This post is part of a series of micro-travelogues called Seven Weeks in India. To see all the posts in this series, click here.
I first noticed it on my wall-map of the world, a small, oddly-shaped blob of Indian territory disconnected from the rest of country linked by a long, thin tether of land I could cover with my pinkie finger. This strange little geographic extrusion was unlabeled; it looked oddly vulnerable stuck between Nepal and Bhutan and Burma and Tibet and Bangladesh and China.
You can read history from a simple map. The fact that this region was a part of India even though it was so remote and disconnected suggested a geopolitical struggle at some point in the past. Its location at the base of the Himalayas and at the center of a cluster of other nations suggested strategic importance. Curious, I looked at the area in Google Maps. Odd and compelling place names filled the screen: Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh. When I switched to satellite view in Google Maps I was confronted by a bizarre landscape of a truly gigantic river basin draining the world’s highest mountains. It was obvious from the map image that this was a land of tremendous geological scale. The biggest rivers, the biggest mountains. I was instantly hooked. I’d stumbled across a strange and exotic land, the most undeveloped region of India, a sheltered cocoon filled with tiny remote villages and traditional tribal cultures and a vast alien landscape unlike anyplace else in the world. We would definitely be visiting this place on our trip to India.
But how?
My wife and I had both been to undeveloped countries in South America and Africa, but this region, called Northeast India, was a whole new level of exotic. Other than booking an airline ticket to Guwahati, the area’s largest town, I had no clue how to arrange for transportation or lodging, or even where we should visit. Was the area even safe for tourists? I had no idea.
Enter Piran Elavia. Our primary travel planners (a Mumbai-based company called India Someday) put us in touch with Piran and his company, Kipepeo, saying that they were the best-of-the-best when it came to an insider’s knowledge of the Northeast. I checked out their website (which was very informative), and then sent Piran a long wish-list of stuff we’d like to do: stay in village homestays, trek into the mountains, get to know locals, learn about culture and religion (and most importantly, my wife, an animal-rights activist, insisted that we see elephants in their natural surroundings). Piran even volunteered to a teleconference with us to ease our fears and help us tighten up our plans. A couple of days after our discussion, he sent us a draft itinerary that included everything I’d hoped for, including the chance to view elephants on a national park safari.
Piran and his team at Kipepeo arranged everything. We’d be assigned a full-time driver who would be with us for the entire 18 days of our visit. They found interesting places for us to stay ranging from primitive mountain camps to homestays at remote villages to historic British-colonial-era hotels. They arranged safaris at the great (and yes, they really are great) national parks of the Northeast, like Manas and Nameri and the fabulous Kaziranga. They arranged for the complicated permits required to visit Arunachal Pradesh, which lies in disputed territory between China and India. They filled our itinerary with exotic activities, arranged for knowledgeable tour guides at every stop, and even supplied us with armed guards when we were in elephant and tiger country. These guys were total pros—they thought of everything.
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When our plane landed in Guwahati the itinerary kicked into motion, and for the next 18 days were in the hands of Piran and Kipepeo. Even though we never actually met Piran in person, his reputation preceded him at every single place we visited. Every innkeeper, every guide, they all knew Piran. “He’s a traveler, an explorer, just like you,” they would all say. “He visits every place in person and meets everybody. Such a nice young man.”
Interestingly, Piran’s whereabouts during our visit were a matter of great debate. “He’s in Nagaland,” insisted one innkeeper, while our driver assured us he was trekking in Bhutan. A tour guide told us he was in a village somewhere on the border of China. As far as we could tell, Piran was a bit like a magical legend, apparently able to whisk himself instantly from one exotic location to another. We never did figure out where he was, but it didn’t matter: whenever we needed help or advice somebody at Kipepeo was instantly available, usually via WhatsApp instant messaging.
This post is about Piran and Kipepeo, so I’m not going to go into detail about our adventures in the Northeast, other than to say that they were, indeed, adventurous (you can read about our exploits in the series of posts called Seven Weeks in India on my blog at PeaceTreesRocketships.com). What I would like to do is thank Piran and our primary contact at Kipepeo, Anjali Saigal, who got us through several scrapes and arranged so many things behind the scenes that our travels were almost flawless. On so many occasions, things just magically appeared when we needed them. We never had to wait for our driver, somehow he was always waiting no matter our situation, even when we were off track and off-schedule. Any time we felt lost, a tour guide would materialize, seemingly out-of-the-blue. Any time we ventured into elephant, tiger or rhino country a rifle-toting jungle ranger would appear to protect us. I’m a businessman, so I know that none of this was magic. It was the result of hard work by Piran and Anjali and God-knows who else operating in the background.
Speaking of magic, I do have to relate the most enchanted moment of our trip, which occurred at Namas National Park. Remember how I mentioned that my wife’s only wish was to see elephants in their habitat? Well, when we were on safari our guide whisked us away from the throngs of other tourists to a remote and secluded park ranger’s station where we had lunch. There was nobody there but us, our guide, and a couple of rangers. We were thrilled to see elephants and a rhinoceros grazing off in the distance. While we ate I watched the rangers trek through the brush toward the elephants, about a mile away. It took a while, but when they reached the elephants they began leading a mother and her baby back toward the ranger station. I thought it was all just a normal part of their day until the guide motioned for us to climb down from the ranger’s tower and led us through the fields towards the elephants. When it sank in to my wife that the rangers were leading the elephants to her, she burst into tears.
The next few minutes were like something from a dream, as the mother and her calf—closely tended by the rangers—introduced themselves to us. They were both intensely curious, their trunks sniffing us and tousling our clothes. The baby kept trying to gently take my camera, as inquisitive as a human child. The rangers kept close watch, but these were domesticated elephants, well-loved by their handlers and employed to patrol for poachers in the remote areas of the park where no vehicles could reach. Like the rangers, these elephants were fighting to preserve their species. When the rangers led the elephants away a few minutes later we were both blubbering with joy.
I truly don’t know if Piran and Kipepeo arranged this encounter or if we just happened to be in the right place at the right time, but this was just one example of how perfect our entire experience in NE India was. To a Westerner, even a well-travel tourism cynic like me, the region was full of surprises, challenges, and yes, magic. Could we have had this same experience if we’d tried to plan the trip ourselves? Absolutely not. Do we owe our great experience to Kipepeo? Without a doubt. Our forever-thanks go out to Piran, Anjali, and whoever else worked behind the scenes at Kipepeo to make our trip the most memorable we’ve ever taken.
To see all the posts in this series (Seven Weeks in India), click here and scroll through the post listings.
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