Travels, With My Rant Hi! It's me, Jay, and I'm heading off to India for a while. I fly out March 26, 2008. Namaste.

Arunachal Pradesh permit starts! We set off at 12:30, on the 11:30 Sumo. “Indian Standard Time,” quipped a woman from the back seat. (Indians are always eager to peak English. The better they do it, the more affluent they feel they are, and they are usually right. So they engage you constantly, if they can, and to the degree they can. Her comment was for us, the westerners and we all enjoyed a good laugh.) We headed north from Tezpur, crossed into Arunachal Pradesh, and checked in at Bhalukpong, a border post right out of the movies, rock-weighted gate and all. (This fairly common in Indian, at least in the NE.) Here the Indians need to show their Innerline Permits and foreigners need to show their Restricted Area Permits. We delayed the whole group as the RAP guy had to be summoned, and he appeared out of uniform, in a blue shirt, groggy from sleep. Mr. Wonge had listed as our traveling companions another 6 people, only two of whom we had even met, and we prepared to answer (read, lie) about the missing six-some. (Arunachal Pradesh law says you are required to travel in groups of at least 4, so we thought our permit from Mr. Wonge a coup for our group of just three, that is until we saw it was really an ersatz group of 9!) But the groggy guard just signed off and sent us on; a Sumo can only hold 10, and where do you find an empty Sumo? We where in! Our driver was quite the cowboy, which was fine on the flats. But the minute we hit Arunachal Pradesh (AP) we started to climb, and climb fast. Thoughts of the bald tires Jim had urged me to take a photo of, as well as the headlines announcing the demise of three tourists from three different countries kept passing through my head. At least it wasn’t raining. But then it did. We reached Nag Mandir in one piece, had a stop, and continued on to Tenge, where the Indian military bases really get going. Every few miles there is another one, all straddling the road, all bigger than you’d expect, always with photography specifically prohibited, indeed all with signage wonderfully British. And all of this seemingly unheeded by our speeding driver, who blew his horn at cars he wished to pass, cars that officers had just saluted as they passed. [A bus that had driven into a tributary of the Hooghly River in Calcutta the day I arrived there and 20 people drowned. The driver had been passing another bus on a bridge when the accident occurred. Everyone blamed the reckless driving that all said was standard fare in India. Thus it happened, just two days later, that the passengers of another bus in Calcutta had attacked the driver after he failed to heed their complaints. One always wonders whether you should say anything.] Several hours and podcasts later, we pulled into Bomdilla.