Memoir: “Riding into the Clouds – My First India Ride”
by Greg, Owner of Santa Clara Cycle
I’d sold and serviced hundreds of motorcycles over the years, but nothing prepared me for what waited on the other side of the world. India had always been a far-off dream—a blur of colors, chaos, and Himalayan horizons—but this time, I wasn’t scrolling photos. I was stuffing waterproof winter and summer gear into a single 60-liter saddlebag, following the guidance of my longtime friend who was leading the trip. In the shop back home, I was the guy customers came to for tire pressures, gearing advice, and which panniers wouldn’t rattle themselves loose on a fire road. Now I was the student, spreading base layers and thermals trying to make four seasons of riding fit into one bag. My friend’s packing list read like a survival script—down jacket for the frosty passes, mesh layers for the valleys that baked by midday, waterproof gloves for sleet, and spare dry socks for when the road turned into a river. As I cinched the straps tight and felt the weight of that 60 liters, it hit me: this wasn’t just another ride. This was everything I’d learned at my shop being stress-tested in a place I’d only dreamed about, on roads that didn’t care how many motorcycles I’d sold.
SFO → Doha → Kolkata: The Dash Begins
The adventure started before the ride ever did. We left San Francisco brimming with excitement and a hint of anxiety. My buddy—our unofficial “team lead”—and I had barely caught our breath in Doha when things went sideways. A short connection time and a huge airport turned our layover into a full-blown sprint.
The confusion started the moment we landed. We were funneled off the aircraft through two different exits, each door spilling passengers into separate stairways and buses. One second he was a few rows ahead of me, the next he’d vanished into a different stream of humanity. By the time my bus rolled up to the terminal, there was no sign of him—just a tide of travelers and a clock that was very much not on our side. Boarding for our next flight was already closing. My heart sank.
But just before stepping onto the shuttle toward the remote gate, I spotted a familiar shape in the distance—my buddy, weaving through the crowd and waving his phone like a victory flag. A few breathless minutes later, my screen lit up with a hurried WhatsApp exchange:
“You on the CCU flight?”
“Yep. Just made it. PAP got through!”
That last message hit like caffeine. Our Protected Area Permit—the golden ticket to Arunachal Pradesh—had been approved while we were still being bounced between plane exits and airport buses in Doha. Talk about divine timing.
The Gauhati Reunion
Kolkata was humid and sprawling, its air thick with a kind of electric vitality. Even before we left the airport, the city pressed in—honking horns, chai stalls steaming on every corner, yellow Ambassadors weaving through chaos that somehow worked. A quick overnight in a simple guesthouse—just enough time to shower off the jet lag, repack the saddlebag, and wolf down some spicy egg curry and roti—and we were airborne again, this time to Guwahati, gateway to the Northeast.
Guwahati felt different the moment we landed. The air was still warm, but lighter, edged with the promise of hills in the distance. Outside the terminal, under that bright, almost too-honest morning sun, stood our third musketeer—our logistics mastermind—grinning like he’d just pulled off the heist of the century. He’d flown in from Delhi ahead of us, wrestled with the bureaucracy, and miraculously secured our PAP paperwork while we were still somewhere between Doha and Kolkata.
And there, lined up behind him like a cavalry ready for inspection, were the Royal Enfield Himalayans, their tanks still dewy from the morning wash. They weren’t showroom-perfect like the bikes I prepped back at Santa Clara Cycle, but they were honest machines—scuffed crash guards, scratched handguards, zip-tied phone mounts, and a few custom racks that made my shop-owner brain start mentally redesigning luggage systems on the spot. We shook hands, clapped backs, and moved straight into “bike mode”—checking tire pressures, chain slack, brake feel, and throttle play. It felt less like three guys renting motorcycles and more like a reunion of long-lost brothers about to ride into a story none of us would forget.
We decided to rest the night in Guwahati, letting our bodies catch up to the time zones and the adrenaline. Over dinner we spread maps, compared GPX tracks, and walked through worst-case scenarios like a pit crew before race day—altitude, fuel stops, river crossings, landslides, and the ever-present question of weather. The Himalayans waited in the courtyard below, loaded and silent under the yellow glow of the hotel lights. In the morning, they would carry us north, away from the familiar and straight into the kind of terrain no test ride or demo day back home could ever replicate.
Day 1: Baptism by Traffic
Leaving Guwahati was an education in itself. The traffic was alive—an ecosystem of horns, hand gestures, and unspoken negotiation. Trucks, scooters, cows, auto-rickshaws, and school kids all moved in a rhythm that looked like chaos but worked like jazz. Lanes were more of a suggestion than a rule; the real currency of the road was eye contact and intent.
Within an hour, I’d learned India’s first rule of riding: “If there’s space, it’s yours.”
And the second: “Everyone’s trying not to hit anyone—but no one’s stopping.”
And Another: “Pass on the left. Pass on the right. Do NOT stop. And Honking is communicating.”
Back home, I’d talk customers through blind spots and safe following distances. Out here, safety was something you negotiated second by second, reading the language of brake lights, body posture, and the subtle drift of a bus edging into your line. A horn tap wasn’t aggression; it was a heads-up. A flashed hand wasn’t rudeness; it was a merge request. By the time we cleared the outer ring of Guwahati, I felt like I’d just finished a week-long advanced riding course—compressed into 60 sweaty minutes.
As the city thinned out, the landscape began to stretch and breathe. Concrete gave way to rice fields, patches of forest, and small villages where kids stopped their games to wave at the three helmeted aliens on loaded Himalayans. The road wound along rivers and through low hills, each bend peeling back another layer of the Northeast.
By the time we reached Bhairabkunda, the gateway into Arunachal Pradesh, the adrenaline had turned to awe. The road narrowed, the trees closed in, and the air felt heavier, charged with the sense that we were approaching a threshold. Soldiers in camouflage stood under a tin awning, rifles slung casually but presence unmistakable. They examined our documents with polite suspicion, scanning our freshly printed PAPs as rain clouds gathered above like a slow-moving curtain.
There was a quiet tension in those few minutes—engines idling, raindrops just starting to prick the dust, our entire plan balanced on a few sheets of stamped paper. When the officer finally nodded, signed, and stamped our entry, it felt like a starting gun. The same moment his stamp hit the page, the sky seemed to make its own decision. The clouds opened up, and the drizzle turned to a proper downpour.
We zipped vents, tightened cuffs, and pulled on hoods under helmets, then rolled forward as the checkpoint faded in our mirrors. The first real wall of rain hit us like a baptism. Visibility dropped, the road darkened to slick black, and the Himalayans settled into their element. With paperwork in our pockets and water streaming off our visors, we rode straight into Arunachal Pradesh—and straight into the heart of the adventure we’d come for.
Into the Mist: Bhairabkunda to Shergaon
What followed was the kind of ride that burns itself into memory. Mist curled through the pine forests in slow, ghostly fingers, drifting across the road and parting just enough for us to see the next corner. The sharp scent of rain on asphalt mixed with damp earth and woodsmoke from distant villages. Now and then, a stray dog trotted along the shoulder, uninterested in three overloaded Himalayans humming past.
We rolled through stretches where the road simply gave up and turned into a stream. Water crossings where kids waved from bamboo huts on stilts, their bare feet splashing in the runoff as they shouted “Hello! Hello!” over the thump of our single-cylinder engines. Women in bright shawls watched from doorways, pausing from washing clothes or cutting vegetables to track our progress like a moving movie screen. Every bend unveiled a new shade of green—tea bushes, moss-covered rocks, towering pines, and terraced fields stacked up the hillsides like steps into the clouds.
By dusk, we found ourselves in a remote valley near Shergaon—a place not even Google Maps seemed sure about. The blue dot floated in vague territory, somewhere between “You’re here” and “Good luck.” No hotel signs. No booking apps. Just a few scattered houses, a dirt track, and smoke from a distant chimney rising in a thin, confident line.
We followed the smoke like moths to a flame, tires crunching over wet gravel until we reached a simple wooden house with a tin roof and prayer flags fluttering in the fading light. We killed the engines, and the silence rushed in—crickets, a distant river, a faint clank of pots from inside. I knocked on the wooden door, not entirely sure what I was asking for.
It creaked open to reveal a kind, deeply lined face. The man looked at our helmets, our dripping jackets, the mud-splattered bikes behind us. Then he smiled—a small, warm smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes—and simply said:
“Homestay?”
One word, and everything relaxed. Shoulders, jaw, the low-key worry of “Where are we sleeping tonight?” Five minutes later, we were inside his living room, boots steaming and drying by a clay stove that radiated soft, steady heat. We sat cross-legged on low mats as his wife moved quietly and efficiently in the attached kitchen, metal pots clinking like a familiar song.
He handed us steel cups of tea that tasted of cardamom, ginger, and pure comfort. Outside, the rain tapped on the roof; inside, the stove crackled, drying our gloves and socks on a makeshift bamboo rack. His wife cooked rice, lentils, and local greens in mustard oil, the aromas filling the small room. Their children peeked around the doorway, then grew bolder—touching our helmets, poking at our GoPros, giggling when they saw themselves on the tiny screens.
That night, under a blanket of mountain silence, we sat around their fire pot—the humble heart of the home. The light painted our faces in flickering amber as we swapped stories. We told them about California freeways, lane-splitting between SUVs, and shiny showroom bikes lined up under LED lights back at the shop. He told us about winters when the snow cut them off for weeks, about snow leopards rumored to prowl the ridgelines, and old walking trails that predated roads, snaking over passes we’d only see as squiggles on a map.
At some point, the generator cut out and the room settled into pure darkness except for the glow of the coals. No notifications, no screens—just the soft murmur of voices, the hiss of the stove, and the steady breathing of a house going to sleep.
Lying on a thin mattress under heavy blankets, listening to the rain and the distant rush of the river, I remember thinking: this—this—is what every rider chases. Not just the twisties or the specs on a brochure, but the unknown road, the open invitation of a lit doorway, the warmth of strangers who become a part of your story in a single night. The reminder that the world is still wide and quietly kind, if you just keep moving forward on two wheels into the places the algorithms haven’t fully mapped yet.
Epilogue
As I drifted to sleep in that humble wooden home, I realized the trip had already paid off—not in miles covered, but in moments shared. The hiss of the clay stove, the soft murmur of our hosts in the next room, my gear drying in the corner—it all felt richer than any perfectly polished bike handoff I’d ever done.
From a missed connection in Doha to a found home in Shergaon, the journey had delivered something I could never sell in a showroom: the pure, unfiltered joy of being small beneath the mountains and completely, utterly alive. It was as if the Himalayas themselves were reminding me that the best rides aren’t measured in odometers or invoices, but in the way they rearrange something deep inside you.
