Day 31

Distance covered: 97 km
Total distance 5311 km

I awake to the chorus of a million birds flocked all around the guesthouse. After a lazy breakfast and a quick photo shoot for the Oil India newsletter we set out through the narrow and dusty streets of Guwahati heading straight for the Bajaj service station. Shree Auto had great customer service and they were extremely helpful giving us priority service, though four hours later she was still feeling unstable.
Guwahati does not have too much to offer, it’s main attraction being the Kamakhya Shakti temple located atop a hill, offering an all encompassing 360-degree view of Guwahati and the river Brahmaputra. Except for the haze hanging around the entire area it’s quite a pretty sight. Except for the main Gopuram the rest of the temple has been rebuilt with only few pieces of the original work visible here and there. The inner sanctum is more impressive with massive stone pillars and blackened rock walls - signs of its long history. The sun was retiring for the day and with the tense situation prevailing around Guwahati with the ULFA rising day fast approaching we had been strictly advised to be indoors by nightfall. But we had to visit the arts and crafts exhibition at Jagran, the state run emporium and as usual ended up buying a lot of interesting and irresistible stuff. The 10 km vide back to Narangi took a long, long time cause we were stopped at least 5 times in the small stretch and searched by the police. It reached a stage where we were yelling at the cops. Getting sick of all this I am looking forward to some peace at Kaziranga and the only encounter I am interested in involves the Rhino.