It was a Monday morning and we were at the bus and taxi stand in Mokokchung town, bright and early, to buy a ticket to Mon, the northern most district of Nagaland; our last stop on an incredible 3 week journey through the state.

We should have been in Mon already, but Nagaland being Nagaland had other ideas for us. Sunday meant no public transportation between towns and villages, something nobody thought to tell us, which lead to us spending an extra day in Mokokchung. We didn’t mind though, Mokokchung is beautiful and the extra day meant visiting villages that were originally not on our agenda. However, 3 days later, we were now ready to move on, which brings us back to the sumo stand.

Three seats to Mon please! we smiled brightly at the rather unhappy looking man behind the desk.

It is important to mention at this point, that public transport in Nagaland, like in other parts of the country, runs on the ability of the population to sustain significant discomfort for slightly cheaper fares. So buses routinely have seats that are too small for the number of folk they are made for, low cost flights have no legroom and the versatile Sumo, made for 7 passengers at best, usually seat 10 – 11. This meant that we were usually cramped in, limbs at odd positions, with vegetables, chickens and the very supple Nagas, who seem to fit into the tiniest space possible. Beyond a point we started booking 3 seats because it made travelling on Nagaland’s poor roads slightly more bearable. Also because we’re considerably larger than the average Naga and needed just a bit more space.

He shook his head, jaws working vigorously at the betel nut stuffed in his mouth.

Three seats to Mon please!, we tried again, as we stared at him with mounting unease, thinking all the grinding on the betel may have affected his hearing.

The man shook his head again, now looking decidedly more unhappy, largely because it seemed he would need to speak and that meant divesting his mouth of his precious betel nut.

Seats full! he spat out, adorning the area between us in bright red spittle, and waved dismissively, asking us to clear out of the way. The line behind us was mounting. After more to and fro we were told, aided by the ever helpful public, that there is only one Sumo that does the 8 hour journey from Mokokchung to Mon and the seats were full. Also to up the fun quotient, the sumo runs every alternate day, which meant that the next one would run on Wednesday.

Wednesday also full! He spat out again, before stuffing his mouth with more betel nuts, signalling an end to the conversation.

To compound matters, it was also Durga Puja, which meant that transportation was in any case thin and chances of getting hold of another vehicle to do the journey were negligible. After working out a number of permutations and combinations, with google maps, random people at the bus stand and other booking agents pitching in, we decided that the best (of the worst) option was to head back to Dimapur the next morning, 200 odd kms in the opposite direction, and get on the night train to Sonari, a nothing town on the Nagaland – Assam border. From there we could catch a sumo up to Mon on Wednesday morning. With any luck this round about scheme would work and we would be in Mon by Wednesday afternoon, two days later than planned. Not ideal, but the only workable one at the moment, so we booked a Sumo back down to Dimapur and the train back up to Sonari, effectively planning to traverse the entire state twice in 24 hours. We headed back to explore more of Mokokchung, somewhat mollified that we had some plan in place. This is Nagaland!

The next morning we woke, bright, early and quite miserable at the prospect of travelling 10 hours in a Sumo on some of the worst roads this country has to offer, traversing the journey we had done over the previous two weeks. To add to our streak of luck, the hotel taxi to take us to the sumo stand failed to show up and we had to trudge through a slow cold drizzle down to the stand. As if that was not enough, on reaching the stand we realised that our seats were not in the middle row as we hoped but in the last row, where we would be squeezed in with two other Naga gents. Due to Durga Puja and shortage of taxis, we were unable to get the precious middle row and the even more precious third seat. The Nagas as usual seemed upbeat and cheerful, a 10 hour sumo ride was of course all in a days work. We had done a lot of Sumo rides in the state, but regardless of how bad the road was, how rickety the Sumo was, and how many squawking chickens travelled with them, the Nagas always seemed to take it in their stride. And not even in the stoic way the rest of India routinely suffers inconveniences, but with a joie de vivre that was at once uplifting and disturbing. It was an art to be emulated. They not only laughed and joked whilst stuffed into spaces that scarcely seemed possible, they also shared their food and bought you fruit. On most days their positivity was infectious, but that morning the laughter, chatter and offer of bananas did nothing to help our mood. We were the grumpy tourists!

Then suddenly, our luck changed.

We were discussing our predicament when a fellow passenger overheard us and commented casually that the cab would make its way to Dimapur through Assam and not through Nagaland as we’d imagined. Perhaps it might be a better idea to get off at the border and make our way northwards towards Sonari, rather than south to Dimpur, he suggested gently, trying hard to mask his incredulity at our harebrained scheme. Assam!! The previous day we couldn’t get a taxi down to Assam and here we had unwittingly booked one whilst trying to get to Dimapur.

And so we set out on our significantly curtailed journey feeling much more upbeat. Four bone jarring hours later we were down in the plains of Assam in Mariani, the very forgettable border town and taxi convergence zone. We had a breakfast of aloo puri and lal chai and discussed politics and the merits of a morning meal of Naga chilly wrapped in chapatti with a member of the local BJP cell, who felt that Prime Minister Modi was well on his way to ending global terrorism and poverty whilst setting the record for the most hugs with other world leaders.

From Mariani we squeezed into a ‘Magic’ a bastardised cross between an auto rickshaw and Maruti Omni van along with 10 – 12 other Assamese (also decidedly smaller than us) and made our way to the large town of Jorhat, to get a bus to Sonari. From Jorhat a direct bus was unavailable, so we jumped into one for Sivasagar and then a connecting one to Sonari. The bus journeys were entertaining, with tea gardens in the distance and the occasional excitement of drunk Assamese trying to assault us with rice and water balloons (Durga Puja remember). So finally, after making our way through the hills and plains, fighting off nausea and dancing Durga Puja revellers, one sumo, one Magic, two buses and 12 hours later we reached the dusty little town of Sonari, the gateway back to Nagaland.

Sonari is less than lovely, and unlike our usual practice of trying to book a ‘cheap’ hotel we booked the most expensive one available, for the grand sum of Rs 1500/-. While the town competed with Bengal to celebrate the holidays, we slept. The next day we would travel the remaining journey to Mon, with its beautiful villages and unique cultural landscape. It would only take two Sumo’s, 4 hours and 50km to get there and after the day we’d had, that seemed a cake walk. But that’s a story for another day.