Land of Jade

by Bertil Lintner

  We retired triumphantly from the scene. Hseng Noung and I got a rickshaw to the hotel where the lobby was crowded with other stranded passengers, mainly from the Aeroflot jet. It was carrying young Vietnamese, mainly wearing blue jeans and sporting baseball caps, who were going to Eastern bloc countries to study, and the same taciturn, unsociable Soviet technicians we had seen at the Fairlawn.

  The room at the Airport Hotel was much better than anything we had stayed in for months. It was clean, air-conditioned and above all, unlike the Salvation Army, it was blissfully free of bedbugs and cockroaches.

  Our vouchers were also valid for a buffet dinner for which we had to join a ferociously hungry queue outside the dining hall. In the usual Indian style, dinner was to be served at nine at night and because of the huge crowd preparations were awesomely slow. The Russians pushed to the front, ignoring the rest of us. After more than an hour of waiting, the doors to the dimly lit cavernous dining hall opened at last. The crowd surged through it, the Russians in lead. And, in one of those very serendipitous Indian ironies, the house band struck up the theme from the film Doctor Zhivago.

  The Aeroflot machine was still stuck at the airport when we got there the next morning. After the inevitable confusion and delay our smaller plane took off for Bagdogra. We had a fifteen-day permit for Darjeeling stamped without fuss in our passports on landing and shared a taxi up to the hills with Clive and Julie, a young English couple on leave from working in Oman, who were visibly upset by the constant hassles and hitches of their journey.

  They checked in at the Windamere—Darjeeling’s equivalent to the Fairlawn in Calcutta—whereas, in the interest of economy, we decided on the dormitory in the Youth Hostel, up on a hill on the outskirts of town. The walk up to it provided us with the first real opportunity since Mussoorie to practise some mountain walking. This had become especially important now as Hseng Noung was already seven months pregnant.

  “Is it all right? Can you make it to Kachin State?” I asked anxiously as we climbed Darjeeling’s winding, hilly streets.

  “It will be all right. Just difficult,” she replied.

  The monsoon soon followed us to Darjeeling. Fog, mist and clouds swirled around the old hill station and the rain pelted down almost every day. It was only when the weather occasionally cleared up we could see the trim little cottages seemingly transplanted here direct from rural England. We rarely left the Youth Hostel other than to eat and take exercise and one night we went over to the Windamere to have a beer by the logfire with Clive and Julie.

  They could not figure out why we had come to India when Hseng Noung was pregnant—and my sudden change of appearance only puzzled them further as on arrival in Darjeeling I had shaved my beard off and had my hair cut very short to make a better fit for the wig, should I need to disguise myself later on. I promised to send them a letter some time, explaining what it was all about. If we had told them about our plans, they would have thought we were crazy.

  To them our plans would have seemed truly insane; indeed, after so many frustrations our reserves of patience were ebbing low and doubts and fears had become hard to stifle. Once again, what we had expected to take only a few days became a week and there was no sign of Kewezeko. We were close to surrender and spent a lot of time battling to sustain a good level of morale.

  Then came another shock. We started to clean Hseng Noung’s photo equipment which had been kept in a bag for some time without being used. To our horror, we discovered that the humid climate in Darjeeling and the musty interior of the Youth Hostel had resulted in the growth of fungus inside the lenses. There were even more big, snow-flake shaped spots in the camera’s viewfinder. We were close to panic, thinking the camera would be useless.

  I rushed down to a photo shop on the Mall to be told that it could be serviced only in Calcutta. As this was impossible we settled for an option we prayed would work. We went around every clinic, hospital and pharmacy in Darjeeling and collected small bags of silica gel from empty medicine bottles. Assuming they would be full of moisture already, we heated the bags over candles in our room. We stuffed the camera bag full of silica gel and hoped this, at least, would prevent further spread of the fungus.

  Our attention turned to matters of camera maintenance; Hseng Noung decided to clean the cameras thoroughly. But while doing so, her hand slipped and she poked a finger through the shutter, damaging the delicate mechanism. We messed with it frantically, but to no avail. So I went back to the local photoshop.

  “This you’re needing to take to Calcutta also.” The shop owner shook his head sadly. As helpful as ever, he even drew us a map of the location of the repair shop he recommended. It was just next to the New Market. Concealing my chagrin, I stayed to chat with him for a while before returning to the hostel, feeling almost desperate. We had not even a camera that worked when, or if, Kewezeko eventually surfaced again.

  At the hostel we had become friends with Ian, a young Australian traveller who stayed next door. Sitting in his room that night, we told him about the camera. He said nothing, but reached into his backpack with a smile. To our amazement, he pulled out a set of watchmaker’s tools. I hurried back to fetch the camera and soon he was probing gently inside it with his highly specialised instruments.

  After an hour, he handed the camera to Hseng Noung. She pressed the button and the shutter mechanism flicked smoothly. We could hardly believe it. To express our thanks, we invited him to the Windamere for a beer by the logfire; not the sort of luxury a budget traveller indulges himself in, as we well knew.

  When we had solved the problem with the camera, we began to worry about our stacks of documents. Sitting inside the hostel, with the rain pouring down outside, there were moments of genuine optimism when we were convinced of eventual success; then the reaction would set in, and we would dwell on spot checks and numerous negative eventualities.

  Whilst the ‘revised’ dates in the visa extension booklet and the letter of introduction from the World Wildlife Fund looked fine, our old permit bothered us. We had altered the 5 to a 6 and then tried to make it look like a 7. It was really messy and far too obvious.

  Until then, only four or five people had been staying at the hostel at any one time. But suddenly, it filled up with a large party of technical students from Madras. Being on some kind of tour, the noise they managed to produce at night was unbelievable. They argued loudly, practised community singing and ran up and down the stairs. I could not sleep.

  During one of these sleepless nights, I was sitting in the stairway, puffing on my pipe and gazing blankly at the concrete wall in front of me. From nowhere, an idea flashed into my mind. In 1977, when I had been visiting Sikkim, a restricted state just north of Darjeeling, I had applied for a permit in New Delhi. At the Home Ministry, they had asked me whether I wanted to pick it up there or have a letter of recommendation forwarded to the Deputy Commissioner in Darjeeling, who would then issue a permit from his office. Since I was travelling around the country, I chose the latter.

  The next morning, I went to a law office in Darjeeling. They kindly let me use their typewriter. I took care to sit in a corner where nobody could see the letter I was fabricating:

  The Government of India has no objection to your visit to Keibul-Lamjao Wildlife Sanctuary in Manipur for a period of one week in the month of July 1985. Your Inner Line Permit will be sent to the Sub-Divisional Officer (Civil) in Dimapur, where you can collect it before proceeding to Imphal. As regards to your visit to Kaziranga, it is regretted that it has not been possible to allow you since that park remains closed to visitors from April to October.

  It would sound credible that we had been allowed to visit one park, the most important from our point of view, and not the other. By stating the issuing authority as Dimapur, we would be safe during our journey through Assam and it would explain why we did not yet have this document in hand.

  On leaving the office, I thanked the lawyer for his kindness in letting me use his typewriter and walked up t
o Glenary’s Confectionary on the Mall, where Hseng Noung was waiting. I sat down at her table and laid the letter out in front of her.

  “It looks good,” she grinned.

  I ordered a pot of coffee and, at the table, signed and date-stamped the letter. Again, for the umpteenth time, we were ready to leave feeling confident it would work.

  But still again, there was no sign from Kewezeko. And once more, we were rapidly running through our funds. On July 13, in a torpor of depression, we sat in our room counting our remaining assets. We had about 400 rupees left. Enough for two second class train tickets to New Delhi, where we would have to find some way of begging or borrowing the airfare back to Bangkok.

  I sadly began preparing my defence speech to my colleagues in Bangkok, especially John McBeth, The Far Eastern Economic Review’s bureau chief in Bangkok who had put so much faith in our plans. What excuses could we make? Who was to blame? The Naga insurgents who had never responded to our urgent messages despite our letter from the KIA? Or ourselves for being such unrealistic idiots?

  That was Saturday, and that night we discussed selling our small computerised Sony radio. But even that would not have helped us much unless we were absolutely certain Kewezeko would come.

  By 9 o’clock on Sunday morning we had our bags packed. We had acknowledged defeat. Half an hour later, Kewezeko walked into our room.

  “Bad news, I’m afraid,” he said as he sat down. “There’s still no bloody word from NSCN headquarters. But I think we should go anyway. What do you feel about it?”

  We agreed with him instantly. Our bags were packed so we left—but not for New Delhi. We walked downhill to the market where we took a taxi down to Siliguri. The clouds were right down low that day and as we drove through the murk, we could hardly see the curves and hair-pin bends until the taxi was almost on them. After one of the most hair-raising car journeys in my life, we reached Siliguri in the afternoon. At seven in the evening, we were on the bus to Guwahati in Assam. Kewezeko bought our tickets to avoid any awkward questions and shortly afterwards, we left, knowing that whatever happened, this had to be the final attempt.

  At Cooch Behar, a few hours drive from Siliguri, there was a surprise check by West Bengal customs. Probably acting on a tip-off, a dozen uniformed revenue officers halted the bus on a lonely stretch of the road. The male passengers were ordered off and asked to identify their luggage. Our bags, two army packs, stood out from the rest.

  “Open your bags!” One of the officers barked, waving his torch in the direction of our army packs. Every item was carefully inspected.

  “You’re having so many medicine bottles and why all this camping equipment?”

  I nervously explained that we were to spend a week in the Assamese national parks and were worried about disease. He seemed convinced and asked to see my passport. As I had fervently hoped, he did not know that, as a foreigner, I also needed a permit for the northeast. My visa extension until 31.7.1985 satisfied him.

  “Good. Your papers are in order.”

  They had not even bothered to ask Hseng Noung any questions. Knowing how fierce and sometimes even anti-Indian were the sentiments of the northeastern Mongol tribes, and since she looked like one, they had left her sitting undisturbed in the bus.

  At midnight, we reached the West Bengal-Assam border where entry permits are supposed to be checked and illegals halted. We went through three gates without being stopped. But at the fourth I could glimpse quite a few soldiers standing around in the dark. The bus pulled up at the barrier and an officer boarded it. The driver protested, saying we had already been checked for more than an hour at Cooch Behar.

  “That was West Bengal. This is Assam,” the officer retorted.

  He went from seat to seat, demanding something of the passengers in an Indian language. Some of them answered “Guwahati” and others “Dibrugarh”. It was not difficult to understand that he was asking where they were headed. When it was my turn, I pretended to be half asleep. He pointed his finger at me and unleashed a rapid stream of words.

  “Guwahati,” I slurred drowsily.

  The officer continued his check down the aisle. In the dim light inside the bus, he had not even realised I was not an Indian. The bus was waved through the checkpoint and we relaxed. I soon fell asleep with Hseng Noung’s head on my shoulder.

  At four o’clock in the morning, there was another surprise check. Policemen surrounded the bus as it came to a halt. I could understand very little of what was going on, but the English words “Restricted Area Permit” stood out. Some of the passengers, who from their appearance were Punjabis, Nepalis and Muslims, were summoned off the bus. A sternfaced policeman with a bushy moustache clambered aboard, gazed around and soon spotted me.

  “Your permit, please!”

  I fumbled in my shoulderbag and handed him the whole set of our documents. He glanced quickly through them with an intent look on his face.

  “But you’re only permitted to go to Manipur. Not to Kaziranga. This is Assam.”

  I realised that, after all, I had made a mistake by excluding Kaziranga but pleaded that I had to pass through Assam in order to collect my permit at Dimapur.

  “You can fly.”

  “Impossible. All flights are fully booked until next month.”

  He contemplated my documents for a while. Then came the decision:

  “Indirect permit. You’re allowed.”

  He left. Kewezeko gave me a relieved smile over his shoulder from his seat in the front. We were through, I thought.

  Outside, uniformed police and plainclothes officers were shouting and milling around in the flickering light of their torches. Perhaps they were acting on a tip-off? Was it because of us? We doubted it, but we were getting jittery anyway.

  A stout official in civilian clothes, surrounded by policemen armed with .303 Lee Enfield rifles suddenly appeared. The words “Restricted Area Permit” rang out again. One of his men scrambled into the bus and ordered me off. Patting my shoulderbag to make sure all the documents were still there, I followed him down. Two policemen escorted me over to a jeep which was parked beside the road. We used its bonnet as a desk and in the light of a torch which one of the policemen was holding I presented my documents one after another.

  “Permit! Permit! I want to see your permit!” the officer demanded.

  I bumbled about muttering apologies and presented my dossier of documents. He was getting impatient but brightened up when we came to the letter of recommendation from the Home Ministry.

  “Ah! This is it.”

  He read out the first lines. “Subject: Permission to visit Keibul-Lamjao and Kaziranga.”

  “Are you going to Kaziranga?”

  “Well, yes, officer. With your permission.”

  “But you’re not having a proper Restricted Area Permit.”

  “No, I know that. But with this letter in hand, the authorities concerned will give us the proper permit.”

  “Was there no checking of your papers at the Assam bordergate?”

  “Yes, of course there was. They said it was all right.”

  I tried to prevent him from reading further and discovering that we were not, according to the letter, permitted to go to Kaziranga, only Keibul-Lamjao. I flipped the page over to divert his attention to the letter of introduction from the World Wildlife Fund. The officer read through it, carefully, nodding to himself and looking definitely impressed. He had just got to the end of it when his attention was attracted to a sudden burst of shouting and torch-waving from the police near the bus. His interest in me promptly vanished and instructed me to report to the police on arrival in Guwahati.

  With a pencil, he scribbled down the serial number of my forged letter in his notebook, adding “permitted to visit Kaziranga.” I scrabbled my scattered papers together and went back to the bus. The police were shining their torches all over the luggage rack.

  “What’s going on?” I asked an Indian passenger sitting across the aisle.

&
nbsp; “Ah, just some Nepalese illegals who’re hiding on the roof. They’ve got no permits, you see.”

  “No permits? How can they come here without permits?” I asked indignantly making sure I was heard by the other passengers.

  Two elderly men in Nepalese clothes, tight cotton trousers, long baggy shirts and colourful caps, were led away towards the police station. I asked what was going to happen to them.

  “They’d have to pay the police off and then they’ll be sent back to where they came from,” my fellow passenger said.

  Since the campaign against illegal immigrants from Nepal and Bangladesh began, checks have become strict. But many still manage to slip through the net. The two elderly stowaways who had been arrested might or might not try again for the green pastures of Assam. I felt sorry for them but also grateful. Their discovery had rescued us from a tight corner.

  This unscheduled halt lasted for two hours so it was already ten when our bus reached Guwahati. We felt a little apprehensive that on this early stage of the journey, when no difficulties had been anticipated, we had already had such a narrow escape.

  Our original plan had been to catch the first connecting bus to Dimapur just in case anybody had picked up a rumour that two foreigners had entered Assam on dubious documents. One factor in our favour in keeping one jump ahead of the authorities was the erratic Indian telephone system. If anybody was on our trail, they would have to follow us themselves. But the long delays at the checkpoints during the night had delayed us considerably. There was no other bus to Dimapur until 8pm so we had no choice but to spend the whole day in Guwahati.

  We had no intention of walking about in the streets or, more risky still, of checking into a hotel where we would have to register and the police would get our names. There was always the possibility that the officer who had checked our papers in the middle of the night had been efficient and forwarded his notes to Guwahati. Here, the authorities still had our names from the time we were spotted and registered when we had flown out in May after our first, failed attempt to reach Nagaland.