Extreme travel
Old-fashioned ingenuity proved the skeptics wrong to climb the Sela pass
THE ROAD TO Tawang is very bad, and very high,” said one of the men watching the thin Assamese mechanic change my Hero’s battery. “It not possible on this bike. It too old, and too small.’
“This bike is going to get me to Tawang,” I replied, “I’ve ridden 2000 miles on it so far, and it’s done nothing wrong.’
Despite my retaliation, the naysayer had a point. The former Tibetan town of Tawang sits, eyrie-like, in a mountainous cul-de-sac in the far corner of the Northeast Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. Folded between the Tibetan and Bhutanese borders, and cut off for centuries from the outside world, now the only way to reach it is by the single 170-mile road that connects it with the rest of the subcontinent; a road that crosses, at its highest point, the 4175m Sela Pass. But even riding at 2000m had deprived my Indianmade Hero Impulse’s 150cc engine of enough oxygen to make it struggle and splutter – now I was expecting it to cope with double that altitude. A service and new battery would help, but it might not be enough.
From Bhalukpong, a scrappy town at the seam of mountain and plain, the road wound steeply upwards between sheer walls of jungle and the hurtling water of the Kameng River. Below, the mirror-flat plains of Assam fell away in an infinity of green. Now, Buddhist prayer flags streamed between jerry-built roadside shacks.
Soon, the Hero was struggling. By 2000m I was crawling up the switchbacks in first gear, slower even than the merrily painted trucks that rumbled past. By the 2700m Bomdila Pass, we’d slowed to the speed of an asthmatic slug. In the Hero’s present state, there was no chance of making it over the Sela Pass tomorrow. I had to
try to fix it somehow.
That night I stayed in Dirang, a pretty town scattered across a valley at the milder altitude of 1500m. Over the telephone from England, Marley – my all-knowing boyfriend - told me that by inserting electric wire into the main jet of the carburettor and removing the air filter, I should alter the fuel-to-air ratio enough for my Hero to wheeze over the Pass.
Soon, a local mechanic and I were squatting beside the Hero, studying its carburettor by torchlight. Ignoring my pointing, sign language and instructions on Google Translate, he poked around the bike for other explanations for its sickness, while I hopped around behind him in frustration saying, ‘No – carburettor, carburettor!’ But I was a woman, I couldn’t possibly be right. Only when he failed to find anything else wrong did he reluctantly follow my instructions. Whether the bodge would work, only tomorrow would tell.
The following morning, swaddled in thermals and down, I began the 80-mile, 2400m climb towards the Pass. Trucks ground up the steep inclines and shaggy yaks ambled across the road. At 3000m, the Hero was still going. Onwards I climbed, slower and slower, crawling steadily towards the summit. 10 km... 8 km... 6 km said the white marker stones by the road. When we crept past the 4 km stone, I knew we’d make it. Even if it conked out now, I could push it to the top.
It was cold. Dregs of snow lay on
“Even if it conked out now, I could push it to the top”
the verge and the freezing air bit through my two pairs of gloves. Odd to think I’d been in tropical Assam yesterday.
“Come on, Hero! Come on! We can do it!” I yelled excitedly.
Then, rounding a bend, there it was; the pass. A large, pagoda-like gate straddled the road, a line of prayer flags flapped in the breeze and a wonky sign beside a café said: YOUR [sic] ARE NOW AT 13700 FEET. ‘Yes!’ I whooped. ‘We’ve done it!’ As I rode down beyond the pass, the clouds thinned, the air warmed and colour leached back into the barren landscape. Rocks gave way to sparse pines and, later, a magnificently forested gorge. As dusk fell I was riding through the dusty, halfshuttered streets of Tawang’s old market, the Hero purring happily. How happy I was to have made it.