As life gets longer,
awful feels softer.
Well, it feels pretty soft to me.
If it takes shit
to make bliss
then I feel pretty blissfully.
Modest Mouse, “The View”
Questions to ask oneself before cycling on a given road:
1) Is it in India?
2) Is it in Arunachal Pradesh (one of India’s most remote and mountainous states)?
3) Is it in monsoon season?
4) Are there “danger” or “road closed” or other foreboding signs?
5) Have your more experienced cyclist friends abandoned you?
6) Have more than 50% of locals scoffed or told you that it’s impossible?
7) Do the switchbacks on the map look like seismometer readouts?
If 2-3 “Yes” responses, not going would probably be the prudent choice.
If 4-5 “Yes” responses, it’s probably a really stupid idea to go.
If 6-7 “Yes” responses, you and your bike will both break, and you deserve it.
Then again, there might be other questions to consider, such as:
8) Do you have either an inferiority complex or slightly masochistic tendencies? Maybe both?
9) Have you been looking forward to Yak cheese, Salt Butter Tea, and Barley Flour?
10) Do you wanna see old women with face tattoos?
11) Wouldn’t cycling up to the little pocket where Tibet, India, and Bhutan converge give you serious bragging rights?
Yes, yes, yes, and yes! Let’s go! It couldn’t possibly be as bad as they say.
OR COULD IT?!?!?
On with the photos!
Control: A Standard Road in Assam
The sort of road that makes you wish the day would never end.
Arunachal, Part 1: Kimin to Ziro
(89km, max altitude 1773m, total gain 6400m, two full days)
This is clearly a road, and so is better than I had expected.
Sure there are some potholes, but “if it’s like this the whole way, we’re in pretty good shape.”
Famous last words!
Hold breath, cross fingers, say prayer, knock on…any wood except that tree.
Shaky, with his superior grimacing skills, managed to zip right on through this mud slick.
But only because I and a few cars had gone through just before him, spraying the calf-deep mud out of the way.
Oh, my poor rim and brakes!
Part 2 – Backtrack to Potin, then to Itanagar and Gophur
(151km, max altitude 1773m, total gain 6970m, 1.5 riding days)
Whatever, cars and trucks and even scooters are coming in and going out. How bad could it be?
Even the most perfect roads must have looked like this once.
Good thing I learned how to fishtail properly in Myanmar.
The landslides start before the roads have even been completed.
This is about where we lost faith that there would actually be more road up ahead.
Part 3 – Bhalukpong to Tawang
(280km, 20,800m total altitude gain[!], max altitude 4,200m)
[6 riding days, 2 voluntary rest days, 2 forced rest days because of a general strike]
Day one of who knows how many.
How I learned to stop worrying and love switchbacks.*
From a sign on the side of the road
“BRO [Boarder Roads Organization]
Making Broader Roads…
Until Tenga”
After Tenga.
Altitude: 100m —>up to 1800m—>down to 1000m—>up to 2600m—>down to 1400m—>up to 4200m (!)—> down to 2000m—> up to 3000m —> turn around and do it again backwards.
The start of the climb up to Sela Pass, the highest mountain pass road in the Northeast and possibly among the top 5 in India.
Distance from base to top, as the crow flies: 7km.
Distance via road: 40km.
In Manipur, we met a grandpa who had been with the army engineers working on this road…in the 1960s. It’s still not done.
Fog, another natural hazard. One of the few times I’ve ever felt grateful for Indian airhorns.
The road had clearly been paved at one point.
A brief reprieve from the mud.
Pictured right: Monpa rock-breaking ladies taking a nap on the side of the road.
As the elevation hit 4000 and above, I started to get a little lightheaded and woozy. Just gotta hold out for a few more kilometers…
The last are generally the worst.
The final approach
Booya!*
Personal altitude record!
(rabbit glove picked up off the street in Vietnam.)
Left to Bhutan, Right to China.
Congrats, you did it! Here’s a view of a Yak.
*Photos of me and others marked with an * courtesy of Chris Buchman at http://www.fromatobe.com.
I was just thinking today, hmm, I wonder when Mike is gonna do an update. And voila! You did one! I willed it into existence!
Do it again! India’s Awesome Stuff to Passable Internet ratio is pretty insanely high, I need some help churning the posts out.
What an accomplishment. Perfect perseverance.
AWESOME, you guys!!! Good thing we had some training in Myanmar….was this worse??? Where are u guys now???
Hey Daniela, long time no see! How’s everything in Swissland?
It’s hard to compare Arunachal to those couple of crazy jungle days Myanmar. I feel like the Myanmar stuff was tough because we didn’t really see it coming, and because the weather was so crazy hot. In Arunachal the already bad conditions were exacerbated by fog and rain, but the temperature was mostly pleasant…even a little chilly in some spots. Arunachal definitely did more damage to the bicycles (subject of a later post)…but then again we covered something like 600km there, whereas that rough spot in Myamar was only 150 or so, right?
Boy, don’t you miss life on the road???
Chris and I visited the root bridges at Cherrapunjee and then rode through a good chunk of Meghalaya, now we’re just a couple days away from Sikkim. Finally!
Hope all’s well, keep reading!
Incredible, Mike. The commentary at the top gave me a good laugh. Way to kill it dude!
Gotta find some way to keep the readers comin’ back for more ^^
Mike: You are really showing some determination, and I admire you for it. When are you coming home, or are you there already? LOL!!!
Hey Ralph you kinda hit the nail on the head! I’m a little too well-suited to the vagabomd lifestyle, I can’t imagine doing much else right now. When locals ask me where my home is, I usually point at the bike…
No matter how terrifyingly you described those mountain roads and switchbacks, you certainly seem to be enjoying them so much. You look so much better than in college teaching great english skills or in the North gate area of KNU wandering around finding more liquor and saying “I really like being here.”
Hrm, I don’t remember this story of yours about KNU…but in this case maybe not remembering is proof that it happened.