Imphal - Manipur

I have thought many times about how to continue the itinerary. Should I go to the Mon, to Longwa exactly or better to the border with Myanmar? But that would fundamentally change my travel direction. Moreover, the journey there would be quite time-consuming. I decided to stick to my original direction. So, on to Imphal in Manipur. However, for days I had been struggling with another problem. I couldn't book train tickets to continue my journey to South India soon. All possible platforms denied me this. It got to the point where I became disgruntled and tired of traveling. Nothing seemed to work properly anymore.

So, off to Imphal for now

For that, I took a shared taxi to the Manipur police station. That was the end station. So, there I stood for the next 10 minutes, as if I had been forgotten. Then it suddenly went very fast again when a minibus full of people came to a stop. They said, 'Get in,' so I asked the driver where to? Imphal! The drive took 5 minutes until he stopped again. We were here in Mao, the first place in Manipur. The driver motioned for me to follow him. We arrived at the police station where I had to register for Manipur. Of course, everything was done properly, as is usual in India everywhere, of course including home address and German phone number. Now, we continued and it would turn out that I probably had the sleepiest driver ever. With an average speed of 24 km/h and a precise aiming ability to hit every pothole, we reached Imphal three and a half hours later, which most certainly could have been done in two and a half.

Imphal

I decided to explore the city the following day. The city center was just over 2 km from my accommodation, so I walked again. Now, first I passed by the Hanuman Temple, which of course was inhabited by monkeys again. Next, I came to the 'Kangla Nongpok Torban', and I suspected that it was the entrance to the Kangla Fort. So, I paid the entrance fee of 30 rupees (0.34 €) and followed the well-developed path. But after about 15 minutes, I came to a dead end, there was nothing to see here. So, I walked back and then a little further along the main road until I found the sign for an actual entrance, but there was no one in sight and a sign indicated something about access being closed and no entry. However, since a gate was standing open, I walked hesitantly through it and tried my luck. I walked 8 steps when suddenly a uniformed person approached me and said I had to go another 1.5 km to the correct entrance. I promptly, but politely, replied that I had lost interest and would rather go to the bazaar.

The bazaar was only 1 km away and was called 'Ima Market'. It consisted of three large market halls, where all sorts of trinkets were being sold, but here exclusively by women. Afterwards, there was the bazaar, where there was pushing and shoving again.

Loktak Lake

This is a freshwater lake that looks pretty impressive with its many round grass islands, so it was clear that I had to go there. Ammo, my guesthouse owner, took me to the bus that was heading towards Moirang, which was still quite bearable. One kilometer on foot and another 8 km in a small shared vehicle. At the destination, I wanted to cross to Karang Island on a small ferry. However, it seemed that it was not running at the moment and they offered me an expensive one-way ride, which I naturally declined. It was now shortly after eleven o'clock and the sun was finally beginning to break through and improve the view of the lake. So, I hiked up to the nearby viewpoint, but unfortunately, the view was still very hazy. So, the lake was nice, but not a great travel experience. After some snacks in Moirang at the bazaar, I took a shared taxi back to Imphal.

Change of course

I tried again here for several hours to get train tickets, which again did not work, so I spontaneously pulled a joker out of my pocket, sealed the plan to travel to South India, and booked a flight ticket to Bangkok here and now. So, I will be exploring northern Thailand.