John Peel
Senior Member
- Location
- Cheshire England
Monsoons and Camping in Asia
Wanting to be in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam for the drier season, means cycling through India in monsoon season, so I now have a new India visa valid for 12 months so time is not an issue as long as it's complete this year. I wanted to get the visa formalities out of the way now rather than on the move.
I expect to arrive in Mumbai India around May/June, heading down the West coast to Trivandrum. This should only take me about 2 months at a nice pace, meaning I might be all done by about August. I have allowed a long visa for lots of reasons, including that I have been to India before and love it, so might find a place to stay a while maybe.
With such a long visa I could continue up the East coast to Kolkata before flying out to Thailand from there, or even look at getting passage through Bangladesh and Myanmar, which could be unlikely.
Now if I'm having a crappy time down to Trivandrum, I will likely just head straight to Thailand and not bother with the East coast. The East coast is just a "what if", and was never a part of my original plan. So who has cycle toured the coasts of India during monsoon season, and what's your advice?
Camping is my other question. Is it worth taking all my camping gear or just keeping my mozzie net and sending the rest on to family in Australia for when I reach there, and not bothering taking it through the other parts of Asia, as I'm told there is never anywhere to camp and digs are so cheap it's really not worth it. Wouldn't want to get caught out not finding any digs of course?
Cheers. Steve
Wanting to be in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam for the drier season, means cycling through India in monsoon season, so I now have a new India visa valid for 12 months so time is not an issue as long as it's complete this year. I wanted to get the visa formalities out of the way now rather than on the move.
I expect to arrive in Mumbai India around May/June, heading down the West coast to Trivandrum. This should only take me about 2 months at a nice pace, meaning I might be all done by about August. I have allowed a long visa for lots of reasons, including that I have been to India before and love it, so might find a place to stay a while maybe.
With such a long visa I could continue up the East coast to Kolkata before flying out to Thailand from there, or even look at getting passage through Bangladesh and Myanmar, which could be unlikely.
Now if I'm having a crappy time down to Trivandrum, I will likely just head straight to Thailand and not bother with the East coast. The East coast is just a "what if", and was never a part of my original plan. So who has cycle toured the coasts of India during monsoon season, and what's your advice?
Camping is my other question. Is it worth taking all my camping gear or just keeping my mozzie net and sending the rest on to family in Australia for when I reach there, and not bothering taking it through the other parts of Asia, as I'm told there is never anywhere to camp and digs are so cheap it's really not worth it. Wouldn't want to get caught out not finding any digs of course?
Cheers. Steve