If you travel by road from Kohima to Kottayam, what is the minimum number of States within India through which you can travel, including the origin and the destination?

The answer is B (7). The route is Nagaland, Assam, West Bengal, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu or Karnataka, and Kerala. Every step is forced by geography. Nagaland touches only Assam and Manipur among the useful neighbours, and Manipur leads nowhere useful. Assam is reached only through West Bengal on the road network you need, so West Bengal is unavoidable. From West Bengal, Odisha is the direct southward link. Odisha borders Andhra Pradesh, not Telangana, so you must pass through Andhra Pradesh, and from there Tamil Nadu or Karnataka leads into Kerala.

The option of 8 comes from routing through Chhattisgarh and Telangana, which is longer. Note that Telangana was carved out in 2014, so any route that uses it counts it as a separate state.

Concept: minimum-state path counting on India's state adjacency map. It is a useful exercise for Prelims geography and for understanding how connectivity shapes the northeast's road links to the rest of India.

Trap: aspirants often assume Bihar or Jharkhand lies on the way, or they forget Assam's only land link to the mainland runs through West Bengal, and so they overcount.