A trip to Haflong: the lone hill station in Assam

Ever since I read an article in my childhood about the pretty hill station Haflong I longed to visit it. Sitting at an altitude of more than 600 m above the sea level, Haflong is the only hill station in Assam and known for beautiful hills, gorgeous valleys, scenic landscape. It is the district head quarter of Dima Hasao district. Dima Hasao is geographically the second largest and the least populated district of Assam. Dima Hasao was part of the Dimasa Kingdom, with its capital at Maibang and Dimapur during the medieval period (1500-1854). Dima Hasao means "Dimasa Hills" in the Dimasa language, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by the Dimasa people of the Northeastern states of Assam and Nagaland. The word Dimasa means "Son (sa) of the big river (dima)", i.e. the mighty Brahmaputra and Haflong means "Ant hill". Some stories from mythology say Dimasa people are descendants of Ghatotkach, the son of Bhima (one of the five Pandavas) and Hidimba (princess of Dimasa people). As Haflong was not well connected I could not visit Haflong inspite of being born and brought up in Assam. In 2003 I went out of Assam for sixteen long years on getting transferred in my job in ONGC. On our transfer back to Assam to Jorhat in 2019, my hopes of visiting Haflong rekindled, but Covid played a big spoilsport. Then in November 2021 as travel restrictions were lifted to some extent, we planned to visit Haflong during Diwali holidays. Haflong is connected by road and railways with Guwahati. Around that time a new train called Vistadome with large glass panels were introduced between Guwahati and Haflong providing a comfortable mode of travel with an opportunity to enjoy the beauty of the scenic route. I would have loved to travel by the railway which crosses through several tunnels. But that rail track does not touch Jorhat and we took the road instead.There are mainly two routes to Halflong from Jorhat - one via Nagaon crossing the Kaziranga National Park and the other via Dimapur. We took the Nagaon route for going to Haflong starting in the afternoon of 3rd November, Wednesday, with a plan for night halt in Kaziranga National Park. After a short stop to buy Peda, a popular sweetmeat of Bokakhat, a township just before Kaziranga, we went to Hotel Landmark Woods. It was a beautiful property at a scenic location though a bit run down due to the pandemic. We met a big group from Mumbai there. They were celebrating Arabic birthday of a young girl in the group on that day and we got to be part of it. We in turn offered them some Pedas from Bokakhat hoping they would like these.

On Thursday, 4th November, we started at 7 am in the morning. After visiting Maha Mrityunjay mandir at Purani Gudam, we took a tea break at Kuhi Tea Bar. Owned by an enterprising lady namely Renu Mahanta, it offers delicious snacks and freshly prepared meals. They offer complimentary pitha and laru (Assamese snacks) with tea which are very delicious. We purchased some for the road.

Enjoying our drive through the scenic route passing through places like Hojai, Lanka, Lumding with a tunnel in between, we stopped over at Jatinga bird watch tower. Jatinga is a small village located approximately 9 km away from Haflong town famous for its phenomenon of 'bird suicide'. Thousands of birds of different species fly to this place between September and October and fall prey to death under mysterious circumstances. We reached Jatinga at around 2 pm. Birds were not to be seen at that point of time though it offered a beautiful view.After another small stop at Abraham view point we reached Hotel Landmark in Haflong at around 3:30 pm. The hotel looked pretty with a beautiful café. However it seemed to have born the burnt of the pandemic. Refreshing ourselves with a cup of tea and snacks in the hotel we visited another view point called Moulpong. Afterwards went to the local market and had dinner in a restaurant called Bobho.

Next day we went to Haflong Circuit house to watch sunrise. The circuit house is quite beautiful. We wanted to stay there but did not know whom to contact. The view of the valley and the sunrise from the balcony of the circuit house is breathtakingly beautiful. I fell in love with the balcony itself. We spent almost an hour there witnessing the birth of the day amidst song by insects. One of the insects there sounds like a temple bell. Then we circled around the lake crossing the hanging bridge. On returning to hotel, we met a group from Kolkata in the beautiful Café of the hotel. After sharing some information about Haflong during a chit chat I offered them pitha and laru from Kuhi Tea Bar which they appreciated a lot. They took address of the outlet to make some purchase on their return journey to Guwahati. I felt very good at their enthusiasm.

Checking out from the hotel we went to have breakfast at The Kitchen Restaurant at Abraham view point. The owner David aka Andy is a very pleasant young man who left a corporate career to come back to his native place. After a hearty breakfast over chitchat with Andy we took leave hoping to meet again. We bought oranges and turmeric from a lady in a roadside stall. On seeing some Robab tenga, a citrus fruit very popular in Assam, in a nearby tree we asked whether these were available for sale. She called the lady of the house and the whole family made all-out effort to pick some fruits from the hard-to-reach tree and refused to take money for those. We had to coerce them to take a nominal price.

On our way back we decided to see the Maibang Stone House. Maibang (mai means rice, and bang means a lot) is a town located on the Mahur River's bank at a distance of 53 km from Haflong. It was the capital of the erstwhile Dimasa kingdom, from the 16th to 18th century and the King of Dimasa still lives in a stone mansion there. Maibang Stone House is a temple dedicated to Goddess Ranachand, built by Dimasa king Harishchandra Narayan. According to legend, the Goddess asked the king to build a stone house within a night using a single stone. On completion of the house he would find a weapon inside the house with which to fight his enemy to ensure his victory. The king carried a large stone from the top of a mountain to the bank of the Mahur river on his back and started constructing the house, but the rooster crowed before daylight. That unfinished house full with stones on the inside is still there. When we reached Maibang, first we visited a site by the side of the main road with a few ruins and then asked about the road to the stone house. We were told there are two routes to the temple. One is shorter which involves crossing Mahur river. The other is a longer motorable. Unwilling to take the risk of crossing an unknown hilly river in the absence of any other vehicle in sight, we took the longer route. However we found the road too steep and decided against taking the risk to drive up after some time. We thought of walking up the rest of the way and started walking leaving our vehicle by the roadside. But again abandoned our plan as we felt it would be quite strenuous and time consuming. Upon reaching back we discovered our car battery got discharged somehow and we were stuck on that road where hardly any vehicle passed through. Feeling helpless, I called up Andy and told about our predicament. He so kindly contacted his cousin residing in Maibang and sent him for helping us. Luckily a truck belonging to survey party of Oil India Ltd happened to pass through and we could start our car with their help. Informing Pritish, Andy's cousin, who was already on the way, we resumed our journey heaving a sigh of relief. I will never forget kindness of Andy and Pritish.

While coming back we took the route through Dimapur passing through Diphu, Head Quarter of Karbi Anglong district - largest district in Assam. Diphu is another pretty township I always wanted to visit. As a consequence of our debacle in Maibang we reached Diphu late and hardly had any time for sight seeing. After having a late lunch at the Cafetaria run by Tourism department, we just had a quick peek at the Diphu Arboretum which is beautifully landscaped but was still under development.

We reached Niathu Resort in Dimapur in the evening. The resort is very beautiful, well maintained and offers high quality services and facilities. I will rate it at par with Club Mahindra resorts.

On Saturday morning we headed to some of our installations in Khoraghat field as Sanjay had some official tasks to take care of. After spending the day visiting the installations, in the afternoon we headed for Jorhat through a road which was very bad in patches but passed through pretty villages of Assam inhabited by simple, friendly people with kind hearts.