking a trip to Shillong, which is in the neighbouring state of Meghalaya. And then on monday we are planning to visit a national park north of the river which is on the border with Bhutan.

Yesterday was a slightly surreal day, we visited a neighbouring district to Guwahati where my guide was presenting at a small college. we stopped along the way to observe rice fields etc. At the college i was bombarded with requests from students to have their photograph taken with me! It was all a bit strange and embarrassing!

IIT Guwahati and Introducing my new room mate

gilbert the gecko has joined me on my trip!
he lives in the armpit of my t-shirt!
the outside of the hostel im staying in
bars on the window of my room
the (cot) i have in my room

Moving house

Hi All

I have now moved from the City to my new home IITG. Its a massive campus with just 3000 students so its pretty much empty. i have no communications as yet, a nice design student took pity on my and let me use his internet for a wee while until i get usernames sorted out etc.

Gary