The Bhutanchal Buccaneers

Day 12: April 21^st

Bhalukpong - Tezpur- Guwahati

We all got up late this day. We all had this thought in the back of our minds that we wouldn’t take much time to make it to Guwahati. This and the fact that we were ending the trip made us even more lazy as we wanted to stay as much as possible in Arunachal. I told the hotel boys to take our leftover food and just warm it up for breakfast. Not only did the hotel warm it up for us, they made some excellent pulao out of the leftover rice and didn’t charge us at all. But the food and beer bills did come to a hefty amount. We had been hogging at every place we stayed or stopped and our food bills were in no way modest any time.

Since we were in a lazy mood, we decided to head to the river below and spend some time by the waters. After taking the directions from one of the ladies in the hotel, we headed down a short flight of steps that lead directly to the road below. I was having trouble negotiating the steps due to my bruises and was walking or rather crawling like a sidewinder! The guys videoed me and made ridicule of me, but I had a souvenir worthy of this trip – a scar on my left knee!

We ultimately made it to the river and the guys had a splishy splashy time in the waters. I stayed on the shore and just took in the morning sun and the cool river breeze. With nothing much to do, I collected some stones that I found pretty. We did linger around till noon by the riverside and then decided it was time to take to the roads again.

We were able to leave the hotel at around 1400 hours finally. We thanked our hospitable hotel staff and mounted our bikes once again. We roared towards the check point and made our exit entries, which happened to be a mere verbal formality.

As soon as we left the check post, dusty and unfinished roads were waiting for us and finally when tarmac arrived, we sped like crazy. At this point Payeng Da had an unfortunate accident when he slammed into a lady on a bicycle. I was right behind him and helped the lady to the side of the road. You have to give credit to this part of the country. Had it been in north India or elsewhere, people would have started pounding fisticuffs first and then would have bothered to listen, if they ever do that it. But the lady was patient and we applied muscle relaxants and bandaged her bruises. Payeng Da also paid 500 rupees for the damages to her bicycle and we left the place soon after.

Fortunately after that there were no more accidents, only incidents! We filled up petrol for the last leg of the journey at a HPCL petrol pump. But Kenny was confident his tank would take him to Guwahati without any ado. His was a belief that was to be smashed later on.

This time we decided to skip the slush roads and take an alternate route through tea gardens and that provided Kenny with some pretty green vistas to see. We stopped for a couple of times for smokes and the guys were eagerly looking for a beer joint. There are some things synonymous with Assam – wine shops. We all knew that we would come across some very soon and with this thought egging us we rode on. I was particularly eager to make it to Guwahati because my arm wasn’t getting any better. Man, you shouldn’t irk John Abraham. Take it from me. Not wanting to waste much time at the small towns, we rode on or rather I urged them to ride on till Tezpur which was just 24 km away.

The first thing that greeted us when we arrived at Tezpur was the KF Lounge yet again. But sense prevailed and we thought of moving on and having some food and beer at some road side dhaba, which would be easier on our pockets as well. After taking the bypass I remembered one particular joint on our way to Bhalukpong and told Gyan to be on the lookout for that. The joint turned out to be a particular Rangeela Bar , and we all piled in and ordered some chilled beer for all except for Payeng Da and Uncle, who decided to go for some food instead.

After all of us had our fill, we just headed towards Guwahati, but not before making a sutta break some 10 km after leaving the Dhaba. It was growing dark and the increasing heavy vehicle traffic made riding a tad difficult. People buy cars in hordes but hardly anyone knows how to use the dippers. They drive with the headlights blinding people heading towards them. At those times I feel like driving an SUV with some Xenon projectors plus some HID lamps and just blazing them at those morons, sometimes to the point of driving them off the road. Some people do understand when we blink our dippers and get the point. But some are stubborn or just plain retarded.

Yet we tried to move in a single file, but Uncle and Gyan sped off leaving the rest of us to ride together. Gyan has this habit of sprinting like crazy and leaving the rest of the group behind for a good distance. This becomes annoying at times, because we all have this urge to sprint on open roads but make it a point to come back to the group after a while. It was during this absence of Gyan that Kenny’s bike spluttered and came to a stop. I and Doley were some distance ahead and soon received a call from Kenny. It looked like his tank had run dry. I tried calling Gyan, but he was nowhere. So I and Doley went about looking for petrol pumps some distance ahead, but when we didn’t come across any for about 15 minutes, we decided to head back to Kenny and look for one the other way instead. In the meantime Dutta had siphoned off some petrol from his tank to Kenny’s. I also reached around that time and lent some fuel from my tank to Kenny. We decided to ride at optimal speed to conserve fuel till we reached a filling station.

We found Gyan waiting at the filling station where Kenny and Payeng Da filled their tanks. There we found another person that I would like to mention. The attendant was a huge guy, but his manners floored us. I haven’t met a nicer person at a filling station. In fact after we filled up, he thanked us and said “Achha Sa’ab, Shukriya, Ab mein chalta hoon. Dhanyabad.” and went to deposit the cash at the counter!!

It was a ride after that in the night and we were getting closer and closer to Guwahati. We stopped for once more near a bridge for a sutta and water break, but moved on quickly after that. The trip after that wasn’t much to talk about till we came across Saraighat Bridge and then were immediately greeted by dust and dust everywhere. I must have taken in a kilo of dust inside me. We gathered together near the Rajiv Chowk and after filing up, we took the outer ring road towards Gyan’s home.

We arrived at Gyan’s home at a lately 2230 hours after which we quickly washed our dirty faces and Gyan fished out a bottle of whiskey from his father’s stock and served us one last toast. Payeng Da and Uncle had gone to their respective homes. I declined for the whiskey – I was too tired and my hands were still hurting. We narrated some stories to Jayanti, Gyan’s better half, over dinner but saved most of them for our blogs.

We didn’t stay back after dinner and went off to my place at around midnight. On the road a guy on an Activa or something like that came abreast us and asked us in high-pitched excitement where we had come from, where we were going etc etc. We let Doley deal with it and finally he let us go!! It didn’t take long for us to go to sleep after we entered my apartment. I had a quick shower and just plonked onto the bed.