As you can see from the chart below, June was a slow month. After racing through Myanmar, and what with our India visas for six months and all, nobody was in a hurry to go anywhere. There is nary a flat spot in northeast India, save for the Bramaputra River valley, so all of our travels through Manipur, Nagaland, and now Arunachal Pradesh, have been pretty slow, with average speeds hovering well below 20km/hr. All in all, I managed to cover 897km (560 miles) this month, barely half of what I did in Myanmar. That's ok though! India's northeast is a really exciting and challenging place to ride. The level of English here is especially exciting, as it means I can have real conversations with everyday people, leading to lots of homestays, free lunches, solid travel advice, and all the other benefits of fluent communication. It also has its downside, however, as a lot of people think it's ok to pull up next to me as I ride along down the road, and demand that I stop for a photo, and it's already getting tiring answering the same questions every hour; "Where are you from", " Where you go", "Why you cycle", "How long you cycle", "What is name", "You marry?" etc ad nauseam.
India is great for traveling on the cheap! Most meals cost around $1, and for $2, you can get the most expensive thing on the menu, often a dish made with paneer (cheese). While I've had several beers bought for me, I've yet to purchase one myself. The beer is also pretty terrible, so unlike the fresh draft brews from Myanmar, I don't see myself spending too much cash on alcohol here in India. Tea and coffee here are also incredibly cheap, often free, so my other vice shouldn't hurt the pocketbook too much either. Finally, we rocked a lot of free accommodation in June. We stayed at a few schools, playing with the kids and telling them about our travels. We were invited to stay at a couple locals' houses along the way, and finally our benefactor, David, an exec at State Bank of India, met us on the way to Kohima and provided us with almost a week's worth of free accommodation in three different towns. All in all, I spent just over $200, or about $7/day if you include basic living expenses. Throw in the $75 permit to go to Arunachal Pradesh, and the roughly $80 spent on new bike shorts to replace the old ones with provocative holes in inappropriate places, a compact camping lantern, and new walking shorts to replace the ones I lost in Myanmar, and my total expenditures came to $383, or less than $13.
Last but not least, the accommodation chart. In June I spent 18 out of 30 nights in paid accommodation, sometimes as cheap as $2.50/night. 8 nights I spent staying with locals in some capacity or another, and 4 nights I spent in my tent, sometimes outside, sometimes in Churches or other structures not expressly meant for sleeping. India, much like Southeast Asia, has a lot of people. Unlike Southeast Asia though, passersby are very curious, and don't appear to respect others' privacy too much. Often, we'll sit down outside on a bench, or at an outdoor cafe, only to be surrounded within 10 minutes by a throng of curious onlookers standing inches from us. They just stand there, staring. They don't go away, they play with our bikes, tugging on levers and straps, and don't respond to being shooed away. To camp in India, I think one needs to be inside some sort of structure that can keep the mob out, or at least keep you out of site. Even up here in the foothills of the Himalayas, there are people occupying every flat spot, and most of the hilly ones, making camping outside unadvisable. I wonder where I'll have to go before I can just pitch my tent in a forest or next to a river, and not worry about anyone bothering me? Maybe Central Asia?
