Impressions of Guwahati

This is a draft I'd written over a year ago (16 Dec 2008 to be precise)... posting it now without edits...

Till the last weekend, the farthest east I'd gone in India was Chennai. Personally, the Great Indian Northeast has always been something exotic that one read in books and occasionally saw on TV. Assam in particular just meant a senior of mine at work, Bhupen Hazarika, Parveen Sultana, the ULFA, and more recently the horrific blasts that killed numerous innocent people in the state.

When the opportunity presented itself, I just jumped on the idea of visiting Guwahati, albeit for two days on official duty.

Some observations from the trip:

• Sitting in a two-hop flight is no joke... in other words, Guwahati is really far away from Bangalore ("Wow, that was news to me.. Thanks!")
• The Guwahati airport looks eerily like Bangalore's old HAL airport
• Guwahati proper has the narrowest roads for a state capital. Add to that the median and there is as much space for two cars really close, and nothing else
• I can now say with authority that BMTC buses are possibly the best looking in the country.
  
• Traffic flows ultra 'full duplex' (phrase borrowed from a friend who uses that to describe Pune traffic). Given the narrow roads, it is sometimes scary to sit in the front seat of a car, let alone drive one.
  
• The Brahmaputra is absolutely imposing and awe inspiring.
• The IIT campus is beautiful.
• Food in Assam pretty much means rice and fish, more rice and more fish... ("vegetarian.. what is that?")
• Literally everyone in Assam suggests you visit Shillong and Imphal -- something I plan to do in the future. Not to mention the Tawang Pass, which is also on my list of places to go.
• The most famous landmark in Guwahati is the Kamakhya Debutter (yes, that is the local name of the Kamakhya temple). Sadly, the crowd and devotee management in the temple leaves a lot to be desired.
• It is next to impossible to find parking in the city, roads being as narrow as they are.
• Perhaps the place I've seen the most movement of the military so far in India (no, I haven't been to Jammu or Kashmir). There was even a guy with an automatic guarding a VIP spouse in one of the shops in the market we visited.