Navi Mumbai to North East India & back: Road trip on my BMW GS850 bike

I pushed on towards my next destination, Vishakhapatnam, to visit the aircraft museums there.

BHPian kosjam recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

TLDR- I was in the border village of Longwa, Nagaland, where I was able to save my head from being mounted on the headhunter’s stick for a princely sum of, you guessed it, Rs. 150!!!

So it turns out, Mom was right all along! My head really isn't worth much.

Till as late as the 80s, Naga head hunters were actively hunting, well, heads and used their teeth and bones to make ornaments, with the amount of face tattoos signifing the number of heads hunted.
In the last 30 or so years, they have been slowly assimilated into society, with the older ones earning their tobacco money by extorting money from the likes of poor me.

So the story starts in December 2023, but it really started 3 years ago, when the plan first took seed in the above mentioned worthless head. The Eastern Frontier. The intention was to go all the way to the North East from Navi Mumbai, trying to avoid repeating a route once taken. Easier said than done, with some unsettling stories coming out of fellow bikers who had travelled through eastern UP and Bihar. As we were 3 bikers, there is safety in travelling in a group, isn't there?

Alas, lady luck did not favour me as the other two bikers had to drop out due to personal reasons. Immediately, requests, demands and instructions to delay the trip abounded from family as well as friends. But with a penchant for adventure, I was hardly going to be pulled back from my trip. As a compromise, I would come back the same way I went to the North East, hugging the East coast all the way. And hence the trip began, on 25th December, from Navi Mumbai.

Broadly I will divide the trip into 3 sections, Navi Mumbai to Guwahati, the North East, and Guwahati to Navi Mumbai. While the complete album holds over a thousand pictures, I have managed to condense it down to a few dozen precious pictures. Thanks in advance for giving me your valuable time.

So lets begin with Section 1:

Day 1- It was basically just riding from Navi Mumbai to Nampalli, Telangana. It was 760 km, on the very first day, and it was all I did, apart from finding a hotel and crashing for the night, ready to tackle the first sightseeing point of the trip the next day. My family and friends braved the cold winds to see me off on this journey. Warms up the heart when they think of such things...

Day 2- Visited the beautiful and majestic temple, devoted to the Lord Narsimha in the act of slaying the asura Hiranyakashyap.

The temple is on the far side of this picture, unfortunately partially hidden in the morning smog.

An otherwise beautiful morning with the advantage of having no crowd and the whole place mostly to myself.

From there I pushed on towards my next destination, Vishakhapatnam, to visit the aircraft museums there. But I got distracted by a beautiful dam and the scenic back waters which caused me to lose 2-3 hours to get some beautiful shots with the object of my love…

From there I pushed through the interior roads of Telangana towards the Coromandel highway(NH16), finally managing to reach it only around sundown, just in time, to be safe from the murderous trucks actively trying to run me off the road!!!

Day 3 – The next day I pushed towards Vishakhapatanam, and with its really chaotic traffic, I was able to reach only by noon, which turned out to be a boon, as the museums were scheduled to open even later, by 2 pm that day. As I had not planned on staying in Vishakhapatanam, I had no place to park my bike safely. After being looked down upon by a security guard at a local hotel, who insisted I park my bike outside like a zomato delivery guy, I managed to find an upmarket hotel which would allow me to park my bike in their parking for the low low price of a sumptuous lunch, here I happily deposited my bike, hogged on some Chinese food, and proceeded to the museum area on the eastern coast of the city.

 The first look at the line outside the museum was very heartening for me, far more used to seeing such queues outside temples than museums. Looking inside, the lines were justified, what beautifully done museums they were. One was dedicated to the Sea Harrier, with its impressive and thoughtfully laid out equipment, and the other was dedicated to the majestic (and massive!) Tu-142 Albatross submarine hunter.

There is a third museum, of a submarine, but it was too hot for me to get stuck inside a black cramped tube with hundreds of fellow sweaty Indians. Here you see it’s rear end, with its 3 propellers and a giant rudder.

The day ended with me continuing onwards towards Guwahati on the Coromandel highway(NH16).

Days 4,5,6- These three days entailed me riding sun up till sundown on my way to reach Guwahati. Met a friend in Bagdogra who had really friendly dogs.

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