When in Doubt, Go Find Out

I spent the summer of 2017 in North-East India, riding nearly 11,000 kilometres across Sikkim, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Nagaland. A trip that was supposed to last only 28 days turned into a nearly 4-month long adventure. There were many learnings  that came my way over the course of this ride, but for the time being, I&rsquom going to  focus on just one &mdash the importance of first-hand experiences

In the run up to this particular trip,  everyone who I spoke to seemed to be of  the opinion that the northeast was not safe  for travel. &ldquoIt&rsquos politically volatile," some said, while others were of the opinion that I would &ldquodefinitely be robbed or attacked.&rdquo 

There were a few who were even confident enough to inform me that, &ldquoIt is not worth spending time or money travelling to  such places.&rdquo

Naturally, these conversations began to weigh me down with hesitation, and even some fear. But, after a fairly topsy-turvy battle in my head, I threw caution to the  wind and put the plan into action anyway.

I didn&rsquot plot an itinerary for this trip &mdash most of the routes that I rode and the places that I visited were based on the recommendations from locals that I met along the way. You could say that I was riding blind, depending entirely on the information from strangers to decide where I would go and how I would get there. This  also meant that I was asking these people for guidance about safety of routes and the like. Why is this relevant You&rsquoll know soon.

In Gangtok, I met a few people who warned me that Sikkim was safe and easy to travel through, but the rest of the northeast would not be that way. But, despite the advice to the contrary, I ventured onward into Assam.

As it would turn out, the people I met in Assam were absolutely wonderful and I ended up having a great time in Gauhati and thereabouts. When it was time to leave  and ride towards Tawang in Arunachal  Pradesh, I began to hear the words of caution yet again. 

Arunachal is breathtakingly beautiful, and its people are easy-going and welcoming of an adventurous stranger into their fold. But, yet again when it was time to ride south towards Meghalaya, that same warning made a now routine appearance. Needless to say, I continued my journey and went on to personally experience the warmth and genuine kindness of people in several other parts of the northeast as well.

Over this particular journey, I realised that the opinions and information obtained from others, however good their intentions might be, cannot ever substitute your own learning through first-hand experience. In this digital age, when information on nearly any subject is only a few clicks (or taps) away, we&rsquove all come to believe that we are more informed and aware than the generations before us. The reality, though, is that a lot of this information is often based on hearsay or built on what other  people have read somewhere else. Original, authentic, well-founded and honest information is still hard to come by. If I&rsquod chosen to listen to everyone else, I would have missed out on many special experiences. I would have also unknowingly carried forward a prejudice or opinion that was not necessarily with rational basis. My own personal experiences were vastly different from what I had been told to expect.

There will, of course, be times when it is pertinent to pay heed to the wisdom and words of caution received from people who know places better than you might. It&rsquos always a careful dance of personal choice to decide whether you want to rely on someone else&rsquos judgement or your own. But, on the whole, to put it very simply, I&rsquove learnt that if there is something that I am truly curious about, the only way to learn about it is to go out and find out for myself