Day 30

Distance covered: 397 km
Total distance 5214 km

It was the kind of day that makes you wish you had stayed in bed, unfortunately for us it began very early. Barely an hour into the ride and I was wondering what had possessed me to add Assam to my journey at such a late stage. My mind must have gone on a separate vacation. The road or what little is left of it is so infuriating you will want to tear your hair off - but please don’t throw it you could definitely use it as added cushioning. I had half a mind to turn around unfortunately the other half was stronger and a lot stupider. The road is scarred, gouged, abused and forgotten and this has made her vicious and spiteful. It is a miserable ride with small…very small patches of good road. Every time you decide to accelerate the bike begins to bounce and you are lucky if you can avoid the fanged, gaping holes with a vicious bite. The bike took a hell of a beating and so did we. The only excitement - totally unwanted at that was when T.T. suddenly realized he had dropped my jacket. It is a heavy-duty jacket and totally rocks in extreme cold so I had to find it. Leaving T.T. there I rode back a good 15-20 km hoping to find it and just as I was despairing of ever getting it back a truck driver told me a little boy had picked it up and showed me to his home. The kid returned the jacket but demanded a reward of Rs. 200, which I ungrudgingly gave him. Now I had absolutely no idea where I had dropped T.T. off and as expected he hadn’t stayed put so the next half hour was spent searching for him. We were back on the road for barely an hour and T.T. announces that he has now lost his jacket and back we turn with me wishing he would just loose himself and get it over with.
Assam doesn’t even offer any interesting sights to take your mind off the rattling of your bones. Adding to our misery we were pulled over a couple of times and are baggage was searched in spite of my carrying a letter from the police vouching that we are not criminals though we may look like it. I guess that don’t mean shit when you have bombs flying around. On one occasion we were riding and these two guys on bikes try to pull us over and after all the stories you hear about highway robbers there wasn’t a chance in the world of me slowing down for them. Finally they announce that they are policemen and flash their frigging walkie-talkie like that’s supposed to prove anything.
We entered Guwahati just as the dust and smoke from a series of bomb blasts was settling down so you could say it was an explosive welcome to the town. It was late in the evening before we could check into the Oil India guesthouse, which involved another half hour with the security. It is at one end of a beautiful campus and the air was resonating with the calls of birds all around our room.
The only really memorable moment of the day for me was the first sight of Brahmaputra.