Jasingfaa Aqua Tourism Centre: Combining aquaculture, angling and tourism to turn central Assam’s Dimaruguri village into an offbeat travel destination

Aqua tourism as tourism enterprise still sounds exotic in Assam. However, for Naba Kumar Gogoi, owner of Jasingfaa Aqua Tourism Centre- a fish based aqua tourism center amidst a cluster of fish-rearing ponds and Mahrul wetland in Dimaruguri village of Nagaon district in central Assam-it is not just commercial and recreational endeavour but celebration of unique fish tradition and culture of the state.

Photo--Dr. Kulen Chandra Das

Since 2011, Jasingfaa Aqua Tourism Centre has been organizing a national level angling competition in October to attract attention of renowned anglers in the country. This has become a popular event of angling with participation of hundreds of renowned aqua-tourists and anglers from Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland apart from the home state.

“The moment we decided to host the event, it caught attention of national level anglers. Eminent angler Derek Dsouza, instantly came forward to help us with fishing tools and gears for angling and also guided us with his valuable advices,” says Naba Kumar Gogoi, owner, Jasingfaa Aqua-tourism Centre.

Altogether 170 aqua tourists from Assam, Meghalaya and Nagaland participated in the event held this year on October 16 after serious setback due to COIVD-19 pandemic for past two consecutive years.

The national event is accompanied by wide-ranging out of box ideas that include fish cuisine cooking competition for women and seminars for academics and experts. It also creates space for children by organizing fish identification and indigenous fishing tools identification competitions.

Photo--Dr. Kulen Chandra Das

With a dozen of fish ponds, the Jasingfaa Aqua Tourism Centre complex itself offers an ideal space for hosting such events. A restaurant, the main attraction of the resort is constructed on a small island amidst these cluster of ponds, and is connected by a beautiful bridge. In addition, he has taken the adjacent Mahrul beel, a wetland with 85 bigha(nearly 7.5 bigha constitute a hectare), which is a dead channel of river Kolong, on lease to promote indigenous fish culture. The wetland, with its unique biodiversity attract thousands of migratory birds and a home to many indigenous fish species.

“Fish is found abundant in numerous ponds, swamps, wetlands and rivers and our food culture is incomplete without inclusion of a fish based dish. I always consider that when we talk about aqua tourism, it becomes almost synonym to a festival of indigenous fish culture,” Gogoi says.

Apart from the national event, Gogoi also offer services like ‘catch and release’ and ‘catch and carry the fish’ services for interested anglers throughout the year. For ‘catch and release’, the angler is required to pay a registration fee of Rs.50/ to experience the joy of angling. The angler needs to release the fish after catch. For ‘catch and carry the fish’ the angler needs to pay a sum of Rs.1000 for registration and he or she can carry home whatever fish he or she catches. This has added a steady earning to the center.

“Although the national angling event was started in 2011, the process of digging ponds for commercial purpose started way back in 1985 with the initiative of my father Dutiram Gogoi. An agronomist of Hindustan Fertilizer Corporation he had the opportunities to visit a number of countries like UK and France under a Indo-British Education Project. Gradually he started digging more ponds, as commercial fishery was proved to be a profit earning business.” Gogoi says.

In 2007 his father decided to dig a big pond covering 10 bigha land, and he decided to keep a small plot amidst it like an island for agriculture purpose. The decision gave Gogoi the idea of opening a resort on that tiny island. That was the kickstart of the entire project of aqua tourism, he adds.

Initially his father hesitated to open the resort in that interior village. However, the project completed within three years, and immediately proved to be a huge success. People of the locality got a new taste of outing and recreation amidst the serenity of the village. They played a vital role in spreading the message of the resort and its environment. Since then, there was no looking back. Gogoi has just been adding new ideas to make it more success.

The soothing atmosphere with trees and chirping of varieties of resident and migratory birds that visit Mahrul wetland during winter are added attraction for aqua tourists.

But that is not all. Gogoi has more interesting stories to tell.

An experimentalist, Gogoi dared to experiment rearing Golden Mahsheer, a cold water fish that survive in hilly and rocky rivers in his pond under the guidance of Directorate of Cold Water Fisheries Research, Nainital way back in 2011. He dedicated one big pond for the purpose. Despite challenges, the fingerlings grew healthy, survived for ten years in a pond environment.

However, such experimentation was spoiled due to ignorance and mishandling of one of his employees, and he lost all the fishes in 2021.

“The effort was for rearing purpose only. The purpose was to breed them in future and to end the endangered status of Golden Mahsheer. This is a cold-water fish. We put all the efforts to make them healthy. It yielded success and they grew up to two and half kilograms in weight. We also tried to breed them. However, all such efforts went in vain. We are now trying to start the process again,” says Gogoi.

Apart from the resort and the aqua-tourism center, he is also owner of a 100 bigha tea-garden, a piggery, a garden of organic farming.

“Naba Kumar Gogoi has been turning aqua tourism a commercial activity as well as a tool to pass on knowledge of this unique aquaculture of the state to young generation through hands on activities. Over the years he has become the example of how a successful businessman can simultaneously contribute to save nature and unique aquatic biodiversity. It is because of his endless efforts that Mahrul beel is still alive with its unique aquatic biodiversity while many such waterbodies of the district have already been illegally encroached”, says Dr. Kulen Chandra Das, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Nagaon Girls College, who has been closely associated with the project.

Both Das and Gogoi have been visiting different educational and research institutions for promotion of indigenous fish resources of the state. They also attended hands on training on breeding and hatchery management of Mahsheer at ICAR- Directorate of Cold Water Fisheries Research in Bhimtal, Uttarakhand.

Ratna Bharali Talukdar