Staff Reporter
LUMAMI, DECEMBER 17
HOW about this for a ‘cool’ ride? Two students, in their early twenties, paddled on borrowed cycles for six straight days to attend the YETI conference, coming all the way from Guwahati in Assam. To put their effort in proper perspective, temperature in and around Mokokchung drops down to a chilling 2 degree Celsius by nightfall. And yet, 23-year-old Prosenjit Sheel and 25-year-old G Bharath Kumar both students of Tata Institute of Social Sciences, saw something worth braving the wintry chill. “We thought travelling on (other) vehicles is not meaningful. Also we wanted to meet and interact with people on the way,” G Bharath Kumar told Eastern Mirror on Tuesday
Along the way, the duo had interacted with school students in Assam and village elders in Nagaland, sowing seeds on ecological conservation. They were especially touched by the hospitality and shelter provided by the villagers of Chungtia, to two complete strangers.
Riding up the uphill, and often torturous road, from Mariani to Mokokchung had taken its toll on the two riders and they could reach only as far as Chungtia village by nightfall on December 12. “We had nowhere to go, so we approached the church (at Chungtia). But some people said that we should approach the village council and took us to the council hall.
“Incidentally the council was also having a meeting at that time. We were readily welcomed and provided with food and shelter,” Kumar said. The inability to meet with school students of Nagaland, however, has been a disappointment, he shared. “We did not realize that they will be on vacation or appearing exams.”
Despite this disappointment, the duo said, their experience here has been one in which they have learnt more from the people, instead of the other way round. “You see people (villagers) here have no sort of formal/professional education but they can actually identify more species. In fact we learn more from interacting with them,” they said.
The two students’ trip here was funded by a person called Kiran (they do not know his surname) while the bicycles were borrowed from friends.
