The Balloon Bridge

  

The title of this post - The Balloon Bridge - may sound funny. When I heard it for the first time, I thought, what has a balloon got to do with a bridge. But then, the name is right.

The photo of the Balloon Bridge seen here was taken in 2005 when I went to the Lohit district of Arunachal Pradesh. It was erected by the army to facilitate transport of vehicles on the mighty Lohit river - the same one which is called Brahmaputra the moment it enters Assam and joined by Dibang.

During monsoon months, and that is a long stretch for Arunachal and Assam, the Lohit, the Dibang and the Brahmaputra, all are in spate. The Balloon Bridge is impossible to be put up in such force. One of these days, I will also post the way people and vehicles used to travel in Arunachal in times of heavy rains and floods.

Coming back to Balloon Bridge, this was an annual exercise, rather a ritual, when the muddy grey floods of Lohit calmed down a bit and gave way to a prestine blue. The 'Balloons' are inflated rubber rafts tightened with each other with ropes. Aluminium rails become the smooth track for vehicles, sometimes as heavy as Army's Shaktimans.

And the army guys themselves made the pebbled river bed motorable. At times, the water would be crystal clear that you can see everything below it. I am sure,, one can go a little deeper inside the water and still see as clear as this photo shows the pebbles.     

Now-a-days there is an all weather bridge on the Lohit, some 30-40 kms upstream from this spot. So I really don't know if they are still erecting such bridges. These were once common in Arunachal Pradesh.       

But why just Arunachal? Many Delhiites, and for that matter, many people across the country living on the banks of rivers too must have seen it sometimes or the other.

In Delhi, till 2008, the authorities used to put up a similar bridge - here they call it as a pontoon bridge - on the Yamuna between the ITO Barrage bridge and the Old Yamuna Bridge. Now after the Geeta Colony-Shantivan bridge has come up, I think they have stopped putting up this bridge.

I agree, it is necessary for the local population, specially in remote areas like Arunachal, to have all weather bridges and roads. But for people like me, these are objects of sheer romanticism. Taking vagabonds like me to surreal surroundings. Almost.    

  

Oh my is this real ...?