Road block! Update on the Tamu/Moreh border crossing from India to Myanmar

Update: as of August 8, 2018, the border crossing from India to Myanmar at Tamu/Moreh is again open for foreigners. I’ve heard from one cycle tourist (who hosted us in Thailand) that he was able to cross.

As of November, 2017, the rules have changed somewhat…

As folks following our blog know, we are planning to cycle all (or most) of the way from Mumbai, India to Singapore. Mostly this is straightforward except for lots of red tape here and there. The most uncertain border crossing is from India to Myanmar at Moreh, India to Tamu, Myanmar.

There are two companies who I’ve heard can issue border crossing permits for this. Exotic Myanmar Travels and Seven Diamonds. I have been in touch with Exotic, but Seven Diamonds has never responded to my emails.

EMT had suspended issuing border permits for a few months this year due to misbehaving tourists who flaunted the requirements to get a bus and instead hitchhiked from the border. Exotic said they would resume issuing permits again in early November, but they then told me in mid-November that they could no longer issue them. At first, they told me we would need to take a bus from Tamu to Mandalay. This makes a lot of sense because there are few registered guesthouses for foreigners in this region, so we’d need to either cycle over 100 miles a day or camp illegally, which we would not do. We don’t have camping gear, and we have no desire to violate local strictly-enforced laws merely to save a few bucks. I have read and heard stories of illegal campers being awoken at night and forced to move to a registered guest house, or of night time police escorts and disquieting interrogations.

I’ve read many blogs where cyclists wild camped, tried to stay in monasteries or unregistered accommodations, etc. While I respect the resourcefulness of these cyclists, and while I think the guesthouse requirement is silly in Myanmar, I’m very concerned about the underlying reasons for these rules, related to the political situation there. So, I have mixed feelings about those cyclists who have flaunted the rules for their own benefit, as that appears to be the reason for the tightening of the restrictions that we now have to comply with.

So, for us this means we can’t cross the whole way to Singapore by bicycle. We never had a goal of 100% bicycle travel anyway and have been considering trains etc to skip some areas. But there is no train on this section so we have to fly. But, taking a flight is a huge hassle with the bikes, finding bike boxes (really rare in Asia!), disassembling the bikes, worrying about damage, etc. Yuck.

Our two options now are:

1. Continue our ride to Dhaka, Bangladesh. We’ve been in touch with two WarmShowers hosts, and they strongly encourage us to cycle in their country, and they assure us it will be easy to find boxes. Apparently, Bangladesh has an up and coming bike culture. We are interested to see Bangladesh as well, especially exploring the Sunderbans by boat. From Dhaka, there is a direct flight to Myanmar. The benefit is we get to see Kolkata and Bangladesh.
2. Cut our India section short in Chennai in early January and fly direct to Bangkok (there are no direct flights to Myanmar; they mostly connect in Bangkok). I’m still trying to find where to get bike boxes in Chennai but am hopeful we can find some. I found a bike shop that sells Bianchi and other Western brand bicycles, so they should have some. From Bangkok, we can ride back to Myanmar; the Thai/Burmese border is much easier to cross. The benefit of this is that it fast forwards our time line, getting us back on track to be able to see more of Southeast Asia before rainy season and maybe seeing Chiang Mai and Luang Prabang before burning season (March/April). And I’m really eager to visit Thailand again after my amazing experience two years ago.

We are leaning towards option two but still considering…