One tends to assume that finding unique and interesting routes to travel requires a lot of hard work – long hours of research, scouring through maps, reading blogs and seeking recommendations from others. I prefer to go about this a bit differently. My pre-ride research is fairly basic. I am usually just looking to find something that catches my interest – a waterfall that looks inviting, a mountainous region that holds the promise of some great views, or a route that appears to run close to the coast. And then, it’s time to wing it.
You see, I’m still quite old school when it comes to navigation. My go-to method – outside cities – is to ask someone for directions. This is the pillar of my process –
and I enjoy it because it gives me an excuse to have more conversations with real people.
As a motorcycle traveller, I usually hold the advantage of being a curious spectacle, which makes it easier to find someone to speak to. Most often, these interactions are an exchange of questions – I seek local information, while they want to know more about what I’m doing there, why I’m even there in the first place, and, of course, what mileage I get from my bike.
The initial recommendations that come my way tend to be the more mainstream ones. But, as the conversation continues, and I’m able to explain to them my intention to see places that others might ignore, it can often lead to me uncovering information that I might have never found on the world wide web.
Take, for instance, the outcome of my conversation with a stranger while on a ferry across the river Brahmaputra in Assam. Stuck on a boat, and with nowhere to go in a hurry, we ended up having a long conversation about our respective backgrounds and lives. When I told him that I was not particularly looking forward to riding further in Assam after we got off the ferry, he suggested a pretty drastic change. He came from a town near the border between Assam and Nagaland, and knew of a small, adventurous and scenic route that would take me into Nagaland instead. It didn’t take much to sell me on this – and at the end of that boat ride, I set off down the route he had suggested. As it would turn out, it proved to be one of the most challenging and exciting days of riding on that entire trip.
There is, of course, always a chance that some of these suggestions might prove to be quite ordinary, or even bad. But, that’s a risk I’m willing to take, because the payoff, when it does come, makes it all worthwhile. The best routes that I’ve ridden are those that I never intended to find. And, I only have the kindness of strangers to thank for it.
