Discovering Digboi’s 3 Must-Dos by Mandvi – Part 1

The pachyderms with their famed elephantine memory won’t be thanking one of their own anytime soon in Digboi, if the local lore is to be believed.

It goes that sometime in the 1860s, out of the steaming jungles at the foothills of the Patkai Mountains emerged an elephant, its leg wet with mud mixed with traces of oil.

An observant employee of the Assam Railway and Trading Co pounced on the prospect of black gold. Soon the labourers were being exhorted to ‘dig-boy-dig’…and the rest is history…

Assam is what I call river country. It is also tea country and what a lot of us forget the original oil country.

The first mention of oil here was made by army officers and geological surveyors way back in the 1820s. It seemed to seep out and mix in the waters of the Dihing River.

Within years of the first oil well being dug in 1859 in the USA and decades before the Sheikhs of the Middle East’s desert discovered their wishing wells, the first oil well was hand dug in Digboi. Making it not only India’s oldest but Asia’s first oil well.

It’s to this oil town nestled on the fringes and mounds of tropical forests, the traditional elephant corridors now cut off by walls that we headed to.

Verdant Valley Burns Bright

Stormy clouds follow on our heels as we drive to Digboi through a flat valley. The wind blows every shade of green around us. The bamboos creak and bend, the paddy fields flatten out and streams ripple as the water is hurried along.

The locals here are accused of being laid back. A passing sight paints a complete picture- In front of a neat little thatched hut is a pond with ducks grooming themselves.

To be continued………………