On the 1st I traveled by sumo on the spectacular route from Aalo to the small, remote town of Mechuka, close to the Tibet border and only recently opened to foreign tourists. The 110 mile trip took about eight and a half hours. I was up at 4:30, the sky already light. India has only one time zone, so sunrise and sunset in its far northeast are early. I walked to the sumo stand about 5 and we left about 6 under cloudy skies. The sumo had only one other passenger.
We crossed the Sipu River bridge and headed north on a good road up the beautiful river valley of the Yomgo, with the river to our right. We passed rice paddies and thatched Adi houses. The sun came out about 7 and before 8 we made a breakfast stop. I had a breakfast of an omelet, parathas, chickpeas and potatoes, and tea. Another passenger joined us as we continued north, soon several hundred feet above the river as the canyon narrowed, with great views of the river and the green mountains. The road turned west as it followed a bend in the river where another river joined it, the other river flowing south through a green canyon. The green jungle was filled with bamboo, banana trees, and many, many ferns, some of the ferns with stems maybe 20 feet high. Some of the banana trees had big bright orange flowers opening on them. At about 3000 or 3500 feet we were maybe 1000 feet above the river at the bottom of the canyon. As we ascended higher, the ferns and bamboo thinned out and patches of grass appeared.
About noon we reached the little town, or maybe "village" is more accurate, of Tato at about 4500 feet on a mountainside high above the river. After Tato the road markedly deteriorated and we traveled much more slowly, less than 15 miles per hour. The hillsides became rockier, with lots of waterfalls, maybe 20 in all cascading down the cliffs. One was right beside the road.
The sky clouded up in the early afternoon and a few raindrops fell. We reached 6800 feet and then descended to the Menchuka Valley, following the fast-moving river (the same river we had followed all the way from Aalo) just before we reached the valley and the spread out town of Mechuka about 2:30. A sign at the town entrance gave the elevation as 6254 feet and my altimeter gave it as something over 6300. There are no hotels in Mechuka, but the sumo driver helped me find a homestay with a family. I checked in, got a room for my own in a wooden house, and then looked around town as rain began to fall.
Mechuka is populated mostly by Buddhist Memba people, who are friendly but shy. The valley floor is flat, with the river flowing through it west to east. High mountains are all around. The town is south of the river. An army camp is near the river and an airport is also being constructed near the river. The town's houses are made of wood, though there are some half-finished concrete buildings, shops and offices, in the small center, maybe a block or two long. The houses are quite spread out.
The rain stopped as I walked up to a new gompa on a hill just south of town, about 200 feet above the town. From there I could see up the valley to the hills at the end of the valley and a small hill near the end of the valley with an old gompa, 400 years old I've read. To the north loomed a string of snow covered peaks, partially hidden by clouds. I could also see some snowy peaks to the south, though the clouds seemed to cover the mountaintops more in that direction.
Pine boughs were burning in a little fireplace outside the gompa. A single monk sat on the floor inside the gompa, dedicated by the Dalai Lama in 2003, chanting while banging a drum and at times cymbals and a bell. I wandered around inside and outside and then walked back down to the town before dark, about 5:30. I found a little restaurant and had a thukpa dinner. It began to rain hard just as I got back to the homestay, about 7:30. I went to bed about 9, without a bucket bath. The temperature in my room was 63 degrees, but I had enough blankets. My wooden bed had only a very thin mattress, but I had two beds in my room, so I put both mattresses on one bed for a slightly thicker cushion over the wood.
Before 4 the next morning some of those in the house were up and quite noisy. I stayed in bed until 6. My thermometer registered 59 degrees in my room. The sky was cloudy as I walked through town, with lots of litter on the streets (it's not a pretty town) and back on the road I had arrived on. I walked for over a mile along the grassy floor of the valley, with a few houses along the way, under a dark sky, until I reached where the road and river run side by side. About 8 I stopped at the riverside and ate some peanuts. The river here, at the east end of the valley, enters forest, with lots of pines.
I walked back towards town under still cloudy skies but warming temperatures. A suspension bridge crossed the river east of the town, so I walked to it and crossed to the other side. No cars and only a few pedestrians were using it. Many of the wooden floorboards were missing or broken. Hills rise just beyond the bridge and the road beyond the bridge parallels the river. I walked back to town about 10:30. The restaurants and most shops were closed on a Saturday morning. I rested in my room for an hour or so and then went out again.
Soon a light rain began to fall and I ducked into a shop, where I could sit and wait out the rain while talking to an interesting local guy about the Membas and their differences from Tibetans and from Monpas, the Buddhist people of western Arunachal Pradesh (Tawang, Dirang, Bomdila). He told me there are 12,000 people in Mechuka, though I think that includes the district around it. He said there are five tribes here, with the Memba the largest. He also told me the border with Tibet (something like ten or fifteen miles away, upriver) is closed and that there are two or three villages beyond the old gompa west of Mechuka and the border.
The rain stopped about 1:30 and I started walking west along the airport being built and out of town through soggy grasslands, eventually walking along the river bank as the river made slight turns through the valley. I walked about two and a half miles, I think, before I turned back about 2:30 when a light rain again began to fall. I walked back a different route, a new road leading to the new gompa south of Mechuka, passing road workers on the way. Women were carrying gravel while men were heating and spreading asphalt and operating a small steamroller.
I reached the gompa about 3:30, just as heavier rain started. On the porch a guy was making butter sculptures, and I sat down on the boards to watch. A woman brought me butter tea and two kinds of bread snacks. She refilled my tea cup twice as I watched and snacked. Another guy painted the sculpture, an array of towers a few inches high, with some sort of red paint and then the sculptor added small white colored pieces to the now red sculpture. The material used for the sculpture looked like some sort of clay, but they are called butter sculptures, so perhaps it is a mixture of butter and clay, or butter and something else, maybe millet flour. When finished, one of the men placed the sculpture on an altar in the gompa and they closed up the gompa. We all walked down together from the gompa in the rain a little before 5.
The sky had been cloudy all day. I never saw the snow covered peaks I had seen upon arrival the day before. My homestay had electricity only until 7. I had arranged for the household to make me dinner that night and ate a good chicken dinner in the kitchen, the warmest room in the house. I went to bed at 9, with rain falling.
It rained all day the next day and I didn't leave the homestay until 4 in the afternoon. I had chicken thukpa for breakfast and for lunch with the family. They were never very communicative, probably in part because they speak hardly any English and are so little used to foreigners. I spent most of my day reading in my room, which was a chilly 61 degrees. I finished Jude the Obscure and restarted Tristram Shandy, which I had read earlier on this trip. I did take about an hour walk late in the afternoon. I started with only a few sprinkles falling, but heavy rain fell as I returned. The clouds were very low on the mountains. I ate thukpa again for dinner and went to bed after 9. It seemed to rain all night.
And it was raining the next morning when I got up about 6:30. I had a thukpa breakfast and finally the rain stopped. About 9 under still very cloudy skies I walked up to the new gompa. This day was the Buddhist holiday called Buddha Purnima, celebrated on the full moon to commemorate Buddha's birth, enlightenment, and death (or entrance into nirvana). In the gompa a middle aged monk sat on the floor chanting while occasionally banging a drum, clanging cymbals, or ringing a bell for emphasis. Next to him sat a younger monk with a conch shell that he occasionally blew. A boy, not in the red robes of a monk, sat next to the younger monk and also had a conch shell. Across from then sat two guys, also not in red robes, with Tibetan style oboes, about two feet long, and a bell. All were chanting. I watched for a while and took some photos. Somebody brought me a plastic chair to sit on, and then some butter tea and cookies. Later I was brought a can of Pepsi.
An older man and two younger women came in with a big bag full of packages of potato chips, cookies, and the like and stacked them up as an offering on a table near the altars. The man told me that he takes care of the gompa. Another family came in. The little boy wore a beautiful bright yellow traditional jacket while his mother wore a beautiful traditional dress. Other worshippers came and went. I sat, and listened, and watched for more than two hours. It rained off and on, mostly on. I was brought lots of tea, which was welcome on that rainy, chilly morning.
Just before noon there was a break in the rain and I started a walk west retracing the way I had walked to the gompa the previous afternoon. Nobody was working in the fields. I did see workers at the airport and I passed by an older couple grinding flour at a water mill. I watched them as they finished up, locked up the mill, and, heading home, carried off a basket full of tsampa, a long board, and a long sheet of corrugated metal. The metal sheet had been used to divert a small stream into a channel leading to the water mill so that the water would rotate the wooden water wheel under it.
I walked about three and a half miles, as far as Yorko village, passing some horses pasturing and some people walking towards Mechuka. Just before Yorko I crossed a white water tributary of the main river running through the valley. I was aiming for the old monastery on the hill further west, but I finally realized it was too far away, and across the main river. The rain started again, initially just a few sprinkles, and I decided to head back. By the time I reached the airport it was raining hard. Under my umbrella I watched some of the women working at the airport still working under their umbrellas. Another group of them were huddled together, either squatting or on little stools, their combined umbrellas forming a wider canopy.
About 3 I finally reached a little restaurant in town for some thukpa. My windbreaker and trousers were wet. Two very friendly little girls were in the restaurant. I think their mother was the cook. She, too, was very friendly and served a very good chicken thukpa. After my late lunch I walked around a bit and then to my homestay in a light rain, which became harder. On the way I came across some little kids playing in the puddles and with their umbrellas. I also came across a sculpture, made of millet flour I think, of a goat headed figure. It was on the road, with some pieces having fallen off. A dog was eating one of the pieces. I got back to the homestay about 4:30 and had a late dinner of momos, which I had suggested the day before after all the thukpa meals. I got to bed about 9:30 and didn't hear any rain during the night.
I had booked a sumo for the return trip to Aalo for the next morning after giving up on the weather clearing enough for me see the mountains all around the valley again. I was up before 5 and the sumo came by the homestay to pick me at 5. The sky was cloudy but there was no rain. I caught a brief glimpse of a snow covered peak to the west, but then it disappeared behind clouds. The sumo left Mechuka before 5:30 and I had a seat in the second row by the left window, which is the side with the best views. The sumo was full for the ride back.
At the eastern end of the valley, the sumo drove along the river and then ascended briefly into dense fog before starting its descent. I could see only the outlines of trees in the fog. We were soon out of the fog and now high above the river. Dramatic cloud banks and wisps of clouds added to the beauty of the deep green canyon and the river far below. The road as far as Tato was very wet and potholed and our driver drove much too fast on that bumpy road, but I enjoyed the spectacular scenery. The ride back to Aalo, downhill, was much faster than the ride uphill. We reached Tato about 7 and Kaying about 10. The sun came out about 8:30 for a half hour or more. One of the passengers we picked up on the way (after other passengers had got off) had a pile of wood he was taking with him. The driver tied it onto the roof, but not very well and it started falling off. At first he wouldn't stop to retie the wood on the roof and more and more fell off. We finally got him to stop and retie the wood.
The sun came out for good about 10 and we reached Aalo about 11:30. My backpack, which had been on the roof but supposedly under plastic, was wet. I checked into the comfortable hotel where I had stayed before, bought a sumo ticket for the next day, and had lunch. The sun and warmth felt good. I spent most of the rest of the afternoon in my hotel room, resting and watching a couple of movies on television, Pirates of the Caribbean and The Rock. The sky clouded up late in the afternoon. I took a short walk, about half an hour, and then had a momo dinner with a friendly and interesting Galo couple. Back in the hotel I washed my clothes and had a bucket bath for the first time in five days. At bedtime the temperature in my room was a comfortable 79 degrees.
We crossed the Sipu River bridge and headed north on a good road up the beautiful river valley of the Yomgo, with the river to our right. We passed rice paddies and thatched Adi houses. The sun came out about 7 and before 8 we made a breakfast stop. I had a breakfast of an omelet, parathas, chickpeas and potatoes, and tea. Another passenger joined us as we continued north, soon several hundred feet above the river as the canyon narrowed, with great views of the river and the green mountains. The road turned west as it followed a bend in the river where another river joined it, the other river flowing south through a green canyon. The green jungle was filled with bamboo, banana trees, and many, many ferns, some of the ferns with stems maybe 20 feet high. Some of the banana trees had big bright orange flowers opening on them. At about 3000 or 3500 feet we were maybe 1000 feet above the river at the bottom of the canyon. As we ascended higher, the ferns and bamboo thinned out and patches of grass appeared.
About noon we reached the little town, or maybe "village" is more accurate, of Tato at about 4500 feet on a mountainside high above the river. After Tato the road markedly deteriorated and we traveled much more slowly, less than 15 miles per hour. The hillsides became rockier, with lots of waterfalls, maybe 20 in all cascading down the cliffs. One was right beside the road.
The sky clouded up in the early afternoon and a few raindrops fell. We reached 6800 feet and then descended to the Menchuka Valley, following the fast-moving river (the same river we had followed all the way from Aalo) just before we reached the valley and the spread out town of Mechuka about 2:30. A sign at the town entrance gave the elevation as 6254 feet and my altimeter gave it as something over 6300. There are no hotels in Mechuka, but the sumo driver helped me find a homestay with a family. I checked in, got a room for my own in a wooden house, and then looked around town as rain began to fall.
Mechuka is populated mostly by Buddhist Memba people, who are friendly but shy. The valley floor is flat, with the river flowing through it west to east. High mountains are all around. The town is south of the river. An army camp is near the river and an airport is also being constructed near the river. The town's houses are made of wood, though there are some half-finished concrete buildings, shops and offices, in the small center, maybe a block or two long. The houses are quite spread out.
The rain stopped as I walked up to a new gompa on a hill just south of town, about 200 feet above the town. From there I could see up the valley to the hills at the end of the valley and a small hill near the end of the valley with an old gompa, 400 years old I've read. To the north loomed a string of snow covered peaks, partially hidden by clouds. I could also see some snowy peaks to the south, though the clouds seemed to cover the mountaintops more in that direction.
Pine boughs were burning in a little fireplace outside the gompa. A single monk sat on the floor inside the gompa, dedicated by the Dalai Lama in 2003, chanting while banging a drum and at times cymbals and a bell. I wandered around inside and outside and then walked back down to the town before dark, about 5:30. I found a little restaurant and had a thukpa dinner. It began to rain hard just as I got back to the homestay, about 7:30. I went to bed about 9, without a bucket bath. The temperature in my room was 63 degrees, but I had enough blankets. My wooden bed had only a very thin mattress, but I had two beds in my room, so I put both mattresses on one bed for a slightly thicker cushion over the wood.
Before 4 the next morning some of those in the house were up and quite noisy. I stayed in bed until 6. My thermometer registered 59 degrees in my room. The sky was cloudy as I walked through town, with lots of litter on the streets (it's not a pretty town) and back on the road I had arrived on. I walked for over a mile along the grassy floor of the valley, with a few houses along the way, under a dark sky, until I reached where the road and river run side by side. About 8 I stopped at the riverside and ate some peanuts. The river here, at the east end of the valley, enters forest, with lots of pines.
I walked back towards town under still cloudy skies but warming temperatures. A suspension bridge crossed the river east of the town, so I walked to it and crossed to the other side. No cars and only a few pedestrians were using it. Many of the wooden floorboards were missing or broken. Hills rise just beyond the bridge and the road beyond the bridge parallels the river. I walked back to town about 10:30. The restaurants and most shops were closed on a Saturday morning. I rested in my room for an hour or so and then went out again.
Soon a light rain began to fall and I ducked into a shop, where I could sit and wait out the rain while talking to an interesting local guy about the Membas and their differences from Tibetans and from Monpas, the Buddhist people of western Arunachal Pradesh (Tawang, Dirang, Bomdila). He told me there are 12,000 people in Mechuka, though I think that includes the district around it. He said there are five tribes here, with the Memba the largest. He also told me the border with Tibet (something like ten or fifteen miles away, upriver) is closed and that there are two or three villages beyond the old gompa west of Mechuka and the border.
The rain stopped about 1:30 and I started walking west along the airport being built and out of town through soggy grasslands, eventually walking along the river bank as the river made slight turns through the valley. I walked about two and a half miles, I think, before I turned back about 2:30 when a light rain again began to fall. I walked back a different route, a new road leading to the new gompa south of Mechuka, passing road workers on the way. Women were carrying gravel while men were heating and spreading asphalt and operating a small steamroller.
I reached the gompa about 3:30, just as heavier rain started. On the porch a guy was making butter sculptures, and I sat down on the boards to watch. A woman brought me butter tea and two kinds of bread snacks. She refilled my tea cup twice as I watched and snacked. Another guy painted the sculpture, an array of towers a few inches high, with some sort of red paint and then the sculptor added small white colored pieces to the now red sculpture. The material used for the sculpture looked like some sort of clay, but they are called butter sculptures, so perhaps it is a mixture of butter and clay, or butter and something else, maybe millet flour. When finished, one of the men placed the sculpture on an altar in the gompa and they closed up the gompa. We all walked down together from the gompa in the rain a little before 5.
The sky had been cloudy all day. I never saw the snow covered peaks I had seen upon arrival the day before. My homestay had electricity only until 7. I had arranged for the household to make me dinner that night and ate a good chicken dinner in the kitchen, the warmest room in the house. I went to bed at 9, with rain falling.
It rained all day the next day and I didn't leave the homestay until 4 in the afternoon. I had chicken thukpa for breakfast and for lunch with the family. They were never very communicative, probably in part because they speak hardly any English and are so little used to foreigners. I spent most of my day reading in my room, which was a chilly 61 degrees. I finished Jude the Obscure and restarted Tristram Shandy, which I had read earlier on this trip. I did take about an hour walk late in the afternoon. I started with only a few sprinkles falling, but heavy rain fell as I returned. The clouds were very low on the mountains. I ate thukpa again for dinner and went to bed after 9. It seemed to rain all night.
And it was raining the next morning when I got up about 6:30. I had a thukpa breakfast and finally the rain stopped. About 9 under still very cloudy skies I walked up to the new gompa. This day was the Buddhist holiday called Buddha Purnima, celebrated on the full moon to commemorate Buddha's birth, enlightenment, and death (or entrance into nirvana). In the gompa a middle aged monk sat on the floor chanting while occasionally banging a drum, clanging cymbals, or ringing a bell for emphasis. Next to him sat a younger monk with a conch shell that he occasionally blew. A boy, not in the red robes of a monk, sat next to the younger monk and also had a conch shell. Across from then sat two guys, also not in red robes, with Tibetan style oboes, about two feet long, and a bell. All were chanting. I watched for a while and took some photos. Somebody brought me a plastic chair to sit on, and then some butter tea and cookies. Later I was brought a can of Pepsi.
An older man and two younger women came in with a big bag full of packages of potato chips, cookies, and the like and stacked them up as an offering on a table near the altars. The man told me that he takes care of the gompa. Another family came in. The little boy wore a beautiful bright yellow traditional jacket while his mother wore a beautiful traditional dress. Other worshippers came and went. I sat, and listened, and watched for more than two hours. It rained off and on, mostly on. I was brought lots of tea, which was welcome on that rainy, chilly morning.
Just before noon there was a break in the rain and I started a walk west retracing the way I had walked to the gompa the previous afternoon. Nobody was working in the fields. I did see workers at the airport and I passed by an older couple grinding flour at a water mill. I watched them as they finished up, locked up the mill, and, heading home, carried off a basket full of tsampa, a long board, and a long sheet of corrugated metal. The metal sheet had been used to divert a small stream into a channel leading to the water mill so that the water would rotate the wooden water wheel under it.
I walked about three and a half miles, as far as Yorko village, passing some horses pasturing and some people walking towards Mechuka. Just before Yorko I crossed a white water tributary of the main river running through the valley. I was aiming for the old monastery on the hill further west, but I finally realized it was too far away, and across the main river. The rain started again, initially just a few sprinkles, and I decided to head back. By the time I reached the airport it was raining hard. Under my umbrella I watched some of the women working at the airport still working under their umbrellas. Another group of them were huddled together, either squatting or on little stools, their combined umbrellas forming a wider canopy.
About 3 I finally reached a little restaurant in town for some thukpa. My windbreaker and trousers were wet. Two very friendly little girls were in the restaurant. I think their mother was the cook. She, too, was very friendly and served a very good chicken thukpa. After my late lunch I walked around a bit and then to my homestay in a light rain, which became harder. On the way I came across some little kids playing in the puddles and with their umbrellas. I also came across a sculpture, made of millet flour I think, of a goat headed figure. It was on the road, with some pieces having fallen off. A dog was eating one of the pieces. I got back to the homestay about 4:30 and had a late dinner of momos, which I had suggested the day before after all the thukpa meals. I got to bed about 9:30 and didn't hear any rain during the night.
I had booked a sumo for the return trip to Aalo for the next morning after giving up on the weather clearing enough for me see the mountains all around the valley again. I was up before 5 and the sumo came by the homestay to pick me at 5. The sky was cloudy but there was no rain. I caught a brief glimpse of a snow covered peak to the west, but then it disappeared behind clouds. The sumo left Mechuka before 5:30 and I had a seat in the second row by the left window, which is the side with the best views. The sumo was full for the ride back.
At the eastern end of the valley, the sumo drove along the river and then ascended briefly into dense fog before starting its descent. I could see only the outlines of trees in the fog. We were soon out of the fog and now high above the river. Dramatic cloud banks and wisps of clouds added to the beauty of the deep green canyon and the river far below. The road as far as Tato was very wet and potholed and our driver drove much too fast on that bumpy road, but I enjoyed the spectacular scenery. The ride back to Aalo, downhill, was much faster than the ride uphill. We reached Tato about 7 and Kaying about 10. The sun came out about 8:30 for a half hour or more. One of the passengers we picked up on the way (after other passengers had got off) had a pile of wood he was taking with him. The driver tied it onto the roof, but not very well and it started falling off. At first he wouldn't stop to retie the wood on the roof and more and more fell off. We finally got him to stop and retie the wood.
The sun came out for good about 10 and we reached Aalo about 11:30. My backpack, which had been on the roof but supposedly under plastic, was wet. I checked into the comfortable hotel where I had stayed before, bought a sumo ticket for the next day, and had lunch. The sun and warmth felt good. I spent most of the rest of the afternoon in my hotel room, resting and watching a couple of movies on television, Pirates of the Caribbean and The Rock. The sky clouded up late in the afternoon. I took a short walk, about half an hour, and then had a momo dinner with a friendly and interesting Galo couple. Back in the hotel I washed my clothes and had a bucket bath for the first time in five days. At bedtime the temperature in my room was a comfortable 79 degrees.
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