We make a poignant journey in an American ATV, in search for the remains of a downed American warplane from World War II.
It had rained that day in the summer of 1942. The forest was lush green and teeming with wildlife. A young warrior named Kimusai, from the village of Salomi in Nagaland’s Kiphire district, was out on a hunt. He was newly married, and wanted to treat his wife to a feast of wild boar. It was twilight, and he already had a few kills to his name – all small animals. The moon would be out soon, he thought, and so he paused at the top of a hill – planning out a path that would take him down to the forest below.
Except for the sound of the jungle, it was quiet. But, all of a sudden, Kimusai heard a deafening wailing sound. He looked up and saw a giant bird flying very low, with a massive fire on its wings. As he watched in horror, it narrowly missed hitting a hillock. But, a moment later, it came crashing down right below where Kimusai was standing. There was an ear-splitting sound, and a thousand fires erupted around the crash site. Kimusai was a brave warrior, but he had never heard such a loud noise nor had he seen such a big fire. He dropped his kill and ran all the way to his village.
The elders at Salomi saw the burning bird and heard the explosion too. Those were the early days of Christianity in Nagaland, and many still strongly held on to animistic beliefs. The burning bird was seen as a message that the Gods were angry. Prayers were held, mithuns were sacrificed, and nobody was allowed to go to the jungle to hunt. Kimusai and a couple of hunters decided to investigate the giant bird from the sky, and made their way to the site.
They had never seen an aircraft before, but knew that it was not a bird from the heavens. The fire in the forest had died down but there was an overpowering stench of burnt flesh.
Among the debris, they found human remains – three dead bodies in different degrees of dismemberment. Two of the mutilated bodies were near the aircraft, while they found a third corpse stuck to the branches of a tall tree.
They buried the three airmen some distance away from the aircraft, collected a few things from the site, including a gun, and didn’t return there for many years.
North East India was the only World War II theatre in India, and the battles of Kohima and Imphal have been declared as two of the greatest battles in WWII – battles that changed the course of the Great War. The remains of these grim battles are scattered across the region. Battle tanks, guns, unmarked graves, Samurai swords of Japanese officers, weapons, unexploded bombs and aircraft remains have been found – but the jungles and high mountains still hold many secrets.
It took a lot of coaxing, but the jungles of Nagaland eventually revealed one of its secrets to me.
About 12 years ago, while on a solo motorcycle trip, I got stuck in the rain and sought shelter in a roadside shack – the likes of which one finds all over Nagaland. There were three old men in the shack, and they had a fire going to make some tea – which we all drank from bamboo mugs. When the rain stopped, we heard a far away drone of a plane in the overcast sky, and one of them casually remarked that he hoped that this plane doesn’t also end up like the one in the jungle. A plane in the jungle? I immediately bombarded him with questions… the old man just pointed to the blue mountains in the distance and said it lay behind the third mountain range. A very vague indication indeed – and so it’s taken me a decade to find it.
The remains of the WWII plane lay scattered over a large area under the jurisdiction of a new village named Tsurevong, in the Kiphire district.
To get to Tsurevong from Guwahati, I had charted out a route through the remote areas of Nagaland – and, of course, a large part of it was off-road. Now the only reason I was able to attempt this route to begin with was because my steed for this expedition was a Polaris RZR SW 800. Not only is this perhaps one of the only vehicles on the planet to be able to traverse this kind of terrain, but there’s also an irony to the fact that we’re using an American off-roader to search for the remains of a downed American plane.
Rains plagued me as I drove out from Guwahati, and it didn’t let up till I passed the Kaziranga National Park – where a friend, Thejakielie, joined me. The RZR SW 800 has a roof and a windshield, but against the heavy rain it provided about as much protection as standing under a papaya tree! We bought plastic sheets to save ourselves from the rain (not that it helped much), and also to protect our bags and cameras. The RZR has a nice luggage rack at the back, and so we filled it to the brim with a spare wheel, tent, oil, coolant, some electricals, rucksacks and four cans of petrol. Since we would be covering ground at night, we also fitted a couple of aftermarket fog lamps on the roof.
We crossed into Nagaland a little after sundown through the Sonari border. The topography changed immediately after we crossed the bamboo barricade – and so did the condition of the roads. It was only 45 kilometres to the town of Mon, but it took us the better part of four hours to cover the distance. The road disintegrated and totally disappeared at some stretches. The RZR obviously didn’t mind the bad roads, but it was difficult to drive fast through slush in the heavy rain. The last thing we wanted was to slide off the mountain at night.
Our lights cut a lonely furrow through the rain and the black mountains, but close to midnight we drove into the Helsa Resort. Built atop a hill, the resort has lovely bamboo cottages built in the traditional Konyak manner.
Mon is the headquarters of the Konyak Nagas. Among all the Naga warriors, the Konyaks were the most feared – mainly for their reputation as fierce head-hunters.
After breakfast, we drove 42 kilometres to reach Lungwa village. This village seems caught in a time warp. It shares an international boundary with Myanmar, and the border passes right through the middle of the huge thatched house of the Chief (referred to as the Angh). And so we had tea in Myanmar, and returned for a smoke in India!
The Angh is not a rich man in monetary terms, but he wields enormous influence. The Angh of Lungwa controls about 50 villages inside Myanmar.
The Konyak warriors practiced headhunting till quite recently in fact. When a warrior would bring back the head of his enemy during a battle, he was decorated with tattoos on his face and body. The more heads he collected, the more intricate the tattoos became, and the more his esteem in society rose.
Headhunting is a thing of the past of course, and all the tattooed warriors are on the wrong side of 50 – in a few years’ time, there’ll be none left.
The Konyaks are master craftsmen – they make beautiful artifacts out of wood, bamboo, copper and bone. They have amazing handmade muzzle loading guns and manufacture their own gunpowder. According to some books, they’ve been making guns even before the British landed in India.
After topping up the fuel tank and the jerry cans early the next morning, we started out for Mokokchung. Thirty kilometres out of Mon, we reached the small town of Wakching – where the road dropped down and disappeared. It was rainy and sunny at the same time, and after a couple of hours of total off-roading, we came across a small hut where the lady of the house offered us some tea and biscuits. It was in the middle of nowhere, and I wondered how on earth they sustain themselves.
We crossed an ancient looking iron bridge over the roaring and muddy Dhiku river, and rested under a huge jackfruit tree for lunch. Sliding a Polaris ATV sure makes one hungry!
The short wheelbase of the RZR SW 800 makes sliding through corners a breeze. And we hardly slowed down at all while negotiating big pools of water – safe in the knowledge that it wasn’t going to stall. After more than five hours of slipping, sliding, jumping and getting drenched in muddy waters, we suddenly emerged out of a thick canopy of very tall grass and hit a brilliant highway at the village of Merangkong, in the Mokokchung district. All this while, we hadn’t seen any other vehicles at all, and had to guess which path to take at intersections because there was no one to ask for directions. Mokokchung has the loveliest roads in all of Nagaland, but the Polaris isn’t exactly meant to be driven on tarmac.
The next day we had another couple of hours on good roads before we took a nondescript left turn from the village of Longkhum. At some point after the bulldozer cut through the hills, they laid stones on the track and then seemingly forgot all about it. It was good news for us though, as we got a stretch of more than 50 kilometres of off-road tracks with no traffic whatsoever.
After a brief stop at Wokha, we carried on to Kohima. To have called ourselves dirty would have been an understatement, and Thejakielie was rightly apprehensive about whether or not his family would let us walk in through the door of his house – which was en route. Thankfully, they did!
Rokovor, a photographer, joined us at Kohima. We passed a number of small villages and towns, most of which had magical oriental names: Mima, Cakhabama, Pfutsero, Chizami, Losami, Jessami, Meluri, Akhegwo, Longmatra, and Pungro.
As we approached Pungro, I watched the beautiful Zinki river flow gently and disappear across around the bend as it made its way into the Chindwin river in Myanmar.
The next morning, we had another 45 kilometres to cover off road before we were to hit the village of Tsurevong. Along the muddy road, we drove past Pungro village, New Vong, the Lekhimro Hydel Electric project, Moya village, and finally to Tsurevong – the village beyond the blue mountains!
The RZR’s 4x4 option came into play when we were forced to take a detour through a mountainside that had been charred for felling. The RZR tackled the steep ascent and descent with aplomb. We had to drive through deep tracks made by logging trucks that were filled with water. It was no problem, though, as the 12-inches of suspension travel did the trick. The drive-shafts and the suspension arms took regular impact on the logs and rocks, but they withstood the punishment without much complaint.
Tsurevong, with just 38 households, has no electricity, no proper roads and no schools for the village children. They all go to school in Pungro. It’s in these far-flung villages of Nagaland that one gets to see village life in all its unvarnished rustic glory.
On an earlier visit, old man Kimusai and I sat on a large rock in the midst of some teak and alder trees that overlooked the valley. He had a faraway look on his eyes as he narrated the story. His memory was sharp and his story telling ability brilliant. He spoke as if it had happened yesterday. By the time he finished, the sun was setting and the sky had turned a flaming red. He stood up with a deep sigh and made his way home.
“The place was haunted by the spirit of the men who died there,” Kimusai said. He didn’t specify further, and I didn’t probe more.
It was probably a C-47 transport plane that had taken off from Chabua airbase in Assam. American pilots flew these supply planes across the high snow covered jagged peaks of the Himalayas to ferry much-needed materials to the armies of Chiang Kai-shek in Kunming in south western China, who were fighting against the Imperial Japanese army.
These sorties were fraught with danger. The planes were up against natural elements like snow and 200mph winds, as well as the Japanese Zero fighter planes. This infamous route was nicknamed ‘The Hump’ and ‘Skyway To Hell’ by the brave airmen who flew these planes. More than 700 planes went down in this region during WWII. Many fell in the deep jungles of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Myanmar.
Like so many others, this plane never made it back to base after dropping its cargo in Kunming.
The evergreen jungle soon overgrew the wreckage, and it was only in 1967 when the villagers started clearing the forest for cultivation that the remains of the downed aircraft were revealed.
The villagers knew the worth of aluminium of course, and so they piled logs on top of the plane and set it on fire. Some made utensils out of the melted aluminium, while others made fantastic machetes and knives out of the steel.
The site is a few kilometres below the village, which is where we left the Polaris. Since some of the forest had been burnt recently for jhum cultivation, it made the trek to the crash site a bit easier.
The grass at the site was tall and thick, and the trees massive. I could hear a stream, but couldn’t see it initially because of the thick undergrowth. The village pastor, Retringia, slashed a path with his razor sharp machete and we followed close behind. It was deadly quiet, and except for the occasional call of the lone eagle that circled the sky, ours were the only sounds.
We first found the still shiny landing gear, a few twisted wheels, parts of the gearbox and engine – including a crankshaft, fan of some sort, and some other heavy parts that were scattered over a large area. We walked downstream, slashing away at the thick foliage and found a number of large engine parts.
A whole lot of parts are buried underground, and they keep popping up during cultivation every year. A couple of years ago, a villager dug up a radio set and a rusted loaded revolver!
It was an overwhelming sense of discovery, as this was something that I’ve waited to uncover for a very long time. And the fact that the headman told me that I was the first person from mainland India to visit the site made it even more satisfying. It had been quite a journey, and I couldn’t have done it without my trusty steed – which can literally go anywhere, the Polaris RZR.
As I sat on a fallen tree and looked down towards the valley, I couldn’t help but imagine the plight of the crew as they came down in flames. Even if they had survived the crash, it would have been near impossible for the wounded airmen to survive in this dense jungle crawling with wildlife.
These remains lie in a far and obscure place, but it’s well worth the trek – especially with the RZR as your companion. It’s a true reminder, though, of the kind of hell that the soldiers went through during this long and bitter war.
After more than 70 years, nobody knew where the three graves were laid but I said a silent prayer for the men who died so far away from their homeland.
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