Ready to roll after a quick breakfast, our enthusiasm was put on pause when we realised our vehicle needed a separate permit to enter Arunachal, which would take a few hours, since the officials responsible for the same were in a ‘lunch’ meeting, at 10 am. It was noon by the time we were done with all the paperwork, and I was getting impatient. The day’s ride was close to 10000 ft of uphill over 57 km, and I hadn’t ridden at all after doing Manali - Khardungla in August last year. The hillsides were covered with unbelievably dense bamboo and banana forests, there was barely any traffic (owing to the fact that it was shoulder season), and a couple of hundred feet below, the Kameng flowed lazily. The first 10 km went by like a breeze and we were getting into a rhythm, when we were stopped in our tracks. Some section of the road was under construction and wouldn’t be opened to traffic till 5 in the evening, which meant we had to take a long detour that would add around 40 km to our ride, or wait it out. The idea of waiting four hours under the bright afternoon sun wasn’t extremely appealing, so we decided to take the detour and ride as far as daylight allowed. We could always cover that section on our return. The wide, tarmac road soon disappeared into a single lane dirt road, covered under a dense canopy. Perfect riding conditions. We stopped at the small village of Kimi around sunset, deciding to cover the remaining distance for the day in the vehicle. This turned out to be an excellent decision when it started raining and the steep, broken hillsides, being blasted for road excavation, started shooting rocks down onto the road.