Of all the people I meet in Nokrek, Watesing is the only one who insists he has seen a tiger. He announces this as he leads me through the blinding mist towards the matcha nokpante, clumsily translated as “bachelor tiger’s den”. The Nokrek National Park —spread over 47 sq. km, within a 800 sq. km biosphere reserve—is supposed to have housed tigers once, and probably still does. But, ever since man decided ginger and rice were more valuable than tree and shrubbery, and the periphery of the park was encroached on by cultivation, the animal has grown exceedingly shy and is reported to venture out only at night.
A Garo farmer and his family outside their hut
But, in any case, the tiger was never my reason for trekking 12km with a backpack from the highway to the village of Daribokgre, on the fringes of the park. The hamlet is the only place offering accommodation for travellers to Nokrek.
Next to the Balpakram National Park in the South Garo Hills district, Nokrek (named after a local Garo clan) evokes awe and dread among the local population. Its jungles were once supposed to be the hunting grounds of the mandeburing, or savage man (I have half a mind to ask Watesing, my irascible 60-plus guide with suspicious buttonholes for eyes, if he had bumped into him as well), and leeches are said to drop from the trees at the merest whiff of human blood.
Nokrek’s similarities with Balpakram, regarded as the temporary abode of departed souls, are quite uncanny. If the South Garo Hills park is referred to as the Land of Eternal Winds, Nokrek could easily be the Land of Infernal Winds. On my first night in a borang (a traditional Garo tree hut) in Nokrek, a storm had threatened to uproot the structure and toss it into the valley carved nearby by the Simsang river. The walls were shaking; the roof was dripping; and the winds, routed through a million channels, seemed to merge into one giant stream of thunderous noise. Luckily, the tiny thatch and bamboo structure survived the onslaught.
At the nokpante, Watesing coaxes me to stand at the edge of the tall boulders in whose crevices the tiger was once supposed to have slumbered, while he climbs up a tree. From our respective vantage points, we separately wonder what the view would have been if we could see anything beyond the span of an arm.
Earlier, atop the 1,412m Nokrek Peak—the highest point of the Garo Hills—Watesing had rolled himself a cigarette, while I took in the smoky atmosphere over the hazy plains of Baghmara and Bangladesh in the south, and the tall metal tower on top of the Arabella hill in the north. The forests, with their perennial mist cover, seemed a world apart from the demonic abode described by local villagers.