Kohima, Nagaland
Tuesday, November 8th, 2005
Friday, November 4
Today was going to be an easy day. a short ride of 75 km to Kohima and back to Dimapur by evening. Unlike the other ares of India, here we have to kind of backtrack as we ventured further towards the border towns.
The morning was very pleasant and I had an hour to sit down with Navroze and Sajeev to film an interview about my experience so far. Soon after we set off to the hills. It was already 10 am and one of the BRO officers escorted us to Kohima, incase we get hassled.
The first 20 km was still in the plains and quite congested with traffic and people. As soon as we got to the hills, it was clear and the roads were lovely for the bikes to move around. Beautiful green valleys and the constant buzz of crickets was everywhere. Some places the sounds of the crickets actually sounded like cel phones ringing. Often, I would check my pocket to feel if my phone was vibrating. No calls, but that of nature.
There were a few vendors along the road selling fresh pineapples and oranges. We stopped off to sample of the local fruit and were absolutely taken by the fruits. The locals were nice as well and spoke quite good english. curiously, there are a lot of missionary schools set up in that area for a very long time.
The sky was a beautiful deep blue with a few clouds. soon, it was getting more cloudy and cool with that. The chance of rain is very sudden in those parts and could rain as much as 3-4 inches an hour or two. But, no rain poured dow on us.
The ride to Kohima took about 2 hours and we were taken to the war cemetery. Perched in the best of town and well manicured, the war cemetery was the spot where in April of 1944, the allied forces fought and stopped the invasion of Japan in to India. Then we were taken to the church that the veterans of that war had helped build. I was getting a little antsy to go check out the local streets and people instead. By now, it was already 2pm and we stopped by a tiny restaurant called Little China where they served us some very spicy noodles. Nagaland chillis are infamously spicy. By 3:30, we started to roll as the sun sets as early a 4 pm and gets very dark by 5 pm.
We got back to Dimapur and had some early dinner and called it a night at the BRO camp.
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