Dimapur

04.02.2010.

Camp at Dimapur

There was a taxi strike at Kohima so we had to locate private transport to reach Kohima. The road down to Dimapur, in the plains is again a series of curves and bendsthrough the misty mountains and the verdant vales.

Dimapur, the commercial capital of Nagaland is the largest city in the state. Dimapur shares its borders with Assam. Although lower in altitude than Kohima, Dimapur was equally cold at this time of the year. There is not much to see here except for the ruins of the Kachari kingdom.

I am staying at the De Orient Dream opposite to Hotel Saramati the only other decent hotel in Dimapur. The Kachari ruins are an unimpressive pile of red brick work. As it is a “preserved monument”, it will never be renovated. It is slowly falling to pieces. What I could see was a Darwaza and a lot of stone pillars on an open field. The place is an excellent refuge for vagrants and drug addicts. According to the guide book, the ruins give evidence of a culture that is pre-Aryan Hinduism. Because the Aryan domination of the Gangetic plain did not cross the Brahmaputra, the sino-mongoloid culture which is akin to the Burmese could flourish in Nagaland and Manipur. In this sense these states are unique examples of ethnic diversity in India!