Day 2: Started at last!(part 3)

At this point my decision to transport the bike till Tezu is starting to look like a good one. There are no cycle shops in the mountains, and I needed the help of a mechanic to get things working properly!

Sometime later, I got a call from Manju. He had put me on the speakerphone so that my other colleagues could listen to me speaking! I described the scene in front of me - the mustard fields on the left, looming mountains in the distance dominated by snow-clad peaks (supposedly these are near to Parsuramkund), and the serene stream on the right. Talking on the phone had caused me to overshoot the boat needed to cross the stream. After coming back and crossing the stream on the boat (10 rupees to the boatman), I quickly reached Chongkham. No lunch at any hotel, so I settled for two Omletts and a couple of chais.

2:45 by the time I started again. I decided to stop at Namsai, about 30km away. The ride to Namsai was fast - courtesy the largely flat road. About 10 km later started an Elephant sanctuary. The peeping sunlight and the bamboo reminded me of the elephant sanctuary near Kushalnagar. As the sanctuary ended, Tea estates started. I stopped for tea at Lathao. Namsai was just 12 km away. Continued swiftly and stopped near a tea estate. I saw leaves inside a wire basket and concluded it must be tea. The leaves were rather large. I had imagined (courtesy the tea advertisements) that the tea leaves were small. The local folks told me that the larger the tea leaf, the better it is. I tried crushing the tea leaf in an obvious attempt to get some smell out of it - no use. The explanation was that the drying and processing in the factory is what makes it Tea!

Before I reached Namsai, I saw a temple saying "Swamy Saranam" in English and Tamil (what else?). Surprisingly, the temple seemed devoted to Lord Radhakrishna. There seems to be a rather large buddhist population around, courtesy the many buddhist temples I saw.