We entered Arunachal Pradesh, gateway to the eastern Himalayas, a province not even officially recognized by neighboring China as being Indian territory, on the 1st of July. It took 8 days to get to Jeng, the last big town before our destination, Tawang, and the fortuitous location of my big bicycle rim fiasco. After Jeng, I was cycle-less to Tawang, where I spent a few days checking out the town, visiting a nearby school, hanging out with Tibetans who crossed over from China with the Dalai Lama in 1959, and then finally made my way to Jamtse Gatsal, an orphanage and educational community for local parent-less and otherwise disadvantaged children. Mike and I spent a few days there getting infinite hugs from the kids, and hanging out with the super awesome volunteers. Then it was time to make our move. Our special permit to be in the province expired on July 21, so we hitched a ride out in a cement truck, turning an 8-day, gruellingly difficult bicycle adventure in reverse, rewinding the landscape at super speed, and in just two days we were in Guwahati, capital of Assam, and home to civilization (Pizza Hut, and a bike shop).
We spent the next 10 days or so waiting around for my new rim to show up, getting it fixed, and eating pizza. Finally, at month’s end, everything’s ready to go, an we’re saying goodbye to our wonderful and energetic host, and fellow cycle tourist, Indrajit Sinha of the We Are Young Foundation. Indrajit works on youth awareness and empowerment campaigns in Guwahati for various social issues, including sexual harassment, which you probably know is rampant in India.
So this month I spent a ton of money on food because I’ve been sitting around eating pizza a lot, and food is generally more expensive in big cities. I also spent more than $50 on bike stuff, and another $50 transporting myself around because I didn’t have a working bike. The per-day expenditures work out to $14/day, with about $4 of that being for bike repairs and transportation.
As you can see, we rode 6 (well mike rode 7, as he rode his last day into Tawang after my bike broke) days with super low average speeds. Basically I was climbing mountains that whole time, and while on a normal day I can easily do 100km or more in 5 or 6 hours, on the road to Tawang I was lucky to make 40 in 7 hours. The next 10 days or so we were in Tawang or at Jamtse, and the last 10 days of July were spent in Guwahati at Indrajit’s house.
Finally, the ratio of hotels to other forms of accommodation worked out to about the same as most months, a 60/40 split. I don’t know why it always works out this way, especially on months like these when I spent 10 days crashing at Indrajit’s house, and only 2 days camping. Must be some kind of law of nature.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed for a cheap, high-mileage, incident-free August 2014!
