Kumarghat with lunch in Manu - Bangladesh + India x 2 - CycleBlaze

November 16, 2010

Kumarghat with lunch in Manu

tribal villages up Route 44

The folding doors of the food venors' shacks are all closed shut at 7:30 this morning and the market area is in utter contrast from last night's activity, being empty and ghostly quiet. No breakfast this morning, but no worries. There'll be opportunities down the road, for sure.

The 44 starts climbing soon after leaving the village proper, which is a few hundred metres from where I stopped last night. I can see a hotel/guesthouse by the main road and this is where the cafes and shops really are. I stop for a cold drink - a fizzy orange.

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Progress is slow and the climbs are steep and my granny gears get used a lot as sweat pours of me. 

My breakfast comes at a food stall where I buy five small bananas for one rupee each - a pittance.

There're no vehicles following me along the tarmac at first, but trucks start rumbling past after an hour. 

I take a self-timed photo riding through the tall tress shading the road and notice a large monkey watching my performance from the roadside bushes. It seems baffled but it's good it's quite camera shy as even though it's be nice to take a snap of it, I can imagine it coming over and running off with my camera and tripod.

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About 30 minutes later a motorcycle cruises up and the familiar 'good morning' is uttered but the guy turns out to speak good English for a change - a teacher from one of the small tribal villages along this route who invites me for tea at a hut a few hundred metres further up the climb.

There, the lady running the place makes us a brew of the sweet beverage and the man explains to me that he and many of the people here are from the Reang tribe, including the tea maker, a lovely looking woman in a red top and with fine facial features. Others tribes include the Mog. 

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Sensing my interest, he invites me to his village and seeing as time is on my side, I obviously agree. It's less than a kilomtere off the main route, down a small lane that's paved, and when we arrive his fellow villagers are sat outside the two rows of dwellings. They are mainly of the mog, who are Bhuddist.

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A bit later, a bunch of huts by the road offer drinks and I stop for some water where the few people around look at me with disintest until I take a photo of a simple  ceramic bowl containing what I think is lime juice that the people use with the betel nuts they chew so much around these hills. 

When the man sat next to me on a simple wooden bench who's smoking a bamboo pipe see the photo he likes it and so I take one of him and then a few of the women who are sat around. 

I guess they are Reang. It's all just a matter of breaking the ice.

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Lunch is in Manu, a village that the road cuts through and I sit at a cafe and have rice and fish curry that costs next to nothing and tastes delicious. 

It's quite hot out there today and my merino wool jersey doesn't help much.

Not long after I come across a village market in full swing, with goats, chickens and cattle being bought and sold. There are spices, fried fish, and household goods on offer, too, and I walk around looking at the tribes people in their distinct dress, with some women donning elaborate ear-pieces with large holes in their lobes supporting a second ring that dangles below. 

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One woman has unusual conical metal bits to the tops of her ears, another a multi-tiered necklace incorporating old one-rupee coins that have been polished smooth with years of loving use.

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I get to the town of Kumarghat - just a 55 km ride today - and find a decent hotel and once everything is unpacked, it's a surprise to find my computer screen blank - no diary updating on this for a while. 

I guess the nearest place that might be able to sort it out is Shillong, a few days' ride away from here.

Today's ride: 55 km (34 miles)
Total: 643 km (399 miles)

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