Day 5 - Guwahati to Tezpur

I got up to a fresh morning in a big city and a busy market! Well, the market was yet to come into its form at around 8am. I had to move the bike to the side of the main road, as the shops adjacent to the Hotel would open in the next hour and the bike shouldn't be blocking their entrance. Those shop owners I had met when I arrived last night and they were kinda nice people. They told me to park the bike there, as they were closing for the day. I didn't want to bother them, so I got up a bit early and just moved the bike somewhere else. This is when I walked around the hotel a bit, to know the area better. It was actually a nice place in terms of liveliness, with the typical hustle and bustle of a busy touristy market.

This is where I had landed last night... Shops on both sides are yet to open, so I had to move my bike to public parking before that.. that is when this pic is shot :D

The morning I realized, the hotel isn't as dodgy as I thought. People were decent and the natural light coming into all floors was remarkable, considering its surrounded by buildings on all sides

In Sikkim, I had to do a lot of off-road stretches, standing up on the footpegs. During this, the knee armor sleeves were rubbing against my knees, which was getting a bit inconvenient over some time. Also if I had to continue with the remaining trip, (considering a lot of off-roading is ahead), I would have developed hotspots/bruises. So I came up with the idea to layer the knee-facing sides with a patch of cotton/Lycra (if available). Enquiring with the tailors nearby, all looked at the items as a hideous things and had no clue or interest in how to do, what I am asking. I must have checked at least 10 shops. I knew am not gonna buzz until I get this done. So after pestering a few oldies at the shops, they gave me the name of 'Badal', who may take up this work. But 'Badal' opens shop around 10-10:30. So I had to wait in my hotel and go back to the market again. Found the guy at last and others were right, he not only willingly took up the work, but he also did an excellent job at it. This whole thing took up half of my riding day, but it was necessary for me before putting myself and my bike on the road to Tawang.

I a hunt for a master tailor who can stand up to the challenge am gonna give.. lol

Mr. Badal; did an amazing job and got my knee protection sleeves padded!

What else to do standing in that lane and watching people watch me sweat like I came from outer space... 

From the tailor's shop walking back towards the hotel.

So this is how it looked. Now it won't scuff my knees during off-road riding. 

The road to Guwahati had given me confidence and assurance that, till Tezpur, I can expect the same or similar roads. So even though it was already past 11am, I was kinda cool with starting late. After all, it was just 190-200 KMs away, not gonna take that much time for me. Once I was ready and all set by around 12 to roll, I just opened up the permits to go through the details and maybe take a few pictures as a backup. That's when I got a surprise. The permit for Tawang expired yesterday. My initial understanding was, the permits would be for 15 days at least, so I request my friend on the 1st to get them done. But this one was only for 7 days and expired on the 7th of September. Rats!! 

The surprise of the day !! 

My itinerary just got updated with a new task of getting the permit renewed/updated for the next 7 days, assuming that would suffice for my planned days of travel. As Krish was somewhere in Nagaland on a personal trip, I couldn't reach him for help. So I enquired and landed up in the concerned office. The ride from the hotel to the Dy Commissioner's Office was horrible. This was my first day in Guwahati, I was sweating profusely (having come from a colder place just a day before), and add to it, I was on one of the busiest roads during the peak hours. Man, traffic can kill you, forget about the dangerous mountain roads. I was freakin dehydrated and was out of water or a shade on that main road to take a break. Somehow I made it to the office hoping for some quick action. But nope, it wasn't my day! The man at the counter was a snob and the lady next to him, well forget it. Just know that they were not courteous to the visitors. Got to know that there is no renewal of this permit and I have to apply again by filling up a form. Sigh! The humidity and dehydration were troubling me more than the formalities. Anyhow I filled out the form and got the necessary photocopies of id proof and 2 photographs I was carrying. I was told to come back at 4pm. Told you it was not my day. So walked outside the office thinking about where to wait for the next 2 hours.

This was a place I was not supposed to visit, had everything worked out as planned. But I am glad that I did, and learned about the process of getting ILP :) 

There was this shop next to the office, attended by this kind gentleman named Partha. He offered me a seat in his shop with a ceiling fan above, it was heaven for me at that time. I sipped on a bunch of litchi juice from the freezer, and while at it, learned about the routes ahead and a few other pieces of information from him. All this conversation just lead me to discover that he too rides and has a RE Desert Storm. As I had some time in hand, he suggested getting my bike checked at a RE showroom nearby. Wasn't a bad idea I thought, given that I had nothing else to do while I wait for the permit to be ready. So I kept my luggage at Partha da's shop and headed to the RE showroom. Rest all is in the pictures.

Partha da, who gave me a place to rest and relax... Being an Enfield rider, it was good to spend time with him chatting about the place than sitting in that boring 'Resident Commissioner Office'.

Interesting mods on bullets I came across outside the RE workshop on VIP road

Mechs diligently working on customer bikes

The rear wheel has been taken out for inspection. One of the hub bearings had a slight play, so had to be sorted out in the quickest way possible... 

Got the new permit. Yay !!! Tawang, see you soon! :)

Finally! I couldn't just let a day pass by without me riding. So started off towards Tezpur at around 6pm. A night ride through Assam, was on the menu tonight :)

A beautiful sunset in the rearview mirror.

Tezpur route was fine up until Nagaon, from there I left the 4-lane road behind and got onto a single-lane, two-way road. That got me into the game called "Watch out for that pothole". Damn! that road shook me and my bike. Imagine a tar road full of potholes, which are virtually invisible at night due to the dark color of the wet tar. No matter how bright the headlights are, they didn't help me from filtering through. The same was the case with other passenger cars traveling alongside. I finally decided to trail a Fiat Punto, who seems to be a local. He too had a hit-and-miss with the large ones, at least I got a few seconds heads up before every big ditch that was coming up. This went on for the next 60-odd KMs before I reached Tezpur. Didn't have the guts to torture my bike anymore by riding at night on such a road. So decided to call it a day. Found a hotel there, no problems at all. There were no single bedrooms available, so ended up with a two-bed room. The bed I used for spreading around my stuff. From tomorrow starts the climb up to Tawang and I wanted every necessary thing to be handy and charged. I wasn't tired at all today but had to stop because of the road condition and nighttime was making it difficult to ride without hitting the suspension on those ditches. So all in all, I was able to keep up with the itinerary (or at least close to it) by making it to Tezpur by the 8th. 

With all the heat, humidity, and dehydration, I was craving the cool mountains and rain again.

"Tomorrow is another day!" or so I believed :)

Sid

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Day 4 - Siliguri to Guwahati

Today was supposed to be kind of a blur in my trip memory as it's supposedly through and through highway riding. Though considering my perception and (now) limited experience of the roads in the northeast, I was still skeptical of accepting the concept of a multi-lane highway. But then Assam proved me wrong. Assam is the only state out of the 8, which is blessed (depending on how you look at it) with planes. And the road connecting to cities like Guwahati and Tezpur is indeed 4 lane express ways (in India it means faster roads). Having said that, there exist numerous alternative roads, which would also take you to your destination, should you choose to avoid the (relatively) longer highway. Which I did in the last stretch till Guwahati. The highway was butter smooth and was the reason I could cover such a long distance in a day. So I am happy with that. Now coming back to the day, it was a usual one in my book, as Sikkim has already raised the bar in adventure riding. In this journey from West Bengal into Assam, the change of terrain was nothing drastic really. However, I did enjoy the lush green (due to the rain) tea estates on both sides of the road, while entering Assam. The view of the mountains in the distance was also beautiful. The rest of my day can be summarized through the photographs that follow.

Lunch break somewhere close to the West Bengal border. Decent food at a decent price. More importantly, I can watch my bike parked right outside the window :D

Bit of drizzle here and there keeps everything nice and cool.. and green :)

Exchanging some admiration for each other's ride :P

After coming down to the planes, I was missing the mountains again... So was just thinking, when does the climb begin..again!!

Usual milestone photos, just in case I need to track them down someplace later. 

Bhutan was to the left.. mere 37 KMs away... It was tempting not to get into a foreign country. Maybe some other day... I had interesting places to go in our own motherland :)

The bull was getting ignored, so another shot of the same place. 

In a never-ending horizon, this was a cool thing I noticed... the abstract pattern of the clouds in an otherwise clear blue sky.

After getting bored of the highway, I took an alternative dual carriage (both-way traffic) road to Guwahati and that was full of greenery (as can be seen here)...

So if I remember correctly I reached Guwahati late in the evening. Booked a hotel close to the station area, as I had to catch up with a friend, who would get me my necessary permits including the one for Arunachal Pradesh. Where I will be heading next via Tezpur. So I got a dodgy-looking hotel, bang in the middle of the 'Fancy Bazar'. Had it been a decade or two ago, I would have been excited by the idea of staying right in the middle of a busy market with a lot of shops around. But alas, I have grown out of that phase I guess or at least at this point to appreciate it. But again, given I had a long riding day, I needed a place to crash ASAP. So just got into my tiny room and passed out. Not really, just went for a shower, as Guwahati on that day was exceptionally humid. So a shower did wonders in making me feel fresh and the dinner was... um, I don't really remember now. Is that even important ?!!! You get everything in a city, every freakin city. So nothing special there anyway. So the point is, I had my food, put on my riding gear to get some air, and had a proper sleep. Tomorrow is when I was to meet up with Shuhel, a friend of Krish, a friend of Monjit, and a friend of Gopal who happens to own a Cast-Iron Electra 5s. For those of you rolling your eyes, the last one is the model of bike I have and hence got to know all these people and now they are all good friends of mine. Life works in weird ways really. LOL. Theoretically speaking tomorrow is the day I meet a guy, collect the permits, and ride my way toward Arunachal. But the lord of motorcycles (if he exists), had other plans.

Until tomorrow...

Sid

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Day 3 - Pelling to Siliguri

Pelling is a town in the West Sikkim district. It's among those few places, where get to witness a close and majestic view of the Kanchenjunga mountains. But as the rains were still not over, there were very few chances of a sighting. Still, I had one morning here and I had to give it a shot. So I got up at 5:30am (the official sunrise time) and opened my window curtains. There was nothing but thick white fog. So I kept going back to sleep with a 15-minute alarm being put on snooze. This went on without much luck until I dozed off completely. I just to woke up around 8:30am due to the noise of girls screaming out of excitement, just beneath my hotel room window. When I opened my eyes, the fog had cleared and there was a glimpse of the mountains beyond. It was breathtaking given the rarity of the event and I had been waiting just to get a glimpse. The clouds were constantly moving so, within a few seconds the peak again vanished into the clouds. I got my cam and waited some more, but no luck. Few shots I took later, which you can view in the series of shots below. Hope you get to see what's hiding behind the clouds.

Morning view from my hotel window.

Thanks to the boys at the hotel, my bike didn't have any trace of yesterday's ride (/mud) :) I knew I would earn that again on my way back anyway ;) 

Selfie from my iPhone from inside the case. A sign that it was still working after the first day of the ride in rain and mud.

Except for a few glimpses of the Kanchenjunga mountain (which I couldn't capture actually), there was this mystic fog, which covered the mountains most of the morning

Every time the clouds part, a magical part of the mountain was lit up in the sunlight. Just to vanish again.

This is all I could capture after I got my camera in hand. Lucky me to have seen a wee bit more of the giant in the rainy days of Sikkim.

I waited long enough to have a beautiful image of the mountains... Given the season, this is the best I could get.

The beauty of Sikkim didn't end at Pelling, it was all along my path of travel and I didn't have to look that far.

Other than me the only lucky person to experience the places and views was my bull :)

Bit challenging to find a safe spot to stop the fully loaded bike. 

I could spend the whole day shooting the same spot without losing a bit of interest, it was that beautiful. Don't take my word for it, just watch it on a full screen, and you would know.

This was a beauty !!!

One of the biggest and closest-to-road waterfalls I came across... I actually rode through the base of it and got wet with the splash and moisture around due to the falling water stream

I had a full day to ride the route I did in half the time yesterday... So I had all the time in the world today to enjoy this part of Sikkim

There is a reason I had picked the end of the monsoon (it was still raining on and off) for visiting the northeast. You may not find this level of greenery or abundance of water in the streams one or two months after the rain stops... So no pain (bad roads), no gain (amazing natural views).

Singshore Bridge in the background. Asia's 2nd highest-hanging bridge near Uttarey Village

Prayer flags on the cables holding the bridge.

Ek selfie toh banta hai boss !

It was such a peaceful place, as there were hardly any tourists around and the bridge was closed to vehicles due to repair work that was going on.

Decided to have lunch here.

View of the bridge side from the hut.

Some chicken chowmein... gave a pass to Buffalo meat, to avoid experimenting when I have some crazy roads to ride in the coming days.

A local driver came and had a boiled egg and tea.. rare combination for me for sure.

A view from the Singshore Bridge. You are welcome :)

There were a whole bunch of beautiful waterfalls all through the roads I rode in Sikkim... All thanks to the amount of rain this state received.

Teesta (river)? Is that you ?!!

It was so tempting not to leave out anything on the horizon while framing a shot here.

There was a choice I had to make, whether to get into the crazy traffic of a new city or give it a pass and move on to the other states and find something there worth my time. Well I moved on.. (towards Siliguri and then to Assam)

West Bengal entry from Sikkim side. The end of the bridge is a police/border check post.

Siliguri became my base for the first 3-4 days of this trip. This time, I was on my motorcycle..and you can see my energy levels after a day's riding ;)

Same challenges as before, set of wet clothes and damp motorcycle luggage needing a bit of dry air. This hotel room was tiny, so hardly there was space to hand stuff for drying. The only benefit I got was a bike wash late in the night (for a cost though). I had a long distance to cover with the hope of 4-lane highways, it was planned. So I had no time to waste and went to sleep as soon as I could so that I get an early start. 

Until tomorrow.

Sid

  

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