If you haven’t already, go back and read part I of this series to get the background on Arunachal Pradesh (AP). In this post, I’ll be focusing on all the crazy roads we had to ride to explore this awesome place! We were in AP for about a month, and only did about 500km horizontally, but more than 30,000 meters of vertical ascent! That’s like climbing Mt. Everest on a bike more than three times! A smooth patch of asphalt was a rare occurrence, and the road tended to be like a feeble scratch in the foliage, barely breaking the surface, and requiring immense human effort to keep nature from healing the wounds on her mountainsides. There were also no flat spots. The valleys were so steep that anywhere there was enough space for a settlement, there a settlement would be, and where there weren’t settlements, it was because on one side of the road, there was a sheer drop of hundreds of meters, and the other side, a sheer cliff face of hundreds more. Anyway, it was intense, and I’ll let the photos do the talking.
Southern AP is just dense, opaque jungle. If it weren’t for this poorly maintained road, you’d have to bushwhack your way anywhere.
Switchback after switchback, for days and days.
Made of flattened oil drums, this is probably the saddest house I’ve yet seen.
Huge waterfalls abound, plummeting down cliff faces into raging rivers.
These roadside dhabas were a life saver. Hot tea, a dry room, and tasty japati make a great break from the road. Above-right: Two dudes wash their truck under a waterfall, and pose semi-erotically for me…..
But there are people out and about everywhere, from this guy building a bamboo wall on the side of the road, to this young mother and her mother out for a stroll with some babies.
Most of the time, the road was a foggy mess, and if one of us got more than a hundred meters in front of the other, he would vanish from sight.
The road was pretty treacherous, with loads of huge landslides that made it impossible for cars to pass, and we even saw this wreck lying in the middle of the road; looks like a pretty bad crash. But for us on our bikes, the danger was minimal. We weren’t about to careen off the mountainside, and the landslides posed no impasse for us.
There were loads of epic views, prayer flags…
Army trucks every few minutes (AP has a disputed border with China, so India has to maintain a heavy military presence to seal the credibility of its control of the region. Not that AP is in any way Chinese, but try telling them that!) There were also loads of these ladies, who would appear in the middle of nowhere, sitting on the side of the road breaking apart rocks by hand for use in road construction. We caught this group of laborers walking down a mountainside with their tools. Cool Angry Birds shirt! (It has a an image of two of the angry birds kissing, and says “love birds” underneath)
Woot! Woot! The bros’ve made it to Se La, the 4200m (it says 13,700 feet here, but my GPS placed us at over 14,000ft!) and the pinnacle of our long journey to Tawang. Then we rode down the other side in the freezing cold rain, my toes went numb, it got dark, and my rim exploded.
Triple woot!
We also met tons of awesome folks along the road, from these guys (not the kids) who are engineers stationed in a random little village to survey the area for a hydro power construction project, to the nice folks in Senge, who put us up in their government guesthouse and fed us tons of hot chai,
…to the nice angry birds in love lady, to the commandant of the national guard base in Jenge, who kept us company, and relieved his boredom through conversation with us, for a couple days while there was a general strike province-wide, and we were stuck.
Finally, even though it was rainy season, there was tons of dramatic scenery, perhaps made even more dramatic by the clouds and mist. I don’t even know what else to say about riding around AP. It was just so intense, and difficult, but full of amazing things, and although I’d probably wait a while before doing it again, I’ll remember it forever.
Stay tuned for Part III of my series on Arunachal Pradesh, and read about what I did once we got to Tawang, and what’s going on in that remote corner of one of the remotest parts of the center of the world.
Southern AP is just dense, opaque jungle. If it weren’t for this poorly maintained road, you’d have to bushwhack your way anywhere.
Switchback after switchback, for days and days.
Made of flattened oil drums, this is probably the saddest house I’ve yet seen.
Huge waterfalls abound, plummeting down cliff faces into raging rivers.
These roadside dhabas were a life saver. Hot tea, a dry room, and tasty japati make a great break from the road. Above-right: Two dudes wash their truck under a waterfall, and pose semi-erotically for me…..
But there are people out and about everywhere, from this guy building a bamboo wall on the side of the road, to this young mother and her mother out for a stroll with some babies.
 |  Photo courtesy of Mike @ www.threeruleride.com |
Photo courtesy of Mike @ www.threeruleride.com
Poof.
Most of the time, it was just up, up, up, until we broke through the clouds and it was like we were riding in the sky.
Photos courtesy of Mike @ www.threeruleride.com
There were a lot of rest stops, and a lot of laying on top of these concrete barriers and feeling like I was gonna die. But then I’d look down the vertiginous slope from whence I’d come and feel good about what I’d done, and keep going.
Photo courtesy of Mike @ www.threeruleride.com
Photo courtesy of Mike @ www.threeruleride.com
The road was pretty treacherous, with loads of huge landslides that made it impossible for cars to pass, and we even saw this wreck lying in the middle of the road; looks like a pretty bad crash. But for us on our bikes, the danger was minimal. We weren’t about to careen off the mountainside, and the landslides posed no impasse for us.
There were loads of epic views, prayer flags…
Army trucks every few minutes (AP has a disputed border with China, so India has to maintain a heavy military presence to seal the credibility of its control of the region. Not that AP is in any way Chinese, but try telling them that!) There were also loads of these ladies, who would appear in the middle of nowhere, sitting on the side of the road breaking apart rocks by hand for use in road construction. We caught this group of laborers walking down a mountainside with their tools. Cool Angry Birds shirt! (It has a an image of two of the angry birds kissing, and says “love birds” underneath)
Woot! Woot! The bros’ve made it to Se La, the 4200m (it says 13,700 feet here, but my GPS placed us at over 14,000ft!) and the pinnacle of our long journey to Tawang. Then we rode down the other side in the freezing cold rain, my toes went numb, it got dark, and my rim exploded.
Triple woot!
We also met tons of awesome folks along the road, from these guys (not the kids) who are engineers stationed in a random little village to survey the area for a hydro power construction project, to the nice folks in Senge, who put us up in their government guesthouse and fed us tons of hot chai,
…to the nice angry birds in love lady, to the commandant of the national guard base in Jenge, who kept us company, and relieved his boredom through conversation with us, for a couple days while there was a general strike province-wide, and we were stuck.
Finally, even though it was rainy season, there was tons of dramatic scenery, perhaps made even more dramatic by the clouds and mist. I don’t even know what else to say about riding around AP. It was just so intense, and difficult, but full of amazing things, and although I’d probably wait a while before doing it again, I’ll remember it forever.
Stay tuned for Part III of my series on Arunachal Pradesh, and read about what I did once we got to Tawang, and what’s going on in that remote corner of one of the remotest parts of the center of the world.
