Dzuleke Homestay

Dipankar Jakharia   My inability to de-clatter my life had a prolong and hazardous effect on me. With my recent crossing of forty and officially facing an inevitable midlife crisis, I decided to act and started living without terms and conditions.   First out went the television. I have had enough of force-feeding. To top it all, my two daughters were hooked dangerously to the idiot-box. Ninja Hattori, Nobita, and Shin Chan were part of the family. It took more than a month to resize the family and to learn to live with the people who are alive. Story books were all in and bed time story telling became a big hit. Then came my Nishi’s 6th Birthday and I decided to do it with style. My kind of style, without terms and conditions. Dzuleke was on my radar for more than a year. Just before a day of the journey, I googled it and found almost nothing. Nervous yet excited, I called my friend Dole, an eco-tourism expert from Kohima. With some reassurance from him, I started my journey from Guwahati at eight after a light breakfast. It takes less than five hours to reach Dimapur via Doboka. In Dimapur, we all had a sensuous lunch at Zephyr Lounge, where I think you get the best Thai food after Thailand. The smell of lemongrass and coconut milk reassured me of impending good times.   After showing our Inner Line Permits in the check-gate, which is just when you reach the hills (and actually is almost 20 kilometres deeper into Assam-Nagaland border), we unleashed our box of happiness and from then on it was the journey, not the destination. We stopped every twenty minutes and clicked photos and had tea on road-side stalls, thrice. Girls easily picked up conversations with the locals and with absolute ease. So much so that the journey of two hours to Kohima took us almost four. The sun was going down fast and just then my friend Dole called. “Sir, where have you reached?” What a question, I thought. Do I care? I thought again. But then I woke up and reached reality. “Yes, my friend, 10 to 15 kilometres short of Kohima”. Dole told me to take a diversion before reaching Kohima. If I enter Kohima now, I will lose at least one to two hours. Therefore, I should take Jotsoma bypass and go straight through Khonoma road and keep on going until to Dzuleke. This road was not new to me, I took it before, but only until Khonoma. For Dzuleke, you have to keep going for another more hour. I was told that from Kohima to Dzuleke is a distance of 36 KM and takes around one and a half hour. Dole also told me after Khonoma, I would be out of range of any mobile towers.   I turned on my headlights right after the Khonoma gate and knowing very well after this point I will be away from the network, I gave my last call to Dole. Dole told me that the only WLL connection in Dzuleke is currently out of order, but he is trying, but fear not, keep going until you see civilizations. What the hack again. I am running away from it, I thought. Be advised, one should not travel in the hills in the nights. Never with two children without any backup. Moreover, in an unknown territory, never in the nights. But then again this was a trip without rules and regulations. After entering the no-network zone, we encountered a huge man-made gate with raw bamboo and woods. The purpose of the gate looked very intimidating and defensive. And was written “Mithun Breeding Project”. And after that, believe me, we were in a Mithun ground. Those gentle giants were all flocking the roads, sometimes in a group of three and another in more than five. My eleven years old Khushi begged me to stop the car for few snaps. I told her, “you will have a better opportunity on our return, on a broad daylight.” How much this will prove wrong, I hadn’t had a clue, since I was new. Because Mithun's seldom come out into the open in daylight.   The trip of 22 kilometres from Khonoma gate took more than an hour and a half. Many people ask me my love of hills and I also ask myself, why?? Why I love hills and it’s people so much? First, it humbles you. It tells you, you are nothing in front of it. Any assumption of the distance and time taken for an urbaner will grossly prove wrong. And secondly, it’s people. If God lives in children, a part of him must have stayed back with the hilly people even in their adulthood. The simplicity and innocence are equal.   Seeing streetlights, few houses, and smoke coming out of their chimneys and distant smell of bamboo shoots, oh I realized I have reached Dzuleke. I knocked at the first house on my left and came out a mother and a child tied at her back. The language was a problem, but within minutes came a young girl with long jet-black hair, fluent in English. I told her I am here to stay and explore. They kept looking at me vaguely. Just then my two daughters got down from the car and stood beside me. I told her again, we are here for our holidays and inevitably, I told her my most hated word, we are “tourists.”   Someone took our bags and she guided us to her house and made us all sit in her kitchen, near the open fireplace. Warm tea was served and after initial introduction and chitchat, I noticed some background brainstorming in their dialect. What actually happened that they never got the information that someone was coming. Thanks to our WLL or wireless in the local loop for not keeping Dzuleke in its loops.

  The village recently introduced four home stays for people to witnesses it’s way of life and to boost eco-tourism, which includes birds and butterflies and tracking and camping. The houses were allotted to visitors on a rotation system and we became the guest of two sisters Niles and Tuseu, aged late forties and early sixties. For next two days, we become part of their family, which also include two ducks, three kittens, their mother, and few guinea pigs. The vegetables from their garden melted in our mouth and we melted in their hospitality. The first night younger Nishi got a shock of her life when out of excitement our host took some live crabs and release them in the kitchen floor. She locked herself in her room for full fifteen minutes refusing to come out. It took three kittens to pester her out and little did she realize that those crabs were inside her stomach after our dinner.   Next day was Nishi’s birthday and she cut a small cake after blowing six candles, which I bought from Dimapur with our host and our guide Vimezolie. Together with Vimezolie and our host, we became best of friends. Vime took us to their field a pristine golden paddy field. It was a day of cutting the crops, a time to take the fruits of labour. The entire village was there. The concept of yours and mine has not reached Dzuleke. There is not a single shop in the village. No TV no mobile. There are 34 houses with less than hundred people in total. Perhaps it is the smallest village of Nagaland. They have a primary school and a health centre with a staff nurse. I wondered if people ever fall sick here. That day I told my daughters, there are no rules or regulations here. You can eat anything, talk to any strangers, make friends with them, play any place, run any direction, and climb any tree. They quickly made some friends and start playing in the stream. Just then, younger Nishi picked up a crab from the stream, showed it to me, and told, “there is a technique to pick up a crab and it is never from the front.”  

-The writer is from Guwahati and loves travelling Hills.