The road down the Jantia Hills is stunning. Steep jungle forests are falling in a sea of clouds beneath us. But the way down is rougher than expected. Often, the pavement disappears and gives way to stones, sand and craters around which we navigate like in a video game, keeping an eye on the constant flow of horn-blowing trucks, minivans and Tata Sumo (the local jeep). Again dust is everywhere. It finds its way into our nose and mouth. The vegetation turns greyer the closer it lies to the road.
As the hills give way to the plains, we enter into Assam. Assam is the biggest of the seven Northeast Indian states, the so-called "seven sisters". Surprisingly, the region we cross looks a lot like Bangladesh. The landscape is perfectly flat, people are of the darker Bengali type, bicycles are back on the road and rice fields abound again. Apparently, northern Assam is completely different: hills are rolling down from the Himalayas with the mighty Brahmaputra carving its way through. Unfortunately, these mysterious lands are not our way.
Comically, we always get the same questions from the locals when we stop for a break or for directions, often in the same order: "What country? What purpose? Only two people? Going to?" Sometimes we get great comments in response, like a memorable "strange enough!".
Instead of being the expected piece of cake, the 30 km flat stretch to Silchar is tough: very little pavement and a lot of dust. We are definitely filthy. Pierre is even considering for the first time to change his shirt before Burma. We arrive pretty exhausted in Silchar, the big town in South of Assam, which we discover to be a typical big Indian city (crowded and noisy) without the easy wi-fi we had hoped for. We take refuge in the dining area of a new shopping mall - still very much under construction - to eat and rest a little.
Hoping for a more peaceful place, we push further East to Lakhipur. The only cheap-looking guesthouse is full. Fortunately, a teacher of the Mizo minority group introduces us to leaders of the local Baptist congregation and we are given a (somehow overpriced) room in the Baptist headquarters, by far the biggest building in this small town.
We have interesting discussions with the Mizo teacher. We learn about the good deeds of "Bible for the World", an American evangelisation group that distributes bibles, strangely bringing back memories of the Saudi madrassas in Bangladesh. We also learn about the difficulties to come. The man sighs heavily when he speaks about the journey he once did to Imphal, the capital of Manipur: "When I arrived I was an old man. My eyebrows got white with dust".
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