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)-