Road trip to Tawang by a beginner, intermediate and an expert rider..!!
Introduction
Yes! Malayalis have found a new overrated trip destination after Manali. The movie Neelakasham Pachakadal Chuvanna Bhoomi(English: Blue Sky, Green Sea, Red Earth) not only saved Royal Enfield, by increasing its sale like 100 fold in Kerala, It also gave us a cabalistic destination.
The three of us, old hostel mates of College of Engineering Trivandrum, started the journey from 3 different cities - Bangalore, Calicut and Gurgaon and met at Guwahati, Assam. We rented 2 Royal Enfield Himalayan from Guwahati and embarked upon a venturesome journey comprising of exhilarating rides, tent stays, campfires, partying with the villagers, Thupkas, Momos, Maggi, landslides, getting treated as exotic foreigners by villagers :P, Military canteens, random funny signboards by BRO, rain, mist and of course throughout the journey we had some great umm..let's call them sandwiches :P
Me being the aforementioned beginner rider, who uses a bike to go to grocery shop only, had not even dreamt about in my wildest dream to have a road trip of 1000+ Kms, 3500 Kms away from Kerala.
I was a 23-year data scientist who had archived all his small-talk skills among many other skills, after college and had gotten too comfortable with the Amazon prime and Swiggy Super lifestyle in two years of coding life.
To give an example, the ceiling fan in my room stopped working one day. The problem was simple, the fan choke was having a complaint and had to be replaced. I had two options;
Buy a new choke and replace it myself. But, unfortunately, the ceiling was too tall and I didn't have any ladder/stool with me that I could make use of. I had to ask the neighbours for a ladder if I had to do it myself. Cost price: 100 Rs, 5 minutes communication.
The other option was to call an electrician and get it repaired. Cost price: 400 Rs, 15 minutes communication.
Both the options required unnecessary human communication. So I decided to go with a third option, I ordered a table fan online that evening in Amazon and guess what, it got delivered to my home the next morning. Cost price: 1800 Rs, 1-minute communication. You get my priorities right? :P
My co-rider Kavi; MDI Gurgaon PGP Student and one of the greatest low-maintenance guy I have ever seen. He comes with zero pre-requisites. A few years back, we were waiting for a train to Calicut. An announcement came that the train will be arriving two hours late. All of us were really sleepy as it was 6 in the morning but were standing as all the seats in the railway station was occupied. This guy bought a newspaper for 5 Rs, read it for 10 minutes and then spread the newspaper on the railway station floor and went into a comfortable sleep in under 2 minutes. A street dog was sleeping next to him and I’m pretty sure the dog was not as comfortable as he was.
As for riding preferences, he still rides a 10+ years old 100cc CD Dawn which he bought during B.Tech. He is our whilom Intermediate rider.
The expert rider Andy, IIM Kozhikode PGP student, a guy who can go to pro levels of stinginess if required, a skill which enabled him to own his precious Renegade Commando which he had bought during B.Tech.
When we were in the third year, we had a 15 days IV trip to North India, covering Agra, Delhi, Amritsar, Manali, Chandigarh and ended it with a day in Goa. As this was the first time most of us have been North of India, Everyone was enjoying exquisite cuisines of North India one by one and this guy went through the whole trip only on plain parathas and achaar!!
I awarded Andy the Best roommate award during our college days for, he could sleep with or without light/fan, in the middle of a rock concert if he feels sleepy and he took only 0–5 minutes of bathroom time, giving me complete freedom to set up the environment according to my comfort :P
Andy is the one who planted the idea of going to North-East and all of us instantly agreed. Despite my attempts to make it a family-friendly road trip by renting a car and staying in pre-booked (preferably online :P) home stays in proper towns, we finally settled to go on a motorcycle road trip, stay in tents in unexplored villages which made all the difference in this trip — made it legendary!!
Chapter 1: Normalisation
As I said earlier, we were reaching Guwahati from three different cities in three different states. Andy and Kavi reached Guwahati, Saturday at 10 AM. My flight reached there at 4 PM only. I was enjoying a nice flight and treating myself to the best book for the current scenario, The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto “Che” Guevara. This book I had found among the many others I had bought as a part of my 2018 New Year resolution; To read more books. The resolution in 2019 then became to read all the books I had bought as part of the 2018 resolution :P. I was so happy that I saw the right book at the right time..!!
Meanwhile, Andy and Kavi roamed around in the busy streets of Guwahati to score some good sandwiches and get all the permits and stuff required for the trip. By the time I reached Guwahati, they had arranged almost everything required for the trip and asked me to come to KOHUA bike rentals, from where we rented our bikes. They gave us pretty decent service and rates. I took a cab to the location and, still being a little paranoid about all the uncertainties involved in the trip, decided to engage in a conversation with the Uber driver to get his opinions. The moment I said we are going to Tawang on Bike, he was like:
" BHAII..!!! Pagal hei kya aap…! Itni door hei, Itni bura raastha, subhe poora fog vog hogaa.. kuch nahi dekh payega..!! "
Translation :
" Are you mad sir!! It's too long, the roads are not good, It will be really foggy weather in the morning, you can't even see anything..!! "
My reaction in the backseat was like,
On conversing further, I realised that he was just trying to make good business by getting us to book a trip to Tawang in his car. I got down at the Bike rental where I met with my friends.
The bike rental gave us all the riding gear required. Gloves, Helmet, Knee pads and Jackets. We tied all our stuff in the back of our bikes and went for the homestay we had booked for the night's stay. It was a hostel kind of setup where we had booked one room. The homestay's name was Steffy Way. I assumed Steffy was the name of the lady running the place and talked to her by addressing her as Steffy didi. Suddenly a Huge German Shepard came to us and started licking me all over. Steffy was the name of the dog..!!! Nevertheless, Steffy was a good doggy and was really excited to have some guests around.
Once we freshened up, we started preparing for the journey. We made 10–12 "sandwiches" to you know, quench the dehighdration on the way :P
We had read online that it will be raining in Arunachal Pradesh, so I had ordered a top-rated raincoat from Amazon, obviously:P.
Andy had brought an expensive raincoat of his dad and in addition, a shoe cover. Kavi obviously didn't bring one.! We didn't have any tarpaulin sheets to protect our luggage from rain either.
So we got a decent raincoat for Kavi, tarpaulin sheets and 3 flip-flops from Guwahati. We started packing. We kept all the important stuff like permit papers, sandwiches etc in a laptop bag I had bought with me for accessibility.
We had a proper North-East Cuisine called Thupka. It was kind of a soupy noodle and after dinner we went to sleep, excited about the journey we were about to commence in a few hours.
Sunday morning 4:00 AM:
Everyone woke up exactly at 4 as planned. We shared a sandwich. Then Kavi had an idea. He said if we packed all of our raincoats in a single cover, which we will then tie to the bike separately so that when it rains, we can directly put them on directly without unpacking anything else.
We suited up. I got to admit that wearing all that riding gear gave us extra confidence.
We decided to go with Kavi’s idea and kept all the raincoats, Andy’s shoe cover and all the flip-flops in separate covers, tied to a side of one of the bikes.
Packing the luggage in the back of our bikes wasn't easy as we thought. Andy and Kavi had some experience during their previous trips. I was completely new to that stuff. So I watched them do the work like a kid helping his dad to fix the car but all he learned was how to hold a flashlight and get yelled at. :P
It took us (technically, them) around 45 minutes to do the packing.
Kavi and I got on one bike, Andy on the other and we started the journey at around 5.20 AM.
Initially, the ride was smooth as we were passing through NH 27 which was a pretty well-maintained highway. We went on an average of 80–90 KMPH to cover some distance.
But as we covered around 40 KMs, Andy noticed one thing:
The Cover containing all the raincoats and stuff is no longer attached to our bike. It got untied from the bike!!! In the first 30 minutes of the journey, we lost around RS. 4000 worth of inventory! We went back around 30 Km to see if we would have any luck and find it. But unfortunately, we were not able to find it.
It was almost 6.30 AM and we were still right where we started except that the levels of preparation of everyone were now the same! The 3 variables were normalised just like that by fate, or by Kavi's diabolic plan :P
Chapter 2: The trip just went International !!!
We moved on and continued the journey. The landscape was getting greener and greener but then again, we were no strangers to greenery as we were from God’s own Country! but it was definitely a relief from all the traffic and city life of Bengaluru.
This was the first time in my life I was riding a Himalayan Bike. The bike truly was a beast that even an inexperienced rider like me could handle. Andy and Kavi taught me a new thing, The language of bikers; A longhorn from the other rider means stop, a series of short horns means to go slow and so on.
Throughout the journey, we got a lot of respect from people. People flashed their lights when we pass over or overtook them. Even military people waved at us. Kids from random villages waved with excitement at us and they were charged with joy when we waved back at them. That was a profound moment!
The journey went on like a Sathyan Anthikad movie. A different wave of peace hit us which I had never come across before. We were free to do anything. There were no deliverables, no deadlines, no timelines and no accuracy to keep. We stopped whenever we saw some beautiful spots, had a sandwich, spend some time admiring the overwhelming nature around us. We had breakfast in some random village, Udalguri, Assam. As it was a Sunday, Kavi had to go to a Church. We went to a nearby church and saw a lot of beautiful women dressed in Saree in a different but charming way. The choir group was really talented. As they say, there is no person in North-East without a bit of music in their hearts.
We bathed in a waterfall we saw en route. But amidst all of this, a part of me was still thinking of the algorithm I was developing despite being thousands of Kilometres away from Bengaluru. I thought I can never be free from the corporate world wherever I go.
When we went for tea in one of the shops, the shopkeeper pointed out that Bhutan was just a few kilometres away and that you can visit there and fill the petrol for Rs 51/L too. And just like that, the trip went international without us even realising !! We went to Bhutan, filled our fuel tanks, got some Bhutan currency as a souvenir, and had Thupka and Momos for lunch.
Chapter 3: Kerosine
It was almost 4 in the evening when we reached Kalaktang. We decided to stay there that day. We looked for some good tent spots but was not able to find the right place and decided to stay in a homestay. The stay was peaceful and we had some delicious Chow-mein for dinner. Then we discussed the next day's plan. Kavi came up with a new checklist for things to be done during the trip
- Stay at least for one night in a tent at some village
- Make a campfire
- Socialise with local villagers
- Help the villagers
- Ride with a biker gang
It sounded like a good plan and we decided to do all of that on the trip.
We went to the market to get the raincoats (again!) and other items required for the tent stay. Then we passed by a cooking utensil store. Then Kavi had the next idea. Why can't we cook dinner and make some tea during the Tent stay?
We were like why though? In five minutes, Kavi went into the shop, Bought a Kerosine stove, A cooking Pan, 2–3 spoons and paper cups while we were discussing whether to buy all this stuff just for cooking! That Puta tied all this stuff to our bikes and was like, What are you waiting for? let's go!!
We continued on the journey as usual and during the journey, we found a place and got some raincoats. Kavi being very small compared to both of us got a good quality raincoat which was looking decent. Andy and I had to put the raincoat on top of our jacket which was already a size bigger. What they had for that size were bright pink and orange raincoats which were also low quality. I got stuck with the pink one and we named it pinky mol (pink girl). Just imagine, instead of the amazon top rated perfect raincoat of my size, I was stuck with a low-quality pinky mol!!
I wore the pinky mol and we continued on the journey. The roads were getting difficult as it started raining and the muddy roads made the bike skid. After a while when we stopped for a sandwich, we noticed that the Kerosine was leaking!!! My bag was fully drenched in Kerosine making all of my stuff stink of Kerosine for the rest of the journey..!! Thus all of my stuff got a free Sterilisation! The points for Kavi was going down drastically and Andy and I never stopped making fun of him for the results of his shenanigans :P
Chapter 4: Unexplored Villages En route Tawang 1: Thembang
Andy taught me the art of covering hairpins. I was fascinated by the maximum diameter concept. It rained almost the complete day. For someone wearing spectacles, rain is their greatest enemy when driving. You lose clarity if a drop of waterfalls on your specs and you lose it anyway if you remove them. I envied those people who could see in full HD without the help of a tool. I decided to remove my specs as the mist was making it impossible to see.
We could not see a damn thing in the fog anyway. All we could see was 5 metres ahead of us even with the headlight on full bright. It was like a GTA game where the path loads gradually as you progress. The day was ending and we had to find a spot to camp. I was slightly worried about how we are going to deal with the morning activities if we camp, which the other two zero maintenance guys seemed not to care at all..! Kavi, the son of nature, was rather excited about it :P
Our plan was to end the journey for the day in Dirang and camp there. Suddenly we saw a board saying Thempang heritage village, 14 KM. We instantly knew this would be the right place. We took the detour. The roads were quite muddy and we slipped a lot of times. As all of us were in the excited state, we saw it more like an adventure ride in Wonderla and kept moving forward. Finally, after a while, we could see a beautiful arch saying Government Presidential School Thempang as the mist slowly cleared.
We were instantly relieved when we saw the school. It was the perfect place for camping. There was plenty of plain ground covered in lush green grass for setting up the tent, there were toilet facilities and water for cooking available. We talked to the physical education teacher of the school who stayed nearby and he gladly allowed us to camp on the school grounds. He gave us his number and asked us to call if we require anything. The tent was a standard one and it took us only 5 minutes to set up. After we freshened up, we decided to cook some tea and Maggi. We shared a sandwich, played some great music by Rex Vijayan on Andy's Bluetooth speaker and started cooking. It took us some time to figure out the working of the kerosine stove as it was dark, so the first batch of Maggi had a slight taste of kerosine smoke added to it. But as all of us were famished from the long ride and also sandwiched out, we ate it like nectar. There was a cute dog guarding us. Neither did he care about the taste and ate the Maggi gladly.
Ever since we reached Thempang, villagers kept on coming to the school, stared at us for some time like Bran the Broken :P, talked amongst themselves in language we were not familiar with and kept walking. I felt like a zoo animal.
Around 9 P.M, 2–3 young guys came to our camp and asked if we needed any help. They were drunk af but were really friendly. The main guy was Tenzing 1; Yeah I'm assigning numbers since we met at least 6 Tenzings during the journey. Like Rohit in North India and Vishnu in South India, Tenzing is one of the most common names in the North East!!
Tenzing 1 was a really cool guy who wore an expensive suit and spoke in a cool accent!!
We talked to them about the warm hospitality we got throughout the journey and he was like.
'Guys, you guys are happy, right? Make yourselves at home. I just have one thing, I expect the same when we come to your place'
He repeated this every five minutes:P
The other two who accompanied him were his sidekicks, ready to do anything for him. He said that he was hosting a party in the neighbourhood as a celebration of his brother winning the election and invited us over!
He took us to a homestay where they were having the party. I was still thinking about the algorithm even then and was a bit hesitant to go to the party.
The homestay had an appealing architecture. The room was set in a party mood with yellow dim lights, walls made of stones, a jugaad fireplace made out of a modified gas cylinder, 10–12 people sitting around the fireplace and there was a huge speaker in one corner in which they played songs from Assamese, Tibetan and many more languages which we didn't even know existed. My arrogance about knowing 5 languages vanished just like that!!
They offered us a starter made of Yak meat and potatoes and some local beer made of rice and yak fat.
Oh, wait! Did I tell you I'm a vegetarian?
So I could not taste any of it and I had to be content with the Maggi we ate earlier. They played some Assamese songs and started dancing and asked us to join.
We all started dancing. After two minutes of dancing. I finally felt free. Suddenly I was no longer worried about any algorithm, career or anything else for that matter. My mind was clear. Amidst some random strangers, strange music playing in the background, thousands of kilometres away from my home, I felt a sense of belonging.
Like Che Guevara said,
It was one of the coldest times in my life, but also one which made me feel a little more brotherly toward this strange, for me anyway, human species.
These emotions, these sensations, cannot be expressed in the language of poets and painters, musicians and mystics. They must be.. absorbed without reply, as animals do with their contemplative and entranced eyes.
I finally understood what magical realism meant. We thanked the gods for making us take that detour. Song after song, We danced as if we cared about nothing else in the world, went back to our tents and slept like babies.!!
I unarchived the mimicry artist in me and started imitating the Tenzing 1 character after that night. From now on, our journey was driven by just 3 sentences.
- Whenever we didn't get what we wanted:
(in Tenzing's voice) Reality is often disappointing! - Whenever I don't want to do something:
(in Tenzing's voice) Why though? - Almost for anything:
(in Tenzing’s voice) It’s okayyyy!
At later stages, I started speaking Malayalam also in Tenzing's voice. Even though it's been almost two months after the journey, I still use that unknowingly :P
Whew!! It's been almost 16 minutes since you began reading my permutations and combinations of the English dictionary! Thanks for spending your valuable time reading and hope you had fun being a part of our journey.!
I will get back to you with a second article on the rest of our journey depending on the response to this article. :P
NB: Disclaimer
This article is inspired by true events. However, certain scenes, characters, names, materials, incidents, locations and events have been fictionalised for dramatic purposes. ;)
It's really sad to hear about the rising floods in Assam and Bihar. Being from a state which recently encountered this disaster, we know the hardship and trauma faced by the people. Please donate to the relief efforts.
