BIKER HEAVEN

12 SEPTEMBER
DAY THREE SOUTH FROM CATAVINA.
The desert here is a vast up-and-down jumble of immense grey boulders, candelabra cactus, Judus trees and skinny scrub. To the south and west lie mountains scrubbed to their stone core by a few million years of wind and ocasional rain. To the east a long roll of cloud or fog lies low over the ocean. The dawn light washes the mountains a pale chalky blue. The cloud bank is touched with pink.
I have ridden on ahead. I haven't met another car or truck in twenty minutes. Cut the engine and the silence is total. Two buzzard glide overhead. Nothing else moves. I am absorbed into the stillness and the quiet and the beauty and find myself shivering, not with cold, but with that exultation that comes sometimes when, tired yet wonderfully content, you get into a bed spread with Egyption cotton sheets stiff from the laundery and wriggle in minor ecstacy as you clutch yourself in your own arms. Never done that? Never slept between Egyptian cotton sheets? How sad...
And if you have never visited Baja California, start planning. Right now this is about as close as you can get to heaven without a one-way ticket.

A MOVING MICRODOT

12 SEPTEMBER
Joe and Arlene ride production bikes. John and I ride pre-production bikes. These are small bikes, pretty babies to treasure. The average owner will ride down to the store of a Sunday or drop by a neighbour's – say twenty minutes max. Steve wants the bikes tested to destruction. John is massive and I'm no light-weight. Steve wants destruction, we're his men.
Day one south from Tijuana is horrific coastal-strip development on the cheap side of cheap. Pass Ensenada and I begin to understand Baja's magic: clarity of light, range upon range of mountains, immense spaces across which merely to travel is an adventure. Even Big John becomes little more than a moving microdot.

MEET THE POSSE

12 SEPTEMBER
We are five on this adventure – the length of the Baja California peninsular and back – 2000 miles.
Four riders and J in support. J is Nevada based, aids businesses in the Adventure Tourism field market their products and drives a double-cab (leather seats) three million horse-power Dodge PowerWagon laden with everything bar rockets and a cappuccino machine.
Joe and I are given. John is a 50s-something jet engine engineer, six-six and weighing in at a few tons. Arlene is slim, classy, Gay and designs, manufactures and markets biker clothes for style-concious biker ladies (and for Real Men). Check out her sight:

PRETTY BIKE

12 SEPTEMBER
CATAVINA, BAJA CALIFORNIA
Joe Berk is mostly metal. He was in a coma for a few days last November. He was riding a Triumph Speed Triple when a lady on four wheels back ended him. He limps now. Maybe he will always limp. The limp and the metal slow him down somewhat but haven't damped any of his enthusiasms – particularly bikes. He sold a second Triumph the day he picked me up from LA Lax – changing Brits. A KLR 650 shares the garage with a Corvette and his wife's 5 series BMW. Joe's souped-up Subarau has to sleep outdoors. His California Scooter Company 149 stays at the plant. The Company is Steve Seidner's baby. Steve both owns the company and designed the bikes. The bikes are small and pretty, surely an unusual description of a bike. Best of all they make people smile, not with scorn but with pleasure - as does watching your children play out in the yard.

GODBYE MATURITY

12 SEPTEMBER
CATAVINA, BAJA CALIFORNIA
Back in the 1990s Katrina Larkin gave a party for like minded friends in a deconsecrated London chapel. The party is now an annual event and is grown into The Big Chill Festival. Until this year the Festival was as it began: a party for like-minded people. Katrina remains a shareholder and the artistic director. This year she invited the North American installation artist, Spencer Tunick, to create one of his mass nude photographs. My number three son called Bernadette with words to sap the firmest of good intentions: “Mum, tell Dad, absolutely not...”
So of course I joined the parade, one of four hundred nude people on the grass at Eastnor Castle Deer Park and painted all over in lipstick pink.
A few days later came an Email from Joe Berk of The California Scooter Company: How about a ride down Baja California as a proving run for the Company's new bikes.
Which explains why the lawnmower is back in the shed and I am in the Desert Inn, Catavina and goodbye maturity.

GODBYE TO WISDOM

SEPTEMBER 12
BAJA CALIFORNIA
I've been lying in bed the past hour wondering what time it is. My watch died yesterday after taking a fall off a table to a stone floor and I haven't changed the time on my mobile nor on this notebook. Where am I? The Desert Inn, Catavina, Baja California.
I am aware that I haven't blogged since March. Bernadette has been pushing at me over the intervening months. “Write, Simon, that's what you do. Readers expect it.”
So here is an apology to those readers – and an explanation. The Sela Pass in Arunachal Pradesh did for me. The road was suitable for a young, sure-footed mule. It was unsuitable for a septaugenarian with a fear of heights. I reached the top of the pass and I was old. Really old. Five days of rain in Tawang without electricity was time in which to face facts, time to call a halt to exploring continents by bike. Get home, invest in a ride-on lawn mower; should I crave adventure, drive eight miles over the Malvern Hills of an evening; paddle in the warm waters of the outdoor pool at the Malvern Spa; for a change of climate sample the spa sauna or the steam room. In short, act my age.
So what happened to such sensible intentions?
First came The Big Chill music festival.

EXCITEMENT IN TAWANG

MAY 15: TAWANG
Two young drunks loll against the counter at the telephone central. One drunk drops the chip from his mobile. Both drunks bend to pick it up. Their heads collide and they shout at each other. The Angel solves what ever problem they have.
I remark to Angel that drunkenness is common in Tawang.
"They fight when they get drunk," says Angel. "They go home and hit their wives."
"Always?"
"Always."
Will she marry?
Not in Tawang. An elder brother emigrated to Canada. Angel is waiting for a visa.

NOT A YOUNG MAN

MAY 15: TAWANG
I call Baby Baruah from the telephone central, tell her that I will truck the bike back to Assam.
"I didn't want to tell you with all these experienced travelers giving you advice," says Baby Baruah. "In the back of my mind I was thinking that you should stay here. So many things to see. The farm and my cousin's house on the hill."
"Watch cricket in comfort on a big screen TV," I say.
"That's what I'm telling you," says Baby. "Look where all this adventuring has got you to. You are not a young man."
True...

CALLING BABY

MAY 15: TAWANG
What to do in Tawang on an electricity-deprived raining afternoon under low dark clouds? Not a lot. Daylight is insufficient in my room for reading. I take my book to the smoke-free Chinese restaurant. Two of the six tables are occupied by inebriated chain smokers. University students sit at a third. I ask why there is no electricity.
The transformer is damaged.
I repeat the question.
They repeat the answer.
I say, "Wrong answer. "There is no electricity because there is no spare transformer and there is no spare transformer because you don't shout. Do any of you vote?"
None of them. There's no point. Nothing changes.
To which I say, "Nothing will change if you don't vote. Or, at least, shout. Go shout outside the Electricity Company's office."
I have made them uncomfortable. I am uncomfortable. Tawang is too wet and too dark and too cold for an instant revolution. Better go sit in the corner at the telephone central, talk with the Angel and call Baby Baruah.

TWO CZECHS

MAY 15: TAWANG
A decision has been taken. We will load the bike early tomorrow and drive straight through to Assam. I accost a blond foreign couple mooching up Main Street in the rain.
Are they Czechs?
How did I guess?
Because two Czechs are on my Permit for Arunachal; other than me, these two are the only Europeans in town.
They paid 8000 Ruppes for the Permit.
I paid 5000 Ruppes.
A total of 13000.
A Mister Wanga arranged the Permit. He initially demanded 9000 from the Czechs. He claimed to be an influential politician and would obtain the permit within forty-eight hours once they had transferred the fee.
They waited six days.
The male Czech is tall with dreadlocks and loathes India. All Indians are on the make. Everyone has tried to rip him off.
I have enjoyed extraordinary hospitality - though telling him is wasted effort. His English is too limited. He speaks neither French nor Spanish - nor Russian. Surely Russian was obligatory at school? He dislikes Russians (understandable in a Czech) and never learned.
She is better educated and marginally less negative.
We shelter in a mini-restaurant on the High Street. The owner, a woman, is seated behind a cash box. She ignores us. Perhaps she is related to the mobile-phone addict at the bakery. Or suffers from poor eyesight. Or dislikes foreigners...
Half and hour of difficult conversation passes before a girl appears from the kitchen. I order soup. The Czechs drink water.

MAY 15: TAWANG
I have met with much kindness and generosity on this journey. Passang Tsering is my latest benefactor. I watch from inside the cafe as he talks with the truck owner and the driver. The driver is young, perhaps foolhardy. Angel told me yesterday that two couples in a saloon car went over the edge on the Sela Pass the day I crossed. They were killed.
And the Army commander asked me at breakfast in his camp whether I had ever seen an Indian truck driver wearing spectacles. Not that I noticed. The implication is obvious. So, yes, I am nervous.
Does Tawang have an oculist? Should I ask Passang Tsering to have the young driver's eyesight tested? Or should I close my own eyes as we cross the Sela Pass? If we cross the Sela Pass...A jeep that left Tawang early this morning has returned - a land-slide has closed the road. The road may reopen by mid-afternoon, meanwhile rain is falling steadily from black clouds and Passang Tsering warns that the chance of leaving today are slim.
The Army commander expects me for dinner tomorrow.
I am booked on the train from Guwati to Delhi on the 18th.
Or am I condemned to a life sentence in Tawang?
Is Tawang Purgatory?
Or Hell?
Or would sunshine transform the town?
Even electricity would help, light, hot water.
However yesterday's thunder storm destroyed the transformer and there is no spare.

MOMPA

MAY 15: TAWANG
Tawang is a study in genetic diversity. The angel of the telephone central is Tawang Mompa. Typical of her community, she is slight of build, fine featured. Mountain Mompa are squatter and speak a different language unintelligible to the city folk. Vally Mompa speak a third language, equally foreign to mountain and city folk. Cross the pass to the next valley and you find a fourth language and a fifth and a sixth. Division by language enfeebles Arunachal as a political unit. Buddhism is the sole unifier.
Passang Tsering's great grandparents were immigrants from Lasha and the family's home language remains Tibetan. At six foot, he is taller than the Mompa, powerfully built, his features what we Europeans think of as Oriental. His mountaineer's stride is scornful of the slope up from the High Street. He wears a puffa jacket over a tartan shirt, jeans and work boot. He shakes and folds a khaki green umbrella before entering the cafe.

PURIS or POORIS

MAY 15: TAWANG
I wrote in the previous Blog that I was eating Puris. Perhaps not all of my readers have eaten Puris or know what they are. For those interested, here is a recipe:

2.5 cups chappati flour
2/3 cup water at room temperature
ghee for brushing the bread while rolling out the dough
Oil for deep frying

Method to roll out the dough
Make stiff but pliable dough.
Cover the dough with damp cloth and set aside for 30 minutes.
Knead dough a little again. Dough should be stiff enough to roll without extra flour.
Make small balls of the dough and cover them with damp cloth.
Take one ball of dough and dip a corner of ball in melted ghee or oil and roll it out into 4 to 5 inches round.
Repeat the same process to roll out all puris.

Frying the Puris
Heat plenty of oil in a kadhai until very hot.
Put in a puri and immediately start flickering hot oil over the top of it with a spatula so that it will swell up like a ball.
This should take only a few seconds. Flip the puri over and cook the other side until golden brown.
Serve hot with curries or vegetables.

SATURDAY TAWANG

MAY 15: TAWANG
6 a.m. no power and a light drizzle. I hobble up a side street armed with my splendid new umbrella (red on red). I am due to meet Passang Tsering outside a one-burner open-front cafe. The loaded vegetable truck is parked across the street. A couple of landslides blocked the road yesterday for a few hours and the driver reached Tawang late. The cafe's cook is my informant.
How is the road now?
The cook shrugs. Heavy rain fell most of the night.
And the power supply?
A second shrug.
I sit at the only table and order tea and puris. The cafe is a good spot from which to watch Tawang awake. Brushing teeth out in the street is a common habit. Women with their hair uncombed scurry to the baker or collect puris from the cafe. The drizzle is heavier now. Bare feet in sandals slosh through puddles - so much for the Old Maid's warning against wet feet: You'll catch your death of cold. Two indolent bullocks sniff at rain-melting cardboard cartons of vegetables in the back of the truck.
I ought to be worried and miserable. I am content. The upright wooden chair is comfortable. Tea is hot and sweet. Puffed-up puris are fresh from the pan, dipping sauces laced with hot chili. I can't control the weather or fix the road. Passang Tsering will negotiate the truck rate. What ever will be will be...
Meanwhile I am doing what I enjoy most (other than eating prawns): watching people.

MAY 15: TAWANG
Thank the Lord for my Leatherman flashlight. What else works in Tawang - other than my bladder? I light my way to the bathroom, no power, limp back to bed, huddle under duvet and two blankets, listen to the rain, hope for more sleep.
4.30 and faint daylight seeps round the curtains. I peek down at the wet street. Nothing moves. Why would anything move? A gap in the clouds shows fresh snow on the peaks. Tawang is not my favourite place.

BACK TO BED

MAY 14: TAWANG
Thunder and the beat of heavy rain wakes me at 6.15. Still no power. A single candle on the counter dimly lights the telephone central. The angel assures me that power will be restored at 7 p.m.
I call the Colonel in Kolkata. Where are you? Tawang. You are enjoying yourself. Not exactly.
Power returns as the storm intensifies. Thunder echoes continually from mountain to mountain. Lightning lights the underneath of almost black clouds. A massive thunder clap and the light fails. Steel shutters rattle shut. Tawang is closing down for Friday night. I make am umbrella-protected run for the bar-night club and order chicken kebabs. Not even a Tawang cook can produce chicken-free chicken kebabs. So where to go next? Back to bed, listen to the storm, worry that the road will fall down the mountain...

NO WELCOME AT THE BAKERY

MAY 14: TAWANG
The glass-fronted bakery counter protects trays of multicoloured cakes and bread rolls of various shapes. The woman behind the counter is seated on a fold-up chair and in earnest conversation on a mobile. She talks. And talks. And talks...
Various customers enter the bakery, wait a while while the woman talks, leave without being served.
Early afternoon and daylight is minimal with cloud tails trailing between rooftops. I sit in the window and scribble a while in my notebook. A jeep pulls up to the curb. A middle-aged man and a late teenage girl scurry in out of the rain. The man goes directly behind the counter and stuffs rolls into brown paper bags, twenty of this, twenty of that. The teenage girl fills a plastic container with pastries before studying a tray of cup-cake chemical creams. The two she finally chooses seem to me identical to the others. What would I know?
I choose a pastry and a chocolate cake before the woman can get back on her mobile. The cake is for the angel at the telephone central.
A man, probably the mobile-addicted woman's husband, enters with a small child. He shouts at the woman. The woman shouts back. The man leaves without the child. The woman returns to her mobile. I take the cake to the angel, then return to my bedroom and climb into bed. Where else to keep warm? Maybe the power will come on in a while. Maybe not.

HAIL

MAY 14: TAWANG
Back at the telephone central with rain falling, call Baby, tell her that I'm returning to Assam by truck. "The Sela Pass was too much."
"That road was making me nervous for you," says Baby. "In the back of my mind I was thinking that you should stay here. So many interesting places and people you can talk to."
But no challenge, no chance to prove to myself that I can still hack it.
Hack it aged 77? Who am I kidding?
The power cuts out. I glance out of the window. The road is two inches deep in hail. Bloody Hell!
I scuttle to the neighbouring store and buy an umbrella, then to the Chinese restaurant for a bowl of soup. Three kids enter, smoking.
Apparently the NO SMOKING notice is merely for show.
I cancel the soup and take my custom to the bakery.

MAY 14: TAWANG
Fish smells. Passang Tsering favours the vegetable truck. He will talk with the owner. Clouds close in as I walk back up the hill to the Tawang hotel. Walking up hill at 10000 feet is moderately exhausting. I sit on a wall a while in company with a nanny goat and kid. The nanny goat is demoniacally possessed - or a close ancestor posed for medieval paintings of the devil. Wicked eyes accompany horns and a beard. Perhaps I should visit the monastery to pray for protection. A thin drizzle falls. Stupid not to have bought an umbrella...

DEEP THOUGHTS ON FISH TRUCKS

MAY 14: TAWANG
Passang Tsering runs a small store the left side of the road. A son home from college in Delhi speaks reasonable English. A younger son wears rubber gloves to hand print Buddhist prayer flags. The father is the strong silent type. Ask him a question and he ponders deeply. Waiting for an answer, you wonder whether he has lost the thread - or succumbed to boredom. My question is the cost of a truck to Assam. Son inks wooden prayer blocks. He has printed sufficient prayer flags for a summer solstice celebration in London's Hyde Park before Dad replies: a truck fetches fish every day from Tezpur. Another fetches vegetables. Trucks travel empty of cargo south to Assam. Passenger passage is 500 Ruppees. Say a further 1500 Rupees for the bike.

TOURISM IS DISRESPECTFUL

MAY 14: TAWANG
I have the telephone number of a friend of a friend, Passang Tsering. An angel runs the telephone central below the Tawang Hotel. I tried calling my wife last night. The land line refused to cooperate. The angel lent me her mobile. Now she telephones Passang Tsering and gives me directions to his store a kilometer down hill in New Market. Sunshine improves Tawang - not much but enough to make the walk enjoyable. Wild yellow Primulas grow on the grass bank above the road. Tin cans planted with garden Primulas splash balconies with rainbow colour. Tawang monastery up on the right dominates the route. Second largest Buddhist monastery after Lasha, it is home to 450 lamas. Have I visited? No. Will I visit? No. Monasteries and churches and temples are for prayer. Tourism strikes me as disrespectful.

LAST HURRAH

MAY 14: TAWANG
4:30 a.m. and the concrete bumps in the mattress win. I take a hot bucket bath, return to bed and face reality. I am beat. Definitely beat. Totally beat. My back hurts. My ankle hurts. My hands hurt. Everything hurts. The Last Hurrah was the Last Hurrah.
6 a.m. and I search for breakfast. A newish lodging house up a side street advertises Chinese. The door is open. I order Nescafe and a plain omelet as probably safe and ask the kids running the place the cost of trucking my bike back to Assam. These are bright kids. They can spot a score. They quote seven thousand rupees as the norm - though a friend of theirs might do it for six.
I respond with one of those patronising smiles with which Oldies of what ever century infuriate young whippersnappers.

HOT NIGHT SPOT

MAY 13: TAWANG
I have discovered Tawang's hot night spot. Or may have. To be certain, I need more light than a lone candle. And maybe a few people. Fortunately I came armed with a Leatherman torch. Flash it round and I discover an untended bar, a couple of plastic-covered sofas and a dozen square tables each with four chairs. Decor is Western pop star posters. My sons might recognise the music. I share the table with the candle - not much of a conversationalist and I'm too tired to talk to myself. Voices come from behind a door. I tap. Then tap more firmly. Then bang. A head appears above a fake leather bomber jacket, middle-aged with glasses.
Does he serve food?
He thinks a while before answering in the affirmative. He even switches on a light above the bar and turns a dimmer switch controlling ceiling lights from zero to .5 on a scale of zero to ten.
I order a bottle of strong Fosters (he doesn't stock normal). The beer alone is warm in Tawang and the chicken chowmein would please a vegan.

DINNER IN TAWANG

MAY 13: TAWANG
Power returns. I take a bucket bath and dress in everything that's dry in my rucksack. I need an umbrella. Maybe tomorrow, if the rain continues. I make a run for an Chinese restaurant three buildings down on the same street. A notice on the wall forbids smoking and alcohol. Two tables of inebriated chain-smokers provide local colour. I cross the street to a second choice. The choice is up an exterior circular steel staircase. My ascent is watched from the balcony by the owner. I reach the top. He says, "Restaurant closed."
Yes, Tawang is fun.
The last option is an archway lighted with multi-colour bulbs. Can't be the local whore house. Whore houses don't advertise. Possibly a night club?

INDIAN MATTRESSES

MAY 13: TAWANG
I am wet and cold. There is a promise that Power will return to Tawang at 7 p.m. One hour to wait and a further half hour for the geyser to heat sufficient water for a bucket bath. The Tawang hotel has mattresses that Indians believe to be orthopedic and a nail-bed Fakir might find comfortable. Normal mortals prefer something with more give than a concrete roadway - roadways liberally spread with bumps. I drag one mattress on to the other, spread the padded cotton duvet off the spare bed on top, change underwear for dry and cover myself with the second duvet and two blankets. How is it?
Cold and damp.

SPECIALISTS IN CELLAR AMBIANCE

MAY 13: TAWANG
Tawang in the rain does not impress immediately as a party town, wrong vibes.
A few open umbrellas scurry up Main Street. Very few. A bright tartan number covers two soldiers holding hands. A good friend from Assam recommended two hotels. I choose the Tawang as the cheaper of the two. It is a modern building and should be waterproof. Two young women show me a single room at the back on the first floor designed by a specialist in B movie cellar ambiance. The women apologise for that old Indian faithful, Load Shedding. I point out that a window might help. They show me a double room with twin beds and a hot water geyser in the bathroom that will heat water once the Power provider stops shedding load. The room opens off a covered walkway and on a fine day would have a fine mountain view. For now the view is black cloud, rain, parked eight-seater jeeps and even fewer umbrellas.

WATERPROOF KEEPS OUT WATER

MAY 13: TAWANG
$7 WallMart waterproof trousers give adequate protection against a light drizzle when strolling slowly round a municipal golf course on a warm summer's evening. I am riding a motorbike (all be it a small one) up a cold mountain in a downpour. Maybe I should be grateful that the pants act as a sieve and break some of the force of the storm - or learn to buy upmarket, say $10, or even $15. The final kilometer into Tawang is a mud slide. Tawang would look less depressing in sunshine - though not much. Tasteless concrete construction is tasteless concrete construction. Cheap paint is cheap paint. My wet WallMart pants should feel right at home.

KICKED IN THE CROTCH

MAY 13: UP TO TAWANG
The ride down from Sela has been too joyous. Punishment is inevitable. Look across the valley and a faint mist smokes the road up to Tawang, a climb of 5000 feet in 34 kilometers through steep fields and villages. The town is shrouded in dark grey cloud. So, now, is the Sela Pass. Down in the valley an iron girder and steel-plate bridge spans true white water. The road up is mostly rock, mud and potholes. The tires slither and bounce. The seat kicks me in the crotch. I got my second wind riding down. Second winds are temporary. Tired? Very...
Rain falls. The road has collapsed in a couple of places. Women road workers carry baskets of aggregate on their heads. Others squat beside the road chipping boulders in the rain. Female liberation to do a man's work – or a machine's work. Children too (why aren't they at school?), armed with a heavy hammer. Their homes, shacks built of rust-decayed tin made waterproof with road tar. Hill people, they grin as I pass, answer my greetings with a lifted hand and a Hi. My anger on their behalf won't improve their lives...

TRIBALS?

MAY 13: SELA PASS
Lunch is rice with vegetables midway down the Pass. Passengers from two eight-seater jeeps crowd the three tables in a tin-shack cafe. Two girls serve and wash plates outside at a hand pump. The girls are joyful and pretty – surely qualifications for Tribal status? I pose for cameras while waiting my turn for a seat. Look, guys, this is me with that bearded foreign Oldie and this is so-and-so sitting on the seat of his bike. The photographing happens everywhere – and more often now than in the first weeks. People recognise me from TV and newspaper coverage. Fame? I don't believe so. More a freak status. That's OK...

GOOD-NATURED YAKS

MAY 13: SELA PASS
The mountain has got bored with being kind. No more gentle slopes, more a sheer drop and an end to the good road (good as in reasonable rather than good as in actually good), mostly dirt with 350° hairpins ripped to bits. Yaks grumble good-naturedly at being requested to move aside. Brave enough to peek over the edge and there's a village within spitting distance. Getting there takes half an hour as the road zigs and zags a half K one way, half a K the other and so on and so on. The first few fields are bare reddish earth. Drop further and a few green shoots grab for sunlight and white rhododendrons are in flower. Down another thousand feet and the fields are carpeted with emerald green while harvest is approaching near the valley bottom, the fall approximately 8000 feet in 38 kilometers - the climb to the Pass from Dirang was steeper by 8 Ks.

DOWN IS EASIER THAN UP

MAY 13: SELA PASS
The ride down begins in sunshine with an easy stretch of reasonable tar down a glorious upland valley, two lakes on the left, a few stunted high-altitude pines, a proper mountain burn with short, white-water runs over smooth boulders into crystal pools where a worm dangled might tempt a trout. Drop a little and the road begins to zigzag, at first only a few small rhododendrons all in bud, then a couple of deep reds in bloom. Minute almost white, wild flowers speckle the turf, moss on rocks, a few tiny ferns.
Drop further and I am in yellow rhododendron territory, small and bright by the road, tree-size and pale pink through the scattered pines above sheets of drum-stick cowslip primulas the far side of the burn.

SELA PASS

MAY 13: SELA PASS
I've been on the road two and a half hours, uphill all the way. And I've been scared much of the time. Now I've made it. I am at the top, the Sela Pass.
The pass is the narrows between two mountain peaks.
My legs threaten to crumble when I dismount. A cafe on the left advertises tea and food. A woman serves at a small shop counter inside. A corridor leads to a circular space with seats and tables and with windows all the way round. I sit there a while. Nothing happens, no tea. I don't have sufficient energy to go find someone. I sit a while longer, then go back out to the bike. My legs are steadier. I lean against the cafe wall to steady my arms and photograph the sign board as proof that I made it. Then I mount, press the start button and ride on down the mountain towards Tawang.

UP AND UP

MAY 13: SELA PASS
I rode through deciduous forest early this morning in joyful sunshine, then tall conifers. The sun continues to shine. The trees are stunted high altitude pine. The white peaks that were way up there have become close neighbors. I stop on each corner to photograph them. Why? Mostly because photographing mountain peaks is what travelers do. I remain astride the bike while photographing. Dismounting would require trust in my legs. I stopped at an army-run cafe a while back. The cafe was a hundred yards uphill from an army camp. A sentry at the gates of the camp waved me to park on round the next corner. No cup of tea is worth walking back down to the cafe and then back up from the cafe to the bike – not at this altitude. Truth is that I am beat. The pain in my right side may be a stitch caused by holding my breath when under stress – and I am stressed. The Sela Pass is stressful.

NOT FUN - SCARY

MAY 13: SELA PASS
The Sela Pass is not fun. Some stretches of the road are being widened. A few short stretches have been widened. The new stretches, freshly tarred, already have deep craters. Not surprising given that the tar is less than an inch thick. Someone is making money. Lots of money.
Most corners are loose rock and dirt with rain-gouged ravines on the inside of the bend. Truckers keep to the outside which is OK if that is the driver's side of the road. Tough if it is my side. Do I go over the edge or dump myself into the ravine? At least the ravine is safe.
Parapet? Yes, in some short stretches and the mountain is near vertical. Look down and I feel sick. Worst is the wind. Come round a corner and it blasts you in the face, cold as a cold beer but minus the welcome factor. The wind comes off those snow peaks that were distant this morning and way up there. Now I am way up there with no sign of the expected gap.

THE TWO Hs - HEIGHTS AND HOSPITALS

MAY 13: SELA PASS
I expected to follow the river. The river becomes a trickle. A near vertical mountain bars the route. Water streaks mountains left and right, thousand foot falls plunging through pine forest - or two thousand foot falls. It should be beautiful. It is beautiful. However that mountain face ahead scares me. There is no gap. A faint white line zigzags up through the pines. The many gaps in the zigs and zags must mark an absence of safety parapet. Did I write before that I don't like heights? Or, truthfully, that heights scare the shit out of me? The two Hs, Heights and Hospitals...
Even in movies, I close my eyes and shrink down in the seat.

WHITE PEAKS

MAY 13: SELA PASS
Dawn and I open the curtains to the Dirang valley, forested mountains on each side, in the far distance white peaks tinted by sunrise with a faint pink wash. Somewhere up there lies the Sela Pass. I am out of the hotel and on the road by 7 a.m. Lower Dirang has charm with balconied houses along the main street decorated with pots of primulas. Stone walls coral neat, freshly-tilled fields the far side of the river. India's roads in and through and out of towns are always rough. The Sela road continues rough for a few kilometers, loose stone surface and narrowed by piles of boulder each side. Road workers squat on the boulders. Most are women, ages ranging from fresh faced teenager to crinkle faced grannies. Female Liberation to do a man's work? Or India's standard use of women as beasts of burden?
Yes, it angers me pretty much every day of this journey.
The one plus is that the women here respond to my Hi and Good morning.
Wave and smile down on the plains and they cover their faces against the evil eye. Or against the evil Fat Old Blimp.

BOLIPARA PASS

MAY 12: TO DIRANG
Heading down hill now into a fierce bitter wind that tares small rents in the cloud. The cloud thins and lightens. Sunshine blotches the tar. The last cloud clears. A winding drop leads to a river then the next climb first following the river then up through thin broad leaf to pines and rock to the Bolipara Pass at 10000 feet with higher peaks spiking the blue, cascades on naked cliff flashing sunlight. Bolipara is one of those charmless concrete hill towns India excelles at. The many Army camps come of a different culture, clean, properly planned, respect for trees, lots of white paint, no garbage. See what staying ten days with a retired Colonel does to a Liberal!
Cross the pass and plummet down through sparse pines to Dirang and the Hotel Pemaling where I negotiate a 50% discount with the owner for a room with a superb view down the river valley. A patchwork of small fields covers the right bank and lower slopes of mountains already dark in late afternoon, peaks hidden in cloud. A kindly maid brings a Tata Sky box for the TV and the dinner menu – orders must be in by 7 p.m. Hot shower and I watch BBC World News. The receptionist brings dinner on a tray, chicken soup and vegetable momos.
“You look too tired,” he says.
Too tired to go down stairs to the dinning room for dinner and I intend climbing Sela Pass in the morning.
“Will it be fine?”
“Maybe...”

AHHHH...

MAY 12: TO DIRANG
I crawl for a further half hour through mostly minimal visibility. The road is narrow tar with potholes only seen at the last second. Bits of the road have fallen down the mountain. Other places boulders have fallen on the road. One light in the murk could be a bike but is more probably a truck with a faulty head lamp. Trucks keep to the center. Fear weakens bladder control. Gloves off, dig under waterproof pants, trousers, slinky black Alpinestar Long Johns, underpants. Hurry. Hurry. Where is the damn thing? Ahhhhh...

KISSES FOR TWO COPS

MAY 12: ROAD TO DIRANG
The kitchen stove is truck drivers' privilege. The cafe is smaller than a double bed. I sit at a wooden table. A small window in the entrance door lets in a smidgen of light. My age and nationality are common knowledge. Two young cops dressed in combat camouflage approach. “Grandfather,” one calls me and leans across the table. Face close to mine, he mimes drinking. He is already drunk and armed with an automatic rifle.
“Drink,” he says.
“Tea,” I say.
His companion, also drunk, leans even closer. “Kiss me.”
Never resist a drunk cop carrying a large gun.
I kiss both cops on the cheeks.
A large-breasted woman elbows the cops aside and sets my tea on the table. One of the cops fetches a pack of sweet biscuits from the tiny shop counter. The biscuits are a present.
Tea with two cops at the kissing stage of inebriation differs from my memories of tea with my grandmother – Georgian silver and bone china on a white lace tablecloth.
This is not a good day.

VERY OLD, TOO OLD

MAY 12: TO DIRANG
Nechipu Pass is 5000 feet above sea level. The road climbs towards thick grey cloud. Creepers cascade from the swaying giants of the forest, clumps of orchid on a bough, bromiads. Great leaves drip and droop from beneath the trees. Bananas compete with tree ferns, black rip of a land slide. The road is mostly tar with potholes, rough dirt on some hairpins, but OK, manageable – and the thick rich warm scent of the cloud forest welcomes. I feel good. Continuing was the right decision. A small notice on the right side of the road advertises tea with a cup and arrow. I am traveling at less than ten KPH. And I am tired. No excuse for grabbing the hand brake. The front wheel stops dead. Over I fall. I have only the one bag and can lift the bike. Freewheel down hill to restart and punish myself with no tea. Clouds close in. Visibility 30 feet. The road is narrow two-lane. No safety parapet. Trucks loom out of the fog. I crawl for an hour, stop for tea at a shack with a jeep and two trucks parked outside. The drivers crouch over a stove in the kitchen. One driver speaks a little English. “No good,” he says of the visibility.
“No good,” I agree.
“Road no good,” he continues.
“Road no good,” I agree.
“Road bad,” he says.
“Road bad,” I repeat.
“Road very bad.”
“Very bad, yes...”
“Where you come?”
“England.”
“How old?”
“Seventy seven.”
“Seventy seven...” In surprise, “Very old.” Then, “Too old,” he says.
Not encouraging...

SEPTUAGENARIAN TEENAGER

MAY 12: THE ROAD TO DIRANG
A Hornbill sounds reveille at the Eco Camp. Hornbills whistle sweetly. The whistle ends with a deep and very loud honk. Think rubber valve water-pump. A Woodpecker is next to wake and goes on and on. The only Indian cookoo is surprisingly gentle in his call. Perhaps he has a hangover. I feel fine.
Noel and I have been invited to early breakfast by the Sikh Commander at the tented army camp. The Commander has been operational all night and hasn't had time to change. I depart with a warning that the road is bad. Bad is a ludicrous understatement. Two hours to cover the first ten Ks is good progress through a mess of slush, mud and boulders. Two locals ahead of me take falls – mud from head to foot. My survival is luck – and following outriders. I know through most of those two hours that I should turn back. Turning back makes for a poor last Hurrah. So on I go. Yes, I am aware that I am repeating the idiocy that earned me a smashed ankle in Tierra del Fuego. However I remain what I was then: the only septuagenarian teenager.

RED NECK BIKERDOM

MAY 11: ECO CAMP
Four chilled Fosters and what did Noel and I discuss? Most of it is private or sensitive. The source requires camouflage – a lesson learned on my trip North through Central America. Be wary of what you put on the Web. I had insulted the outer reaches of Red Neck Bikerdom in reporting the beliefs and opinions of Hispanic Americans viz a v the US. Spot him, went out the message, smash him off the road. Ouch...!

DRINKING CHILLED FOSTERS

MAY 11: ECO CAMP
Drinking chilled Fosters in Noel's one-bed thatch-roof bungalow is immensely pleasurable. Noel was one of a gang of bright kids from St Edmunds who made it to Delhi, India's premier University. Now he reads omnivorously. A friend from Delhi days, a leading literary critic, passes on books sent to him for review. Books pack shelves, form piles on every table, overflow into unlikely corners. Add sculpture, paintings, even a David Bailey portrait of Noel's sister, and the sitting room should feel overcrowded. It doesn't. It feels comfortable. And it is a reminder of my early 20s in Kenya and visiting British District Commissioners in the Northern Frontier District or the hills, men who are routinely mocked today as buffoons or twits but ruled over vast areas not by force but through wisdom and a desire to benefit the people. They were cultured men with First Class Honours degrees from good Universities in a day when a First was hard to come by and demanded original thought. Above all, they were incorruptible and believed a career of service was more rewarding than accruing wealth. So there I am, revealed in my true colours: an old fashioned Brit Blimp! The Colonel in Rajen Bali would be proud of me. So would the writer...

ONE OF THE GOOD ONES

MAY 11: ECO CAMP
Noel sits on a bamboo bench on the central lawn in company with an Sikh army officer dressed in shorts, sandals and a T-shirt. The Indian Army in the North East States is in two parts. The main Army guards India's frontiers against possible Chinese incursions. Other units specialise in counter-insurgency. Of the latter, the good ones do much of the crime-fighting that the police can't or won't do. Illegal logging, brigandage, etc. This Sikh from the Punjab is one of the good ones. He is a big burly bruiser of a man, soft spoken, newly married, angered by Civil Administration's incompetency in law enforcement.

MAY 11: ECO CAMP
Noel sits on a bamboo bench on the central lawn in company with an Sikh army officer dressed in shorts, sandels and a T-shirt. The Indian Army in the North East States is in two parts. The main Army guards India's frontiers against possible Chinese incursions. Other units specialise in counter-insurgency. Of the latter, the good ones do much of the crime-fighting that the police can't or won't do. Illegal logging, brigandage, etc. This Sikh from the Punjab is one of the good ones. He is a big burly bruiser of a man, soft spoken, newly married, angered by Civil Administration's incompetency in law enforcement.

TEA GARDEN ENGLISH

MAY 11: ECO CAMP
The camp lies a few Ks down a dirt track through forest. I don't see animals. I do pass elephant dung. The camp is a circle of large tents under thatch. Each tent has a bathroom at the rear. The bathrooms are tile and have geysers. The manager is Noel to his family and school friends, Ronnie to everyone else. He is tall, slim, grey haired, was educated (along with most every other male I meet in the North East States) by Irish Christian Brothers at St. Edmunds, Shillong, and speaks Tea Garden English. Tea Garden English is English Public School with a 1940s vocabulary and a slight Indian accent. Tea Garden society was hard work and the Club (tennis, billiards, dances, decorous flirtations). Terrorism did for the Club - Assamese Nationalists building personal fortunes from kidnapping. Noel opted out. He remains out. Way out – though with contacts world wide.

DUMB DOLT

MAY 11: GUWAHATI
I admit to Baby at breakfast that I am a dossa addict. So is Baby. A restaurant on the next street serves great dossas – though not for breakfast. We will lunch there on my return from Arunachal. Baby also promises pork with bamboo shoots and Naga chilies. Naga chilies are rated the hottest in the world. Yum...
I am traveling light, one back pack. The rest stays under the bed. Having a base makes life so much easier.
“Remember the turn at Balipara,” warns Baby of my route to the Eco Camp.
I miss it. Yes, I check with locals for Nameri. Locals have little interest in Game Sanctuaries. They do know of the Nameri Tea Plantation which is why I find myself 35 kilometers down the wrong road. Dumb? Yes, of course.
Worse is to return to Balipara and stop at the cross roads to consult the road atlas. “You are going to Eco Camp?” asks a young man – where he works and will report my stupidity. This, in turn, will reach Baby's ears. I imagine the conversation. “How you can be so silly? And after I was warning you.”
Ah, well...

DUMB DOLT

MAY 11: GUWAHATI
I admit to Baby at breakfast that I am a dossa addict. So is Baby. A restaurant on the next street serves great dossas – though not for breakfast. We will lunch there on my return from Arunachal. Baby also promises pork with bamboo shoots and Naga chilies. Naga chilies are rated the hottest in the world. Yum...
I am traveling light, one back pack. The rest stays under the bed. Having a base makes life so much easier.
“Remember the turn at Balipara,” warns Baby of my route to the Eco Camp.
I miss it. Yes, I check with locals for Nameri. Locals have little interest in Game Sanctuaries. They do know of the Nameri Tea Plantation which is why I find myself 35 kilometers down the wrong road. Dumb? Yes, of course.
Worse is to return to Balipara and stop at the cross roads to consult the road atlas. “You are going to Eco Camp?” asks a young man – where he works and will report my stupidity. This, in turn, will reach Baby's ears. I imagine the conversation. “How you can be so silly? And after I was warning you.”
Ah, well...

PERMITS, PERMITS, PERMITS

PERMITS, PERMITS, PERMITS
The Permit for Arunachal was promised for Monday. I get it mid-afternoon Tuesday, too late to leave. The Permit is for 21 days and lists where I may visit. Today is the 10th. I must return to Guwahati on the evening of the 17th. Six days. My aim is to climb the Sela Pass to Tawang as a last Hurah. Sella is 13,700 feet. The itinary:
11th. Eco Camp in the Nameri Game Sanctuary
12th. Dirang
13th. Sella Pass and Tawang
14th. Recover
15tth. Return over the pass to Bomdila
16th. Eco Camp
17th. Guwahati

PERMITS, PERMITS, PERMITS

PERMITS, PERMITS, PERMITS
The Permit for Arunachal was promised for Monday. I get it mid-afternoon Tuesday, too late to leave. The Permit is for 21 days and lists where I may visit. Today is the 10th. I must return to Guwahati on the evening of the 17th. Six days. My aim is to climb the Sela Pass to Tawang as a last Hurah. Sella is 13,700 feet. The itinary:
11th. Eco Camp in the Nameri Game Sanctuary
12th. Dirang
13th. Sella Pass and Tawang
14th. Recover
15tth. Return over the pass to Bomdila
16th. Eco Camp
17th. Guwahati

A LAST HURAH

TO ARUNACHAL PRADESH.
Baby Baruah is the Wild Grass owner's younger sister, hence being named Baby by her parents – a fun name when a child but embarassing for a school teacher in her fifties. Baby is widowed. Her home is a bungalow in the Baruah family compound in Guwahati. I stayed there between Wild Grass and Shillong and am back there for two nights while waiting for my permit to visit Arunachal Pradesh. Baby tutors primary school children after school. I fight India's Internet. The problems are standard. Either the server is down or, when it works, a power cut hits mid-way through up-loading. Sending pics for a piece to go in a MCN travel issue took two days of frustration. A piece I sent BA got lost in the ether. Add that cyber cafe cubicles are cramped and sweaty and a hunting ground for mosquitoes, yes...
When not in a cyber cafe, I watch BBC election news and, in the late evening, 20/20 cricket. In cricket England is performing brilliantly. I am a Liberal Democrat. My Party increased its vote. Baby spoils me. All in all, I am a fortunate old sod – apart from the Internet.

SURVIVAL OF THE UNFIT

We did it. Not me, but Ashok, President of Shillong's Vintage Car Association. We drove out yesterday to a picnic spot in the hills above Shillong. We is Ashock, his wife Rula, and me in Ashok's classic WW 11 jeep accompanied by more than a dozen member's of Shillong's Royal Enfield Riders Club. A dozen Bullets produce an impressive rumble.
What did we do? What such people do in Iran or Texas or Argentina, Pakistan, France or Russia - or back home at the Horizons Unlimited June meet. We drank cold beer and whiskey (not mixed), ate what was easy to cook over an open fire, told tall tales of rides done and planned and sang to a guitar. The quality of the singing varies. Not much else!
Thanks guys for a great day.
And my thanks to Ashok and Rula for warm wonderful hospitality. A good many years have passed since I last danced with a billiard cue to Frank Sinatra and the Andrews Sisters.
I am back in Guwahati today and ride north tomorrow into the mountains. A final week in the saddle...

WILD DAYS, WILD NIGHTS, WILD GRASS

THIS IS AN EXPLANATION.
The owner of Wild Grass at Kaziranga Wild Life Sanctuary refused to let me leave. He claimed that I looked exhausted and needed to keep off the bike for a week. This is not a complaint and I required little persuasion. Wild Grass is glorious. So are the animals - and great fellow guests. From Wild Grass I rode back to Guwahati and stayed with the owner's widowed sister for three days, dined with friends, partied with the young (in their sixties), struggled with the Internet (2 days to up load pics for the latest piece for MCN). Now I am in Shilling and being wickedly entertained by the President of the Vintage Car Club of the North East. He owns a WW 11 US army jeep, a 1930s Morris 8 open tourer, a 1950s Studebaker and is rebuilding a 1940s BSA 500 (bike, for the ignorant). Got to bed at 3 a.m. this morning and the Shillong Enfield riders are coming to the house this evening. Help! If they leave me in a state to move we will play a few holes of golf tomorrow early then ride (bikes not horses)-

WHY HAVEN'T I?

KAZIRANGA WILD LIFE SANCTUARY: APRIL 3
Why haven't I uploaded stuff onto the Blog? I don't have a memory stick with me because I didn't expect the power to be on - or, if it was on, for the Web connection in the cubicle behind the Chemist shop to be operative.
I rode in from WILD GRASS to find quinine for night cramps. I have new medication proscribed by a heart specialist in Gangtok. The anti-cramps pills don't work. I have had cramps in my feet and legs the past three nights. Hurts like hell and I can't get to the bathroom safely. That explains the chemist...
Does he have quinine?
No.
I shall try a jungle Doctor (Tribal!). Surely Jungle docs proscribe quinine for malaria.

TRIBALS

KAZIRANGA WILD LIFE SANCTUARY; APRIL 3
Define Tribals in order of National importance:
Tourist Attractions.
Country people considered inferior.
Country people for whom the Government hasn't built schools.
Or hospitals...

Add the following from talking with an Assamese University Professor.
Was he Tribal?
Certainly not. His people invaded Assam a few centuries ago. Originally they came from Thailand.
Thus we have a fourth definition of Tribal: Losers...

WILD GRASS

KAZIRANGA WILD LIFE SANCTUARY: MAY 2
Great day yesterday - except for the standard problems of Internet and power. Power cuts are called Load Shedding - great terminology! The load shedding last two, three or four hours at a time, occur at least once and usually twice and often three times daily. I am staying at WILD GRASS. Check it out on the Web.
Yesterday in the Sanctuary a rhino walked down a grass swathe by the river and up over the track immediately behind the jeep. All hell broke loose a few minutes later. The rhino was charging at us down the track - so the forest ranger said as he tried to load his rifle. He was still trying when two buffalo charged by through the forest in one of those male on male power struggles.
Also seen, Jungle fowl. So they are wild chickens - no. Chickens are domesticated Jungle Fowl.

TIGER HILL

DARJEELING: APRIL 3
I don't care for gloom – even Historic, as in castles and Tudor manor houses. The Mayfair Hotel, Darjeeling, is a rare beast amongst Heritage buildings: rooms are light. It is also a hotel where guests talk to each other. The library boasts six-seater sofas and opulently comfortable armchairs. Barefoot diplomats from the US Embassy in Kathmandu share a beer with a couple of Brits. All four were up before dawn to witness sun rise from the peak of Tiger Hill – in company with a few hundred Indian tourists. What did they see? Cloud. How was the cloud? Damp and depressing. Ah, well...

BUBBLY BLISS

DARJEELING: APRIL 3
I have transported my miseries to the Mayfair Hotel. The Mayfair does luxury. The manager throws wide the curtains on a close-up of cloud. No cloud and the view would stretch for a few hundred miles. When did the cloud last lift? February? Or was it January? Or December? I don't give a damn. Keep the view. Get rid of the manager (politely). Gush steaming water into the bath. Add a full bottle of Molton Brown hoarded from the Umaid Bavhan Palace. Hang the DON'T DISTURB sign on the door. Shush now...Don't even breathe. Grandpa is meditating in bubbly bliss...

MEDICATION WON'T SUFFICE

DARJEELING: APRIL 2
Bollywood is shooting a movie at the Hotel Swiss. A tall, slim, very Gay Thirties wears a woollie hat with a bobble. I'm unsure as to his title but he's the man who makes things happen. My camera is beyond him. I traipse from camera shop to camera shop. Darjeeling scores an A+ for vertical streets, an X- for camera technicians. The film crew eat packed lunches and packed dinners leaving me as the only guest in the dinning room. My head hurts. My shoulder hurts. My back hurts. My right knee hurts. These pains are to be expected in an old fool who falls off a bike (even riding zero Ks an hour). Medication won't suffice. I need laughter and a smidgen of five star luxury. The Swiss is a small charming Heritage building and I am not registering a complaint. However, dispelling my misery requires more. For instance a bubble bath...

WILD LIFE SANCTUARY

I saw at least thirty black rhino yesterday. Am now trying to upload Blog before the next electricity cut.

KAZIRANGA WILD LIFE SANCTUARY

OK, I am in Kaziranga, Assam. My telephone doesn't work in Assam. Heavy storms over the past days and electricity has joined internet in being haphazard. I shall ride an elephant tomorrow and see black rhino, deer, buffalo and wild boar - many birds - though unlikely to see tigers as grass is too long. Have been trying to upload Blogs from memory stick here at a computer back of the local chemist! No luck...
Maybe the chemist (also a journalist and filming as I write) can make a suggestion. Cheers to all. Yes, and I AM HAVING A GREAT TIME!

HAPHAZARD WEB ACCESS

Web access in India is haphazard. I am on for the first time today at 10 p.m. and need to get to bed as I must be mobile by 6 a.m.
A bunch of Blogs are ready to upload that will bring me up to date here in Sikkim. I ride to Assam tomorrow, no Email for two or three days. Guaharti will be my first opportunity. Cheers...

ONE MORE FALL

DARJEELING: APRIL 1
A Swiss baker built the Hotel Swiss in the 1920s as a family home and place of work.
Now Help Tourism have the lease and run the hotel as a training ground for local employees. I follow the pick-up down a steep narrow road. The turn to the hotel is on a sharp corner and at an angle of 300 degrees. The gradient is even more acute. Three tour jeeps parked on the corner bar the pick-up from making the turn. The driver waves me on. I creep in first gear. An Indian tourist seated in one of the jeeps opens the door in my face. I can't hold the bike upright against the slope. Down I go, head in the ditch. A couple of drivers drag me and the bike upright. The Indian tourist continues chatting on his mobile.

TOY TRAIN

TO DARJEELINMG: APRIL 1
The mountain town of Ghoom is an unplanned slum of concrete ugliness and garbage. A spur of Darjeeling's Toy Train runs down the main street. I came off in Colon, Panama, trying to cross the track at two acute an angle. Rails trapped the front wheel. Lesson learnt, I meet the tfrack now at near ninety degrees. Darjeeling sprawls along an even more precipitous ridge. The ridge was suitable as a site for a few small health spars, boarding schools and summer bungalows for the British Raj. The modern town is a disaster. Small concrete hotels of unremitting ugliness crowd one another and squueze into non-existence those few remnants of reasonable taste. A good shake would drop the whole mess down the mountain.
Where is the Planning Authority, the urban Administration? Are the Administrators ashamed of their creation? Or are the blind to the awfulness?
Perhaps they live elsewhere.

UP AND DOWN THE MOUNTAINS

TO DARJEELING: APRIL 1
The road winds all the way down through broad leaf forest and all the way up to clipped tea gardens part hidden in layers of mist or low-lying cloud, hairpin turn after hairpin turn, harsh chill down to soggy sweat and back to chill. In Europe the road would be considered single track. Here jeeps squeeze by each other. No busses. Meet a truck and one or other driver pulls to the narrow verge. The drop is only a few hundred feet and is seldom sheer. Imagine rolling down through emerald tea bushes. Not fun but interesting - and probably not fatal. Tin-roof cottages are little bigger than a normal living-room back home. Village shops are smaller. Shiny packets of crisps hang above a tiny counter, open sacks of rice and millet, cigarettes, biscuits, a few bottles of soft drinks. The wind is less than yesterday. The nagging pain in my chest is the same as are the women carrying huge baskets supported on a head band. They respond to my Hi or Namaste with such open smiles, so un-Indian. Old men in wool hats salute with raised hands and flash pink gums. Old? I am probably older. It promises to be a good day...

WIZENED ELF IN GOLDEN RUBBER BOOTS

NEORA VALLEY: APRIL 1
Goodbye to Uttam Paul and the wizened elf in golden rubber boots. Rain fell in the night. The track will be slippery. Having ridden it once, I have nothing to prove. Sensible to load the bike into the pick-up. Comfort is nil: bounce, bounce, bounce.
Walking would be pure pleasure.
We meet an Indian biker/film maker at the track's junction with the road. He films us unloading the bike and I talk to camera – the usual stuff. Why I ride a small Honda: reliability, fuel consumption, light-weight maneuverability. And that there is nothing remarkable in what I do. Millions of people ride a bike to work each morning. All I do is ride further.
Enough talk, get in the saddle: Brmmm, Brmmm...

MELODRAMATIC OLD MAN

NEORA VALLEY: APRIL 1
Pale daylight seeps round the curtains as I pad to the bathroom for the fourth time in the night. Fresh out of bed my balance is never good. My spine and ankles and the knuckle on my right index-finger hurt. Back to bed and I cuddle under the duvets – a few minutes to 5 a.m. and not much hope of getting back to sleep. I face a long ride through the mountains to Darjeeling and wish that I wasn't so tired. This journey has been too much for me. Just this once I'm writing the truth: that I'm scared of failure and scared of suffering some sort of physical collapse. I am 77 years old and having to get up in the night is standard. So are the painful joints. They don't matter. The heart scares me. I intend to keep going of course. I'll enjoy the journey most of the time. It is a great experience. But the fear is there and this wretched exhaustion. Enough of this melodramatic self-indulgence. I'll be scaring my children – that's if they read this Blog. Open the curtains and watch the dawn mist smoke through the trees; hot shower, drag on a thick jumper and sit out on the porch. The Neora Valley is a Wild Life Sanctuary and birds are abundant – though I can't name any. Ignorant Old Man...

SUBSERVIENT SPECIES

NEORA VALLEY: MARCH 31
The three couples from Kolkata represent a pleasant facet of India's economic success –anti TV, anti computer games, pro wild life, pro ecology. Sad that this attitude isn't more prevalent. Mid-age with young children, they explore, on holiday, the less known and less developed areas of India – mountains, nature reserves, wild life sanctuaries, temples and fortresses less visited and difficult to reach. Their advice is to explore the North East States. When I write of their advice I write of the three men. The women remain separate, care for the kids, talk amongst themselves, return to their cabins. A subservient species? What do I know? I am merely an observer.

QUALITIES SADLY MISTAKEN FOR WEAKNESS

NEORA VALLEY: MARCH 31
Stone steps bordered by ferns and bamboo lead to the dinning hall on a higher terrace. Orchids droop between the rocks of the retaining walls. Three further cabins are occupied by holidaying families from Kolkata. The cabins have mezzanines and sleep four. Uttam Paul designed the buildings and oversaw construction by local villagers. His father was a doctor on a tea estate. Uttam married locally and has a house in Lava. He is a neat trim man in his early fifties and speaks quietly and strikes me as both gentle and thoughtful – qualities sadly mistaken for weakness in our modern culture. Uttam is tough minded and a stubborn and dedicated fighter and worker for his community and ecology.

NOT BAD FOR A CAMP

NEORA VALLEY: MARCH 31
I write this on a bench on the log cabin's porch. The driver squats on the outer edge of the car park parapet (dead drop for ever), mobile phone to his ear – calling his wife of course. How is the baby? Villages the far side of the steep valley are a thin scattering of tin roofs on terraced patches of darker green amidst broad-leaf trees. Look beyond to snow caps tinted with gold by the evening sun. There lie the Natula and Gelepla Passes into Nepal and Tibet.

NEAR PERFECT MATTRESS

NEORA VALLEY: MARCH 31
Help Tourism's local director/partner, Uttam Paul, greets me with a silk saffron scarf and glass of locally brewed liquor that tastes of blackberries and is probably lethal. A flagstone footpath and stone steps lead to the comfortable porch of a one-bedroom log cabin. Within lies total luxury: polished wood floors, double bed with top sheet folded over blankets and duvet, near perfect mattress, small dressing-room, bathroom with steam-hot water, thick towels. My only comment, Wow!

WALKER'S BLISS

NEORA VALLEY: MARCH 31
That last, Not really, is untrue. Forget the road as dry boulder-strewn river bed. The straight stretches give magical glimpses of the valley between giant conifers. Ferns cascade from the uphill side of the track; rocks cocooned in moss, crystal clear rivulets; palest of pale-yellow butterflies chase each other, scent of leaf mold and pine tar – twelve kilometers of walker's bliss! Even the bad bits can't be that bad if a septuagenarian can handle them on a small bike. The turn to the camp is on the right under one of those square archways. The final ascent to the parking lot is near vertical mud. I don't do mud. Nor does the Honda. We get three quarters of the way up before beginning to slip backwards. Add two-villager power and we make it. A wizened elf shod in gold rubber boots grabs my bags out of the pick-up. What is a camp? What will I find? Presumably one or other end of cold-water basic...

FUN? NOT REALLY...

NEORA VALLEY: MARCH 31
And upward...
The small mountain town of Lava is dominated by a modern monastery. The track to Help Tourism's camp is to the right on the final bend before the village. The manager assures me that the track is very bad, better take the bike in the pick-up. As if I can't cope...I'll show him.
The track runs along the side of the mountain through a magnificent pine forest. The first few hundred meters are compressed dirt, easy. Turn a bend and I face a climb over large smooth river stones, first gear, bumpity bump bump bump. The stones kick the front wheel. Stay loose is the secret. Let the bike pick its own way as you would with a horse. A smooth stretch follows then more stones and a steep decent with a sharp bend. Imagine a mountain stream without water. Down hill is always worst. Put both feet down, you lose the rear break and begin to slide. Grab the front break and you're on your butt. So, however scared, you have to keep going - which isn't easy when faced with a 160 degree bend. The camp is twelve kilometers down the track. Twelve kilometers of and ninety minutes - enough time to get accustomed to the conditions and gain faith in your ability and the bike's ability. Fun? Not really...

JEEP GEYSERS

NEORA VALLEY: MARCH 31
The underfed driver parks the pick-up at a road side shrine - not to pray but to lift the hood on a mini geyser. Brave, I peek down the mountainside. Four women pick tea on the near precipice. Do they never suffer from vertigo? At least they are sheltered from the wind that whips over the crest. Wind in mountains is always scary. The driver removes the radiator cap and rests the engine five minutes before adding water. I drag a thick jumper from my backpack. Onward and upward...

HEART ATTACKS, ALTITUDE AND FEAR

NOREYA VALLEY: MARCH 31
The road turns uphill – or up-mountain – once more into tea gardens. The ascent is steeper than any I encountered in the Americas. At one point the road tunnels under itself to begin a 360o turn. I was sweating in my wind-proofs by the river. The sweat is chill now and I must fight a stiff breeze on my shoulder or be thrust toward the road's outer edge. How steep is the drop? How far is the drop? Don't know. Don't dare look. And what of the pain on my left side high under the ribs? Heart, muscular or too vivid an imagination? Scared? Yes. Having suffered a couple of heart attacks does that to you. Calmness is essential. I breathe slowly and draw comfort from memories of the first pass I crossed in Mexico, a climb from 60 meters above sea level to 3200. The pain was the same as were the fears – though with one added. Would the Brazilian-built Honda 125 fail? I rode 65000 kilometers through the Americas. I have ridden 12500 kilometers through India. Believe me, Honda 125s never fail...Not so the four-wheel-drive pick-up.

FAT QUACK AND WIFE

NEORA VALLEY: MARCH 31
A grossly fat couple enter the chai shop. He is a doctor and boastful that his weekly visits to these uplands are an act of charity. His wife waddles behind the counter and helps herself to a packet of biscuits. The chai-shop daughter serves them bowls of vegetables and dhal, plates heaped high with rice. The fat couple stuff their faces and leave without paying. As for us, down and down and down to a river gorge and a narrow village where tour agencies advertise white water rafting. We cross a bridge and back track along the river. White water foams through the gorge. Two inflatable boats rest on a gravel spit. Tourists exchange tales of valour. How do I know? Been there, done that – though in Ecuador.

FREE WOMEN AND MOMOS

NEORA VALLEY: MARCH 31
I have escaped the harsh heat of India's plains. Wisps of thin cloud or mist drift across the narrow road. Time to pull on waterproof over-trousers and a light wind-cheater. We stop at a tin and brick shack. A woman serves us sweet milk tea and momos (stuffed crescent-shaped dumplings) steamed by her mother on a wood fire. The women are of a different culture to those of the south. No humility here. These women own themselves, freedom apparent in every movement and in the openness of their smiles and chatter.
I urge the driver of our pick-up to eat more. He is thin, young, married a year, first child born. His wife teaches in a private primary school – monthly salary 1500 Rupees. The driver earns 3000 Rupees plus 100 daily for food when away from home. A monthly family income of 40 pounds Stirling, little wonder that he is under-weight.

TWO ROADS TO DARJEELING

NEORA VALLEY: MARCH 31
Two roads lead from Siliguri to Darjeeling. The direct route passes through Kurseong. We take the westerly road that climbs close to the Nepalese border. The beginnings are a gentle climb through almost flat tea gardens. Women pickers wade waist-deep amongst the deep emerald bushes. Shade trees guard the lanes to tea factories and manager's bungalows. We cross and recross the narrow gauge railway that takes Darjeeling's toy train north from Siliguri. Then up and up and up...

INTO THE HILLS

SILIGURI: MARCH 31
Help Tourism develops tourism within the community. They have built a camp in the Noreya Valley. The Siliguri office manager comes to the Cindrella Hotel in a four-wheel drive pick-up truck at 9 a.m. He has been instructed to transport me and the bike in the truck. I prefer to ride.
“The road to the camp is not possible.”
“So I will ride while the road is possible”

YE OF LITTLE FAITH

SILIGURI: MARCH 30
I lay the laptop and charger on the workbench. The non-newspaper reader regards it with deep suspicion. “It won't charge,” I say.
He pokes the charger with one finger. Nothing happens. I say, “It's not a bomb.”
Relieved, he opens the laptop.
I tell him that it has a Linux operating system.
Possibly he understands.
He plugs the charger into a wall socket. The charger falls out. He strips the ends from two lengths of copper wire, wraps the prongs of the charger with wires, no insulation tape, and prods the other ends into the socket with a couple of skinny ballpoints. Inserting a diagnostic probe into the cable end that connects to the computer produces zero. “It isn't charging.”
“Right,” I say.
“Do you wish me to mend it?”
“You can?”
“It is possible,” he says.
If only he sounded more confident.
Prying at the charger with a jeweler's screwdriver achieves nothing. A short discussion with my guide and the newspaper reader ensues before he takes a rusty kitchen carving knife from a drawer.
To me, “You wish me to open it?”
“You're the surgeon.”
Fifteen minutes with a soldering iron and the charger works. 300 Rupees. Old Man of little Faith...

WE SET OUT TO HAVE AN ADVENTURE

SILIGURI: MARCH 30
Oh God, why hast thou forsaken me? Last night the camera disaster. This morning the laptop won't charge. An underweight young man sits on a plastic chair in side-street shop that advertises lap-top accessories. The shop is the size of a small shoe-box. No accessories. Does he know of a computer mechanic? Yes, indeed. He pulls down the steel shutter on his empty shop and mounts the pillion - a right, a left, another right, a further left, each street marginally narrower than the last. I park in the courtyard of a three-story concrete building the builders of which had never met an architect. A side door opens to a squash court sized workshop, low ceilinged, no windows. Two apparently indolent male thirty-somethings are drinking tea. One of them has tilted a spotlight to illuminate a newspaper. I suspect that the bits of computer and computer shells have found a permanent home on two work benches at right angles to each other. At such moments I remember the mantra with which my companion of Hispanic American travels, Ming, met all dangers and difficulties: “Simon, we set out to have an adventure...”

SUE FOR MENTAL ANGUISH

SILIGURI: MARCH 29
My camera lens is dirty. I buy a cleaning kit at a camera shop, unpack the kit in my hotel bedroom and squeeze a drop of cleaning liquid onto the lens. The top shoots off the bottle. The entire contents flood the camera. Not only the lens but also the interior. Liquid bubbles float on the inside of the screen. Turn the camera on and the sole response from the computer is a request for the date. Were this the US I would hire a smart lawyer and sue the product manufacturer for a new camera plus an extra million for mental anguish - settle for one hundred grand. This is India. I weep.

BACK-ALLEY TAILOR

SILIGURI: MARCH 29
Three hours at a back-alley tailor designing a head band that will hold my camera.
The purpose? To shoot video as I ride. The shop is ten feet by eight, two sewing machines, two tailors. The younger, in his twenties, works on the camera headband. The older gives advice. The one-man chai shop opposite provides tea and further counsel. An elderly English speaker with a puncture repair shop (only for bicycles) translates. Add two or three onlookers and you have a street party. Why is Siliguri different? The people speak quietly, they don't jostle, they respect personal space. The only argument is financial. The tailor charges 50 Rupees. I tell him, Nonsense, and pay double.

TRAIN IS OK

SILIGURI: MARCH 29
Unloading the bike at Siliguri is a doddle. An employee of the Cindrella Hotel has brought a bottle of petrol. I lunch with the hotel's owner, Rajendra Baid. He founded, when only twenty, Siliguri's newspaper. The paper continues in profit despite electronic competition.
Lonely Planet describes the Cindrella Hotel as Siliguri's best, bedrooms with polished floor boards. Best, yes, but the floors are marble. Siliguri is cleaner than cities further south. The people seem different. In what way? I'm unsure. Give me a few days...

RAJEN BALI

What did I do in Kolkata other than watch cricket on TV, drink beer and over-eat? Talk with Rajen Bali - two septuagenarian chums sharing experiences and opinions and teasing each other. The teasing grows from affection and trust in a relationship. Rajen is a fine man, honourable, generous, determined in his principles. highly literate, widely read, widely traveled...and skillful in the kitchen.

DISGUST WITH LABOUR

KOLKATA: MARCH 28
Cooked by the Colonel, delicious prawns for dinner and one more sad good-bye.
The Kolkata edition of The Telegraph ran a flattering piece on me this morning. I am stopped twice by bikers on the road to the station.
Loading the bike is easy, the sleeper comfortable. I chat with an English woman, a child psychologist, member of a tour group off to trek in the foothills of the Himalayas. Where did trek originate? Is walk inadequate? Less sexy? Less commercial?
She has been a Labour supporter since childhood and a Labour Councilor. The present Labour hierarchy disgusts her. She will either vote Liberal Democrat or abstain.

FAREWELL TO KOLKATA

KOLKATA: MARCH 28
My last day in Kolkata and Rajen Bali promises me a treat. Off we march for breakfast, the Colonel leading, three swings of his arms, three claps. Come on, chaps. First the South India Restaurant, then to buy prawns for my farewell supper.
Crows and a few dogs pick at a heap of stinking refuse outside the market. Why isn't it cleared away? Ask the Municipal Government.
Rajen has shopped at this market for the thirty years. He barks witticisms at the stall holders, pokes at strange (to me) vegetables and fruit, explains their culinary usage – such is shopping with a two-legged encyclopedia of the subcontinent's food.
A small skinny fish merchant scoops prawns from a basket for the Colonel's inspection. The Colonel approves. Fish gleam on a slab, no ice. Trussed chickens lie silent. Two black goats wait the knife. A fresh carcass hanging from an iron hook drips blood into an open drain; a teenage butcher drags the skin from a second.
The Colonel selects limes, a red onion.
We are pulled home by a bare-foot rickshaw wallah.
Easy to salve your conscience and take a tuk-tuk.
Rajen Bali, ever practical, has pushed up the rickshaw wallahs' wages.
How?
By hiring them and paying 15% above the standard fare. Do this frequently and the raise becomes the norm.

KOLKATA: MARCH 26
I will take a train north to Siliguri, the transport hub for Darjeeling and Sikkim. 800 Rupees for a 2nd class a/c sleeper, 800 Rupees for the bike. A porter wraps the bike in straw and sacking, a further 300. The gas tank must be emptied.

MOI AMORE

KOLKATA: MARCH 27
The Colonel and I are invited to lunch at a new restaurant opened by Kolkata's prophet of fusion cooking, Pradip Rozario. Padrip trained with the Oberoi Group both in India and in Europe. The Kurry Klub at 176, Sarat Bose Road was his initial gamble. The first two years were tough. Next came K K's Fusion. Now Moi Amore on the top floor of a plush new shopping mall and cinema complex. The décor is light, smart and friendly. The food is delicious – giant tiger prawns lightly grilled.

BRIT BRITS ARE CRAP AT 20/20

Indian Premier League 20/20 competition is in full swing. Sadly no matches at Kolkata's Eden Gardens before April 1. Rajen and I make do with television. Sachin Tendulkar is God. Collingwood is the only Brit with Brit grandparents. The two other Brits have parents or grandparents from the subcontinent. Thank God for Asian immigration.

IS HOGARTHIAN TRITE?

KOLKATA: MARCH 26
I love Kolkata. Communist State Governments, unfriendly to business, have curtailed investment. One result: the city suffers from less industrial pollution than Delhi or Mumbai. A second plus: no arguments with cab drivers. Cabs have meters, drivers switch them on. Shopping in the markets is a pleasure. Stall keepers are friendly. The language is musical. More English is spoken. I can communicate.
I explore the city while Rajen organises the final stages of my journey into Sikkim and the North East States. Few relics of the Mughals survive. Those of the British Raj have done better. The Writers Building (1780), headquarters of the East India Company, now houses the Government Secretariat. Built to impress the natives, the palatial Government House in immense pleasure gardens is home to the Governor of West Bengal. The Governor is a political appointee. I haven't written of the slums, that vile Hogarthian world glimpsed down alleys. Nor did I photograph them. The denizens deserve more of us than serve as illustrations for a Blog.

CHINESE STREET MARKET

KOLKATA: MARCH 26
Street breakfast at the Chinese street market: a ten liter aluminum pot of chicken soup simmers over coals on the sidewalk. The squatting stall holder rinses bowls in a bucket – sufficiently clean for the Colonel and I. One of our party, a woman, has brought her own cup. Her husband talks on his mobile while Rajen discusses chicken stock with the cook. Rajen remembers her mother. Beyond the stalls, women chop piles of salvaged timber into kindling. One feeds a baby at the breast. A family have roofed a crack between two shacks. The mother washes two toddlers in the gutter. Our next stop, stuffed dumplings...

WOW!

First day with internet in over a week. Where am I? Just returned from North Sikkim to the capitol, Gantok. Neither phones nor Internet in the North. Here in Gantok heavy storms every day wiped out Internet connection. Now, finally, brilliant sunshine and clear skies. Sat on my balcony at the hotel at 4.45 this morning to admire the snow peaks - fabulous. And the Internet working. Wow!

KRAZY KEBABS

KOLKATA: MARCH 25
Krazy Kebab is newly opened and designer modern - somewhere to take a business client. The food is superb and Westerners will find ordering easier than at Kasturi. The kebabs are good. Try the lamb chops, Adrak ke panje. They melt in your mouth. Or the chef's own invention: Ghost Aftab. And there is an excellent value lunch-time buffet. The chef in his whites and tall hat sits with us. He was an executive chef with the Taj Hotel Group. He left to build his own small Empire. Good fortune to him.

KASTURI

KOLKATA: MARCH 24
Kasturi at 7/A Mustaque Ahmed Street is the oldest Bengali restaurant in Kolkata. Climb stairs to a narrow room. Sit at a plastic topped table, no table linen, no menu, and eat fresh sea food. A waiter offers a dozen different dishes. I would be bewildered, nervous. Rajen selects. All are delicious. Salt water prawn in a sauce is extraordinary.
We sit in the proprietor's office after lunch. Rajen and the proprietor talk of cooking. Why no menu? Because dishes and prices change each day. The proprietor does the buying at the fish market. Quality and knowledge of what his customers can afford govern his choice.

OLD MEN ENTRAPPED IN MEMORIES

KOLKATA: MARCH 24
Travelers eat mediocre food much of the time. Ignorant of where to eat we consult guide books or trust to chance. Writers of guide books are equally ignorant and chance is seldom the path to glory.
Encyclopedic knowledge of Kolkata makes Rajen Bali a brilliant pilot through the city's culinary highways and byways. First a cold beer at a bar. One bottle is sufficient. We sit quietly, content in each other's company, and tell tales of what made us who we are.
"Boring," my younger sons would say. Or, "Heard that..."
True, perhaps, but what would they prefer? Silence?
As for food, Rajen's tastes are eclectic. Plush or plastic table is immaterial. Only the food counts.