Month: December 2017

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…

Mysore

Mysore, what a horrible name… It sounds like I need to see the doctor. It’s a good thing they’ve recently switched back to their original name Mysuru, but everyone still seems to say Mysore. Blech.

The ride into the city was really pleasant. It’s the cleanest big city in India that we’ve seen, and indeed we heard it was voted the cleanest in India recently. Also, being a planned city, the blocks of residential housing that we cycled through were comfortable and relaxed with many well-cared-for and colorful houses.

We stayed at Parklane Hotel, which is popular with Western and Indian tourists alike. It was nice to interact with some fellow travelers, and we met an Australian and British couple. The hotel had a good place we could lock up the bikes with 24/7 security.

Our “back to the future” style clock in the room.

The hotel was very well-signed with informative signs on every lightswitch, door, and even the bum gum was labeled.

No mention of, perhaps, limiting your intake. I like this place!

Sound advice, I guess…

We signed up for a food and walking tour with Royal Mysore Walks and had a really fantastic time with our guide Abhilash, who showed us the clock tower, outside of the palace, walked us through the market, and gave us lots of tasty food to try, including the best masala dosa I’ve tasted in my life. Yum!

Clock tower.

One of the oldest buildings in Mysore, about 100 years old.

Our amazing guide and another fun couple who joined the tour.

Colored powders used for rangoli, an art form where people draw designs on streets and in front of their houses during festivals.

Mysuru Palace

We took a few hours to check out the palace and take some photos. We were lucky there was almost no one there, so we took our time.

Palace through one of the archways.

Courtyard.

There were several rooms filled with ornate pillars like these.

Temple outside the palace.

Another pillar room.

Beautifully carved wooden, silver, and metal doors.

Palace with another arch.

Here we are…

Colorful tile work.

Some elephants outside the palace.

And a painting of elephants!

Cool murals opposite the palace.

We enjoyed the super-comfortable city, good hotel restaurant and bar, so we stayed two full days and relaxed, reading books and lounging by the small pool before heading on back towards the coast in Kerala. Abhilash is finishing up his computer science degree, so we also met up for lunch, and I tried to give him some advice; hope I was able to give him some ideas.

Safari

We decided to book an all-inclusive hotel near the Nagarhole National Park, that includes two safaris, a boat ride, and all meals. It was a bit expensive, but it looked like one of the best safaris around.

We left really early to get a head start on traffic and arrive before the activities started at 12:00. We had an amazing easy ride through rolling hills on excellently paved roads with a cool tailwind.

The afternoon safari was a bit of a bust, but we had fun chatting with two couples on our Jeep, one from Paris, and the other from Texas (a Greek man from Crete and an Indian woman from Mysuru on vacation). We did see lots of deer, a lizard digging for eggs or something, some birds, and a few other animals.

Some kind of fungus.

Entrance to the park.

Thousands of beautiful spotted deer.

This lizard was really eager to get whatever was in this hole. He didn’t come out the whole time we waited, nearly 10 minutes, just kept shoving himself in deeper.

We saw quite a few monkeys, besides ourselves.

Huge termite mounds everywhere.

Here’s the peacock I promised.

Cool tree trunk.

But the next morning, we hit the jackpot on our safari, seeing several gaur (Indian bison), an elephant, and a tiger!!! It’s rare to see a tiger, and I knew that, so my idea was to keep doing safaris until we spotted one. We were super lucky and saw him chasing down some deer before ducking into the brush.

Gaur chewing his cud.

More spotted deer…

More gaur.

Tiger! It was really exciting; our guide heard about a potential for a tiger, and he told us to hold on tight and we sped down bumpy dirt roads before getting to this area. We saw some deer racing away, and a minute later, a tiger came out of the brush and ran for a few seconds before jumping back out of sight. (And if you’re still trying to find the tiger in the photo, bless your heart! I don’t see it either; I must have aimed the camera at the wrong spot. Ah well.)

This geriatric grandma elephant completely ignored us as she rubbed against the tree and cleaned herself. After a few minutes, she let out a trumpet and sauntered off.

Kerala

And with that, we were off to Kerala. Since we had the safari and breakfast in the morning, we didn’t get started until almost 11. It was drizzling, and the forecast was calling for heavy rain by 1pm. So we found a small town across the border in Kerala with some hotels and aimed for that.

We didn’t realize we’d be going back through the national park on the bicycles, so this sign was a little concerning! We went from hoping to see wildlife in the Jeeps to fearfully checking our surroundings hoping they stayed away. Fortunately we saw nothing but deer and monkeys. At first the guards said no we couldn’t go through the park, but when I explained we had to get to Kerala and showed him the town on Google Maps, he agreed we could go. And then asked if he could take a selfie with us. LOL, sure!

The rain picked up a little, but then finally cleared up as we entered Kerala, so we didn’t get too wet. Crossing the state borders in India is almost as dramatic as crossing country borders in the EU. There’s maybe a police checkpoint but no border control, but suddenly the language, roads, and culture changes.

In Kerala, we quickly noticed the roads were much worse with tons of potholes everywhere and much steeper gradients and more traffic. The signs for restaurants (“hotels”) and shops are much more colorful and prevalent, and the hammer-and-sickle Communist flag is waving everywhere. Also, we seem to get many more stares in Kerala than we have in any other state so far. People also wave and smile to us on our bikes, but off the bikes, we feel like we’re back in Eastern Europe with the side glances and even in-your-face stares. While the middle age and older folks tend to stare grumpily, the younger generation puts us at ease with smiles and waves.

I also don’t think that Indians realize that their word for “foreigner” is borrowed from English and sounds identical. Either that, or they enjoy talking about people in front of their faces. We had lunch at a local place across from our hotel and everyone around us was having a conversation about “foreigners”, it seemed.

I’ve grown fed up with not knowing much of the local language, so even though we’ll only be in Kerala for a few weeks, I decided to jump in and try to learn some Malayalam. It’s a tricky language with over a dozen vowels and 30+ consonants based on Sanskrit. But I’m practicing a few words and numbers so hope that will help out a bit. It was nice in the Balkans learning enough Serbo-Croatian and the Cyrillic alphabet to get by, so I hope to approach that basic level of understanding.

After almost walking away, our hotel finally agreed we could keep our bikes in a locked storage closet near our room, so we are staying two nights, waiting out the rain. For $16/night and $1 meals, it’s cheap enough to stay, though there’s not much to do in this city. The rain comes and goes, and the locals all tell us there’s no way it will rain this time of year, but it clearly is. We may try to find a car tour guide so we can see the area a little and get out of the hotel but stay dry.

And with that… വിട. ഉടൻ കാണാം