Visit to Nagaland

Well I got a once in a lifetime chance to go to Nagaland few weeks back. I took the option of going to Dimapur - a major city in Nagaland. Dimapur is the eastern most airport of India, and is close to the border of Assam & Nagaland for my Dealership visit from M&M.

So after 2 flights, from Mumbai, there I was in a realatively big town in the middle of no where. The Air Port was a bare basic one, with no buses and stuff. As it is I went to Dimapur in a small ATR plane. The reception at Dimapur was quite an experience, some politicians had come in the same flight after getting assembly elections tickets and so there were few hundred supporters who had come to welcome them, so after waiting for some time, we got in our pick up vehicel - a Bolero (which was obvious) and went to the Dealership. All along the way it felt like we were in a different country all together, seeing the people, type of houses and also the trees. All people there were with the Mongolion features, talking to person who had come to pick us up, we realised that 95% of population of Nagaland were followers of Christianity and English was the official language of the state, that gave all of us a sense of relief, having the knowledge that atleast we would be able to converse easily with the locals there.

So after a quite eventful journey, which mostly involved observing the locals, and trying to count the Mahindra vehicles along the way, we reached the Dealership. Here we met the Dealer Principal, a real Gentleman, who the guided us to our hotel. So after some lunch, rest and seeing India screw the 20-20 game against Australia, we went back to the dealership for the next day planning. Here we got to know the state of affairs in this state. The condition was really quite critical, few people had been murdered the same day. Due to this, the whole town was supposed to remain closed the next day, so went all our hopes of shopping. We also got to learn that there were close to 20 local dialects in the 16 Districts in Nagaland, due to which the locals preffered the use of English. Also because of the condition of roads and also the absence of paved roads in majority of places, Mahindra vehicles were quite popular there, especially the 4x4 ones. So after being advised against leaving the Hotel after 6 PM, we went back to the Hotel. Here also we experienced the life of the locals, locals had dinner by 8 PM and went to sleep early, so by 9 the whole town was shut off. For us it was quite odd, as our days generally end at 11 PM....

The next day, we went to the Dealership and did some work. We saw the vehicles which had come for service there, observed the regular concerns in the vehicles. We also interacted with many customers, learning about their likes and dislikes about their vehicles. Really quite an enlightening experience, and it should be quite helpfull in our customer centricity approach. After our Lunch, we went around the town, which was closed due to the Band enforced protesting the murder of the people. We got to see the houses, few churches from outsides and also the locals, then again it was the usual, back to Hotel, Dinner and stuff...

The final day, was quite uneventful, we took our first flight to Kolkata, there after spending a few hours with some family friends, it was back to Mumbai. The last flight was really boring, it was congestion as usual at Mumbai airport, so we flew all the way to Pune and came back and finally landed almost 2 hours late, from there it was a cab ride all the way to Nashik...

Looking back at the visit, I have few regrets that didnt get to do much sightseeing or shopping. But then it was once in a lifetime experience. Having the knowledge that you are in a place which has many problems of extremists, no stable government, seeing the tension on faces of all the people was surely quite chilling, plus being referred to as a Main Land Indian !!!!