Thenzawl is a nodal town, 90 kilometers south of Aizawl and makes for a convenient place to break the 8 hour slog to Lunglei. The tourist lodge here is among the oldest in Mizoram and is better managed than some of the others in the state. My room was huge with a balcony that overlooked a little brook that gurgled all night long. Here I killed many hours reading my kindle and watching a colony of fiery golden ants industriously running up and down a water pipe carrying scraps of food in their mouths.
A majority of the clientele at the lodge weren’t tourists but people on official duty. While lunching at the dining hall, I got into a conversation with an Army Officer stationed in Lunglei who couldn’t believe I had travelled all the way from Mumbai to cavort about Mizoram where there was “nothing to see or do”. Nevertheless, he enthusiastically showed me videos on his mobile phone of all the scenic spots that he had seen in the region and invited me to a round of drinks at his office in Lunglei. It was a generous offer and a difficult one to resist in the predominantly dry state.
Another guest was Rajesh, a Petroleum Inspector from Bihar who was treated royally by the Mizo petrol pump owners that had accompanied him. After they departed, he joined my table to vent his frustrations about the job. 4 years ago, after a trip to Aizawl, he made the mistake of attempting to impress his boss by telling him that he loved the scenery here. Little did he realize that he would be the only one to show any enthusiasm for the place with the rest of his colleagues regarding the assignment more as a punishment than a pleasure. So he would become the sole individual sent to Mizoram to do the work. And now, married with a kid, he loathed the long haul he had to make every few months here.
Like many of the tourist lodges in Mizoram, the one in Thenzawl is about 2 kms shy of the town proper but it’s a pleasant walk where you pass through dainty pools of water, picturesque houses clustered on lush green slopes, wide open spaces housing poultry farms with clothes drying in the sun hanging languidly by the fences and curious little boys and girls running up to you as you take pictures to see what you’re shooting.
One of the more ubiquitous sights in Thenzawl is a handloom mill. You see them at the backs of houses, by the roadside, in grocery stores and in their own little private closets with the women of the town chugging away at them. Although it may seem like a quiet, little place, the handloom industry in Thenzawl has boomed with entrepreneurial zeal thanks to sustainable development initiatives involving the women in the area. A lot of the product goes to the Aizawl markets and further to other markets in the Northeast and beyond.
If you go by the Mizoram tourist brochure, there are plenty of things to do and places to see around Thenzawl. There’s the Vangtawng Falls, supposedly the highest falls in all of Mizoram, the Chawngchilhi cave, commemorating a folktale about a romantic union between a girl and a serpent, Chhingpui Tlan, a memorial stone erected in the memory of the downfall of two lovers and a Deer Park on the outskirts of the town.
But I was content with just walking up to the Presbyterian Church on one of its hillocks and looking at the panoramic landscapes around. There were quaint churches nestled in the hills, quiet little roads curving between thickly forested hills and football matches being played at the training grounds far down below. Perhaps, the best way to experience an ordinary town is to take pleasures from the ordinary things it has to offer and Thenzawl is a marvellously pleasant ordinary town.
