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Description of a march through unmapped and uninhabited jungle near Kanjang |
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I left Kanjang with the rather optimistic intention of getting to Phowakungri by the most direct route - no villages, no paths and country of which the maps were extremely sketchy and known to be inaccurate. My intention was to make for a pass in the distant range and thence get down to an old K.P.M. camp in the Shiloi valley. This I hoped to do in two fairly easy marches. Thence I though I ought to get to Phowakungri in one march. By the nearest inhabited route it would take me five marches. We crossed the Pochong valley and got up the other side apparently near the top, and proposed to camp, at about 3.15 pm, but could find no water. On again till 3.45 but still no water anywhere near. Then we got to what appeared to be the top of the ridge and plunged happily down into the valley the other side through thick jungle down a very steep and rocky water course carrying on in the belief that it went straight down into the Shiloi valley where we could camp among pines and grass. We did camp eventually among pines and grass between 5.30 and 6.0pm - no further from Kanjang than where we had first stopped to look for water, for instead of crossing the Phodung-Shiloi watershed we had come over into the valley of another tributary of the Phodung. My disgust was considerable but no-one else seemed to think it anything but a joke, including the Lapvomi coolies who had had an exceedingly hard day and would have to climb back the last 1500 ft to regain our previous height next day. |
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The valley of the Phodung has all been terraced at some time and on the Kanjang side of it is an empty village site - the levelled house-sites are still traceable - all grown over with jungle. This is known as Khu-lui and is said to have been decimated and driven away by raids from Somra. On our way up the east side of the valley we got an excellent view of the very broken line which forms the watershed between the Chingai and the Phodung, and would have to be the northern boundary of the Manipur State if the Chingai were rejected. My servant at the tail of the Safari saw a big sambhar stag. Everywhere the jungle had been burnt, it was said by the Tangkhuls from Somra. |
