2 Wheel Vagabond: North East India

The border on the Indian side was just as quiet as the Myanmar side, both the Immigration and customs offices were empty but when I finally found a staff member to help me they got the paper work sorted very quickly and I was soon on the way. I spent the night in the border town of Moreh with some European and American motorcyclists traveling the opposite direction and the next morning I headed north to explore the remote regions of Nagaland. The first city I passed through was Imphal, it was noisy, dirty and congested, I filled up with petrol and I was immediately surrounded by 30 locals wanting to take photos and bombarding me with questions, I decided then that I would avoid the cities and larger towns whenever possible. Nagaland was a different world, I had planned on taking half a day to get to the city of Dimapur but the roads turned into mountain tracks which at times were barely ridable, it ended up taking me 2 days. The narrow mountain road didn’t have much traffic but the drivers that I did see heading in the opposite direction drove like maniacs often coming around blind corners out of control, leaving it up to me to avoid a collision, luckily due to the road condition they were going at a relatively slow pace and other then one car side swiping my pannier box, which luckily left no damage I managed to avoid the oncoming vehicles. The Scenery in Nagaland was spectacular, the steep hills were covered in jungle and the winding track passed through many small villages. I was impressed with the villager’s way of life, they were living sustainably within their environment, working with it not against it, everybody seemed to be busy working not only for themselves but for the benefit of the community and most importantly everybody seemed happy. This seemed like a good lesson to me, how happy you can be with simple things in life, you just have to look at any city in the world to see the misery of people who struggle everyday with debt just to keep their heads above the financial waters ….. credit cards, loans, faster cars, bigger houses, better furniture…. All the things that we think we need are also the things that chain us to a life of wanting more and having to be a slave to paying it all off.
As beautiful as these little villages were, tourism wasn’t their strongpoint and finding accommodation was quite a struggle, it gets dark quite early in India and I found myself in the situation of possibly not having any where to sleep for the night, I had lost my tent on the road in Myanmar so camping wasn’t an option. I asked about guesthouses at a number of villages but struggled to find anyone that could speak English fluently enough to understand me, after my 5th village and on the verge of it getting dark I met a local English teacher who told me there was a guesthouse in the next village a few km up the road. I organised to sleep in the guesthouse, it was very basic but I was so relieved to have somewhere to stay for the night it felt like the Hilton, plus it was only 100 Rupee, that’s about $2 Australian, cheapest guesthouse I’ve stayed in so far. It turned out my cheap little guest house didn’t include toilet or washing facilities, so early the next morning while most of the villagers still slept, in absolute desperation I grabbed my roll of paper, took a walk down the road to the first corner and out of sight of the locals did my business with a spectacular view of the sun rising over the Nagaland mountains.
After 2 days of hard riding I finally made it to the city of Dimapur, I fought my way through the traffic and found a hotel on the outskirts of town, I parked the bike around the back and jumped straight into a hot shower. The last 2 days were great fun and the mountain roads had been challenging but my next challenge would be dealing with the traffic on India’s main roads and highways as I headed West. The road took me to Assam and Megalaya districts, my destination was the town of Cherrapunji, credited as being the wettest place in India the area is surrounded by forests, sheer cliffs and waterfalls, which gave me the opportunity to swap my riding boots for hiking boots for a few days. A highlight of the area are the natural root bridges that span the pristine rivers, visiting the deep valleys where the root bridges were was like visiting another world that left the chaos of India behind. The road west was brand new and was a pleasure to ride, for once there was hardly any traffic apart from the odd goat that ventured on the road. I had planned to stop at one of the larger towns but once again came across the problem of not being able to get accommodation, I’m sure some of the guesthouses had space but just weren’t willing to let a foreigner stay….. Indian hospitality! I had to ride into the night, the issue is that after dark the villages totally closed down and looked like war zones, I arrived in the slightly larger village of Rongjeng and found a restaurant open, I asked if there was a place to stay and they told me I had to register with the local police. I finally found the police station, I was a little tentative because as much as they might help, if they decide to ask questions or are in a bad mood dealing with police can make life a nightmare or cost you a bribe. After an hour of talking to the officer in charge I was escorted to a guesthouse and finally found somewhere to stay for the night, I promised myself that I would find places to stay much earlier from now on. I took a slight wrong turn the next day and rode through Tura, along the way I passed a group of what looked like heavily armed mercenaries in two pickup trucks. They stopped me and it turned out they were the local paramilitary patrol, they ended up being nice guys and told me that we were in a disputed area and there were currently problems with insurgents, and after we took some photos with them and the bike they offered to give me an escort until we entered a safer area.
I was quite keen to visit the district of Sikkim which is at the base of the Himalayas, Darjeeling is a town which is famous for its tea plantations, it was the perfect place to park the bike for a few days, relax and enjoy the scenery. The elevation rose quickly as I climbed the winding mountain roads, I stopped to take in the view of the clouds over the landscape and realised that the patch of white at the top of the clouds was actually a mountain, not just any mountain but the peak of Kanchenzonga the world’s 3rd highest mountain at 8586 meters, impressive stuff. I sampled many a cup of Darjeerling tea with superb views of the Himalayas over the next few days and also managed to do some touring along the mountain roads of Sikkim, I couldn’t stay too long however, Nepal was calling and I wanted to get closer to the magical Himalayas.

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2 Wheel Vagabond

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Thursday 1 December 2016

North East India

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