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!
Posts
Haha. Thanks Gary :-) Very interesting. So basically you're picking up Indian hitchhikers in exchange for translation skills. Very entrepreneurial of you. How many FAQs can I ask? I have plenty in the question bank...
ReplyDeleteThe plethora of experiences that you have enjoyed and been bombarded with in such a short notice is unfathomable. I guess the vast and such varied experience will be fruitful to you both in understanding India as well as in ur PhD.
ReplyDeleteNow for the important stuff.... Can I please have the rights to your travelogue? I can see the gala opening night for your published book some day soon.. ;)
Enjoy the last couple of days in Assam. See you soon in Calcutta
Deb
Hi Deb! I am gutted i left Lakhimpur on monday night, if i had stayed an extra day i could have joined my friend in tracking a tiger which was causing bother in a village!
ReplyDeletealthough it did decide to attack the search party - so the risk assessment would have been a problem! haha - looking forward to the calcutta part of the trip!