Globe Gallivanting- motorbiking across the world

At the Earle Holiday Home in Shillong we prepared to leave. A genteel crowd of middle-class holiday makers who had previously ignored us raved about us and decided our photo would be framed and put on the wall. We answered questions, celebrity-style, and rode off with a good (though surreal) send-off. Meghalaya was stunning, but somewhat tense. They were a tough crowd. Generally there were more hostile stares than usual, and even with a huge grin and the all-encompassing respectful head-waggle you could only just garner a hint of a smile. The scenery, though, was damn fine. It was rolling hills with a hint of jungliness. The banana palms carried on and on, and I think date palms started again from the look of them. There were waterfalls and things of that ilk. Everyone played out their lives on the road again, and the back bamboo stilts of the houses on the roadside were sometimes very, very tall. You could see Jhum farming, the rotational crop farming t...

We raced down Darjeeling hill quickly. The horrid road at the bottom was busy. There were flat tea estates everywhere, bright green with little tea bushes, all grown to the same height. There was no one around though, so we snuck in and took tea photos. The road carried on and on until we officially arrived in the Middle of Nowhere, otherwise known as Jalpadwara National Park. We spent the night in a great little hotel with giant tiger photos on the walls, and met some friendly army officers who asked what caste we were. It was a hard one to reply to.   The ride across Assam saw us stop for tea in a side-of-the-road shack. As we were sat busily consuming rasgullai, there was an earthquake. The whole place shook, and we watched the bike bounce up and down in a ferocious manner. Everyone ran outside to stare at the roof but nothing collapsed. Everyone else seemed a lot calmer than I did. Later we discovered there had been 6 earthquakes in the last 6 weeks. We troop...