Nabaneeta Dev Sen is a highly acclaimed writer in Bengali literary circles, with her prolific writing across various genres like poetry, short stories, novels, essays, memoirs, and travelogues. She is also a very popular children’s author. On A Truck Alone, to McMahon is the translation of Dev Sen’s travelogue of her journey from Jorhat in Assam to the McMahon Line at the Indo-Tibetan border. It is a trip that is taken on an impulse, a journey of a restless soul who feels the entire universe is accessible to those who dare to be reckless.
Sometime in October 1977, Sen was invited to Jorhat for The Assam Women’s Literature Conference. She had agreed to attend the conference on the condition that she would be taken to Kaziranga. The author almost misses the conference when she mistakenly boards the flight to Kolkata instead of Jorhat, so engrossed was she in conversation with Dr. Ashutosh Bhattacharya! They ultimately manage to catch their flight, thanks to their co-passengers. The entire episode is described in a light-hearted vein. Soon after completing the formalities of being the Chief Guest at the Conference and giving a couple of interviews, the author’s friends take her to the Kamrup Complex in Kaziranga, on the banks of a narrow river, across which lies a forest. Here, she sights wild animals, and catches a streak of yellow that is the tiger that made off with the forest officer’s pet deer. An elephant ride in the forest in the rains followed by a night alone in a hut on the edge of the forest makes her visit to Kaziranga truly magical.
On the return journey by ferry steamer to Tezpur, she meets a gentleman—Jeep Babu, as she refers to him—who is on his way to Bomdila, not far from Tezpur. In the course of their conversation, he mentions how in the sixties, the Chinese had come as far as Bomdila but went back along the Lhasa-Tawang Road, where the border with Tibet lies—the McMahon Line. They left after building a fantastic road, according to the gentleman. On confirming that this was indeed a direct road from Bomdila to the Tawang Monastery, the writer is soon engaged in finding ways to get there.