North East Chron­i­cles: Located in the mid­dle of the mighty Brahma­pu­tra river, the jour­ney to Majuli island is around 2 and a half hours in a noisy ferry. We vis­ited the island on March 22 & 23, 2007 dur­ing our North East trip.

At the Nimati ferry ghat, the junc­tion where you need to board a ferry to the island of Majuli, we were told that there would be a delay for about 2 hours. A bandh had been called the day before (which didn’t hap­pen) but peo­ple were still under the impres­sion it was on.

We had no option but to sit beside the river side and wait. We got quite a few curi­ous glances from peo­ple around : I don’t think they are used to too many vis­i­tors in these parts. Some­one asked us why we were going to Majuli and seemed rather sur­prised when we said we were there for a visit.

Majuli, is often called the largest river island in the world. How­ever, one web­site clar­i­fied that it isn’t : it’s merely the largest fresh­wa­ter island in South Asia.

But the sense of its large­ness per­vades as soon as you step into the island. Because of the mass, you can’t really make out it’s an island in a river! It has an area of about 1080 sq. kms and is located on the Brahma­pu­tra river. Every mon­soon, the island is said to change shapes depend­ing upon the rain­fall and the mood of the river. The island is sup­pos­edly shrink­ing. But this doesn’t seem to have made much of a dif­fer­ence to the lives of the inhab­i­tants of the island who go about their daily lives as usual.

The ferry finally arrives and our dri­ver Shaikh expertly manip­u­lates the Indica onboard. It looks like a tricky maneu­ver but he seems con­fi­dent. It’s a 2 and a half hour jour­ney upstream and after a while we get tired of look­ing out into the river and pass time play­ing dumb cha­rades. The pas­sen­gers are not too happy with us as we’re mak­ing quite a bit of noise, but we’re really too absorbed in our game. And besides there aren’t too many things you can do on a boat going at about 15kms per hour (or what­ever that is in knots).

By the time we reach the island, dark­ness has descended. So except the bad roads, we don’t really get a feel of the place. Our abode for the night is the guest­house of the Gara­mur Satra and the care-taker is deeply apolo­getic as it’s in quite a mess. We man­age to set­tle in and put on the nets to evade scary look­ing mos­qui­toes. Din­ner is at the Cir­cuit House a dis­tance away and after that we come back and set­tle in for the night.

Early morn­ing, after a cur­sory bath (there’s no hot water and the place isn’t too clean either) I walk into the Satra premises where the monks are get­ting the main area ready for the morning’s ‘naam’.

Satras are an inher­ent part of the island’s cul­ture and there are about 25—26 remain­ing now includ­ing Kamal­abari, Auniati & Gara­mur. These cen­tres prop­a­gate the reli­gious ide­ol­ogy of the Assamese medieval Vais­navite saint Sankardeva & his dis­ci­ple Mad­havdeva, preach­ing what is called the Satria culture.

The heart of any Satra is the naamghar where dis­ci­ples gather to sing and pray. We vis­ited around 4 Satras, each one a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from the other. In one Satra, the young dis­ci­ples were busy mak­ing masks out of papier maché : these are used in their dance dra­mas and are an inte­gral part of the way they spread the message.

After vis­it­ing about 4 Satras, we pro­ceeded to a small non-descript place on the main road, where besides lunch, sev­eral sweets were con­sumed. After that, it was time to move on and we were back at the ferry ghat for the ferry at 3 pm.

Shaikh was back in busi­ness as he maneu­vered the boat again on to the ferry and we got ready for the long ride back to Jorhat. There were prob­a­bly many aspects that we missed out but we were happy that we got a chance to get a brief pre­view of life in this rather unique island.

Get­ting to Majuli:
The clos­est air­port is Jorhat. From Jorhat, you need to reach Nimatighat, which is about 20 odd kms away. From the ghat, there are about 2 daily fer­ries. The best sea­sons are early on in the year, and the win­ter time. The sum­mer and rainy months are best avoided. Besides the Satras, you can also explore other com­mu­ni­ties on the island to get a taste of the cul­ture includ­ing the weavers, and the Mish­ing com­mu­nity, which is said to have set­tled down here gen­er­a­tions ago, orig­i­nally from Arunachal Pradesh. A guide is always help­ful to show you around.

The Majuli Album

Ear­lier NE Chron­i­cles
– Wild, wild East: Kazi­ranga
– Life on stilts: Mawlyn­nong
– Back to school: Shil­long
– Mag­i­cal evening by Umiam lake