Tawang: Tawang: Tawang
And a sad day…..
Today was the day when we were supposed to take a trip to the neighbouring lakes and hills that made Tawang a hot tourist spot. But we decided to take it easy. We all got up pretty late, enjoying the warm comfort that our beds and blankets provided us. The sun was up and it hardly looked like a stormy night had proceeded the bright morning. It was an idyllic day and all of us were in a slow motion mood. John declined to go out for the day, deciding instead to laze around in the room. A wise decision as it later turned out.
After taking our own sweet time, we finally were ready to set off for the well recommended lakes – Madhuri Lake and P T Tso Lake. We passed through the town quite lot – blame it on the unknown roads and after a whole lot of just going round and round, we were finally shown the way to the lakes. But just at that moment Gyan’s Karizma started to give problems and the ignition kept cutting off when the handlebar was turned to the right. We couldn’t figure it out so we took Gyan’s bike to the town looking for a mechanic. We found one and soon Gyan’s bike was stripped naked and finally the fault was located. It turned out to be a broken ignition wire. The fixing took quite a while and by the time it was fixed, it was lunch time. We went to a restaurant and even ordered lunch only to find out it’d take an hour. Not having that kind of liberty with time we cancelled our orders and went to another smaller place that served quite a lunch.
We were running late and going by the fact that Madhuri Lake was 40 km away from Tawang, we decided we’d have to be content with the P T Tso lake that was 10 km away. So once again we set off towards the same road. By this time we had become a familiar scene in Tawang! But as luck would have it, Kenny and I were stopped at a check point while the others just kept zooming off. We honked but nobody looked back. I was pissed at that point but then didn’t have much to do anything about it. The military guard demanded our ILPs which we had left in our room. With little option left,I started off towards the hotel to get hold of the ILPs. Just as I was getting to the hotel some government vehicles overtook me with breakneck speed and I was wondering what was going on. The moment I entered the hotel I saw people rush out and go to a nearby hillock. I asked the reception what was happening when he replied that hardly a minute back a helicopter had crashed at the helipad that was very close to the hotel. I rushed up to the terrace and could see smoke billowing up in the distance. It was the chopper burning up. I had never seen anything this sad in my life and could actually see and hear the chopper blowing up. I called Dutta from his room and we were witness to the flames engulfing the wreckage. Ambulances, police cars, state vehicles – all seemed to have arrived at the helipad but the fire tenders were nowhere to be seen. It was truly a gut wrenching sight and try as I might I stood riveted at my place.
Finally I thought of going and atleast getting to the guys who might have been waiting for me. But as I was going off in their direction, I saw them approaching me from the opposite direction. I was informed that following the crash the army had closed down the roads and even if we were allowed to go through the road conditions would mean we would have to come back anyway. We later learnt that the vehicles that had gone to Madhuri lake in the morning were turned back because of the excessive snow on the roads. With all this fiasco I was in no mood to roam out any more. But Payeng Da and Uncle went to visit the Tawang Monastery.
Soon after we learnt from Payeng Da that the shops of Tawang had closed down as a mark of respect to the victims of the chopper crash. We later found out that the crash left 17 people dead. The pilot and flight engineer had made it, but barely. May God bring peace to their souls.
We weren’t upbeat in the evening and moreover we had a long hard ride the next day. We had to do Tawang to Bhalukpong in a single day which meant we had to combine two days of rides into a single day. It was a long 286 km that we had on our sights for the next day and so without much ado we had an early dinner. Prior to dinner Payeng Da and I had gone in search of the local brew “Ching Chang” but didn’t find any. We had to be content with some distillate stuff that we found totally undrinkable, all but Kenny. Boy, was he on a roll. He kept on downing glass after glass much to our amazement.
We went off to sleep in mild anticipation of what the next day would hold for us.
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