CHANDUBI, Jan 29 ? Fed up with the secluded life on the uninhabited island of Juan, Fernandez Alexander Selkirk, the explorer and navigator considered his lonely life a curse bereft of society. Pinning to return to the arms of humanity, he admitted , Friendship and Love, Divinely bestowed upon man
........ of a love
........ I taste you again!
Truely. So have the employes of Chandubi tourist lodge. A government job has forced them to stay off the beaten track here at Chandubi. In the solitude of forests they looked unhappy because of unending wait to welcome visitors which was a non-event. Seeing the crew of scribes, they were agog with delight.
Speaking to the group of visiting scribes, they said, ?We are spending a life in the woods where hush is the constant companion?. A few people have however started to come to Chandubi. Seeing the inflow of tourists, people were hopeful of having Chandubi as one of the prime tourist spots of the State since it has the making of a leading tourist spot.
Here it is worthwhile to mention that a State like Kerala is forging ahead in tourism sector and has achieved success on an unprecedented scale. But some tourist spots of the State offering breathtaking view are left out of account. The case in point is Chandubi, 60 km west of Guwahati.
The historic must-see-destination is gathering dust. The 35 km-long road from Mirza to Chandubi is a hazard to the visitors. The street snakes through the woods from Rajapara to the picnic spot and is visited by many picnic parties but the road is yet to be metalled or tarred. Moreover, the woody bank of the marsh (beel) which had huge sal trees have fallen prey to the greed of wood smugglers. Here it is worth mentioning that the woody bank was a rich habitat of fauna including various birds, deers, tigers pachyderms and even rhinos etc who were stated to have ventured to the banks of the marsh.
The beel was sequel to the devastating quake on January 12, 1897 and was originally 5 miles in length and 1 mile wide. But it is fast dwindling following the heaps of rubbish left by the flood of the Kulsi river. Further, leaves and alluvial soil moving with the stream from the surrounding hills is also decrease the size of the historic marsh.
An interesting anecdote about the name of the marsh is that in the quake of 1897 a boy named Chandaram drowned in the beell and since then it is is known ?chando duba ? Bill? which later became Chand-du-bi. According to another view, Chan implies pahar in Khasi language and this hill is stated to have sunk in the earthquake and thus the name Chandubi.
It is worthmentioning two foreign tourists Jirfry Warford and his spouse Anna Sheldrew came to visit Chandubi in 1992, and a group of tourists from Japan have also visited the spot. But they reportedly returned without staying at Chandubi tourist lodge. The 16-bed tourist lodge is bereft of basic needs. Pure drinking water is a rarity here. The tourist restaurant lying unused needs to be improved. Though time has been kind to the beauty of this marsh, negligence on the part of the authorities is proving testing for the historic Chandubi.