May 1-5, 2015: Mechuka and back to Aalo

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.

April 28-30, 2015: North Lakhimpur and Aalo (Along)

I was up before 7 in Hapoli on the morning of the 28th.  As usual, the sky was cloudy, though sun did break through occasionally.  I took a walk around town and saw a man with a cane hat with fur and a hornbill beak on it.  From Hapoli and the Ziro Valley I wanted to continue through the hills of Arunachal Pradesh northeast to Daporijo and then onto Aalo, formerly known as Along.  However, a bridge between the Ziro Valley and Daporijo had been damaged and was under repair, so no sumos or any other transport were going to Daporijo.  I had to make my way to Aalo via Assam.

I left on a sumo bound for North Lakhimpur in Assam at 11:45.  It headed south, retracing the route I had taken from Potin on my way to the Ziro Valley and then, from Potin, heading east down the beautiful green canyon of the Ranga River (with very little water because of the dam upriver near where we had crossed it before Potin).  Under mostly cloudy skies we descended from about 3500 feet elevation at Potin to about 800 feet at the Arunachal Pradesh-Assam border.  From the border it was only about 15 miles more to Lakhimpur through green flatlands with big tea estates.  The blue ridges of the hills of Arunachal Pradesh could be seen on the way. 

We reached the scruffy town of North Lakhimpur, sunny and hot, about 4 or 4:30.  I checked my thermometer on arrival and it registered 86 degrees, quite a change from the Ziro Valley.  I checked into a room in a very cheap hotel (250 rupees, only about $4, a night) near the sumo stand.  I didn't mind the cold water bucket bath.  The temperature in my room at bed time, a little after 9, was 86 degrees, more than 20 degrees higher than in my room at night in Hapoli in the Ziro Valley. 

I left North Lakhimpur at 7 the next morning on a sumo bound for Aalo.  I had the window seat in front, next to two cute kids, about 8 to 10 years old.  (The little girl, however, vomited twice en route.)  The sumo headed northeast, paralleling the blue hills of Arunachal Pradesh.  The countryside was green, with lots of tea estates.  We traveled the 60 or so miles through flat Assam rapidly, reaching the Arunachal Pradesh border at Likabali about 9:30.  A sign gave Likabali's elevation as 450 feet.  We made a meal stop just beyond the border and didn't get going again until 10:45.

From the border the sumo headed north to Aalo up and down jungle covered hills.  We reached 3000 feet three times, once as high as 3200 feet, according to a sign.  We crossed rivers and made several stops.  Once we got into the hills the sky clouded up.  We passed many large thatched houses made of wood and bamboo. Small rice paddies appeared here and there.  It was all very scenic and rustic.  Only one small town, Basar, was on the way. 

Before reaching Aalo, the sumo dropped off passengers in two villages of wood and bamboo houses, most of them with thatched roofs.  I did see electrical wires in the villages.  We arrived in Aalo, at the juncture of two rivers at about 1000 feet elevation, after 4:30, just as raindrops began to fall.  I walked in the rain to a fairly good hotel.  It seemed to rain all night.

It rained until about 8 the next morning, and then the sky cleared and the day was sunny until the sky clouded up about 3.  About 9 I started a long walk, first through the ugly little town along the main road full of water-filled potholes, then past an army base just outside of town, and then east along the wide, fast moving Yomgo River (my map labeled it the Shyom River).  The river was filled with white water and gravel banks.  Green hills rose on either side and I could see a village of thatched roofed houses on a hill on the other side of the river.  Once I got out of town the road was good, with little traffic.  I passed thatched houses, rice paddies, bamboo, and ferns along the way, with great views of the river.

About four miles from Aalo I left the highway and walked down to a 450 foot long bridge over the river.  I crossed it and walked into the village just on the other side.  The village was very quiet.  I bought some potato chips and water from a little shop and watched some of the villagers playing carom in the shade.  The people were friendly, but shy.  I think they are Adi Minyang.  Aalo is inhabited mostly by Adi Minyang and Galo people and I was told the Adi Minyang live mostly on the other side of the river from the town. 

I walked around the village a bit, rested on a shaky overlook of the river and bridge, and then headed back to Aalo about 1:30.  The slow walk back, with stops here and there to watch women working in the rice paddies or anything else interesting, was hot until the sun went behind clouds.  Just as I reached the drab outskirts of the town I got a ride from an American guy and his local wife.  They dropped me off at my hotel about 3:30. 

Later in the afternoon I walked across the bridge over the Sipu River, which flows into the Yongo at Aalo.  I had crossed over this bridge on the road from Assam.  Instead of walking south on this road towards Assam, I walked north on the road and then down to the Yomgo just before the Sipu flows into it.  I talked to three guys sitting by the fast moving river, with good views up and down the river.  The river flows down from the north and turns east at Aalo, soon reaching the Siang River, which is what the Brahmaputra is called in Arunachal Pradesh.  From the riverbank I walked back to my hotel, reaching it after 5, just as the rain started. 

April 24-27, 2015: The Ziro Valley

I was up about 7 on the morning of the 24th in Itanagar.  Clouds again filled the sky, though the sun came out about 8 or 9, though there were still plenty of clouds in the sky.  I walked over to the open market and saw a skinny old man wearing a small bamboo wicker hat with a hornbill beak and a long feather attached to it.  His black hair was tied in a knot just above his forehead.  I also saw thick yellow caterpillars, about two inches long, on sale. 

I left on a sumo bound for the Ziro Valley, north of Itanagar, about 10:30.  The sun was out on departure, but the sky soon clouded up.  The ride was comfortable, with only four passengers.  It took us about 20 minutes just to go the two or three miles along the clogged road through town to the outskirts, from where we headed downhill to the new train station five miles from town.  The tracks had just reached Itanagar and train service had just begun. My map showed no direct road from Itanagar to the Ziro Valley through Arunachal Pradesh, so I thought we would have to travel through Assam.  However, soon after the train station we turned north on a muddy new road through the forested hills along a river.  On this new road we made a ten or fifteen minute stop, along with a bunch of other vehicles, while a backhoe cleared a landslide.  A friendly crowd got out of their vehicles to watch the work in progress.  An old man with a long machete in a scabbard on his back came up to me to touch the hair on my arms.  A young guy in my sumo also had a long machete in a scabbard. 

We eventually crossed the river and zigzagged up a ridge to 3500 feet and the village of Potin on the old road, where we had a tea stop.  From Potin we headed down on the old road to a river and a dam at about 2000 feet, crossed the river, followed it for about five miles, and then climbed again through forested hills.  I saw lots of bamboo and much other vegetation.  Pines began to appear at about 4000 feet.  The sun came out occasionally.  The countryside was lovely. 

A sign marked the summit at 5754 feet, and then we drove down to the little town of Hapoli at about 5100-5200 feet, arriving about 3:30.  The clouds in the sky were now dark.  I checked into a drab, cold hotel (my room temperature consistently seemed to be about 63 or 64 degrees), and took a walk around town, checking out sumos and looking, unsuccessfully, for a better hotel.  Hapoli is at the southern end of the Ziro Valley and I walked up to a hill in town with good views of the little valley to the north.  A few raindrops fell about 5:30 as I headed back to my hotel.  I saw a woman with black nose plugs and a basket on her back.  I have read that the reason Apatani girls and women were tattooed and fitted with nose plugs is that in the past, because of their beauty, they were kidnapped by neighboring Nishi tribes.  The tattooing is on the lower face, a little like beards.  The nose plugs fit into holes on both sides of the nose, considerably enlarging and spreading out the nose.

Early the next morning I walked to the open market in town.  There wasn't a lot to see, though I did see some interesting stuff on sale:  bamboo shoots, banana flowers, and six little piles of small black bugs.  I saw one old woman with nose plugs and tattoos.  

About 8:30 I started a walked through the valley to the smaller town of Ziro, only about four miles to the north, and spent most of the day wandering through villages and rice paddies along the way.  The sun came out occasionally during the day, but the skies were mostly cloudy.  I followed the main road out of Hapoli, potholed with very muddy shoulders and soon took a turn off to the east on a dirt road leading to the village of Hong, a village set up against the hills on the eastern side of the valley.  I didn't go to Hong, but rather walked through rice paddies, turning off the road onto another dirt road that became a path paralleling the main road.  Lots of women were planting rice.  One old woman had nose plugs.  I walked along the narrow dirt dikes of the paddies in places.  In a little pool off an irrigation ditch I watched two guys catching fish.  One used a bamboo racket to stir up the water along the sides of the pond and chase fish into a net held in the water by the other.  The fish caught were very small, less than an inch long.

The small valley is flat and filled with rice paddies, with hills on either side and a river running through it.  I again reached the main road and crossed to another village on the west side, where I saw some more women with nose plugs.  The houses are made of wood and bamboo, but now all have metal roofs.  I reached more rice paddies at the far end of the village and watched four little boys knee deep in the mud of an irrigation ditch catching very small fish with a net and with their hands.  Walking through the paddies on a dirt path, I saw a very old woman with nose plugs carrying a basket on her back.  She stopped, put down her basket, and started picking up some very small fish left on the dike of a rice paddy.  Occasionally I saw frogs jumping in the water of the paddies.

Four women, two older and two younger, were working together in a small bamboo fenced paddy full of densely packed rice sprouts, bright green, ready to be replanted elsewhere.  I walked over to watch.  The younger two were pulling out clumps of the rice sprouts, while the older two were weeding the dike.  They were friendly, the older two women talking to me in Apatani while the younger two continued to work silently.  One of the older ones, with nose plugs and tattoos, brought me over a little bunch of yellow wildflowers that had been growing on the dike.  The other one also had tattoos, but no nose plugs, though she did have slits on the sides of her nose for the plugs.  I asked if I could take some photos and they let me.  I kept watching them and that made them laugh. 

About 11:30 they took their lunch break, after one of the young women checked the time on her smart phone!  She spoke some English and told me that woman with nose plugs was her mother, the other older woman her aunt, and the other young woman her older sister.  Her father, a thin, wizened guy joined them for lunch.  He had been using a hoe to beat on the dirt of a nearby dike enclosing a paddy full of newly planted rice sprouts.

They shared their lunch with me, and I shared what little food I had brought, just some peanuts.  Their lunch was sweet rolls, hot tea (from a thermos), and rice wine.  The mother gave me a full plastic cup of tea and a full plastic cup of rice wine.  I think she told me the wine is called "Oh."  She asked her daughter to ask me to sing something, so I sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."  I had once been told, decades ago, that that is the one American song everyone knows.  I doubt that is true, and especially among the Apatani.  She asked for another song, so I sang "Help."  I then asked her to sing a song and she sang a couple, the last one very beautiful.  As she sang, her daughter leaned her arm on her mother's shoulder.  The mother served me another half cup of rice wine, with hot tea added. Her daughters drank no wine, but I noticed her sister particularly enjoyed it.  After about a 45 minute lunch break. they went back to work and I walked on.

I continued walking through the paddies, with rice planting and dike construction to be seen along the way.  I took a short detour into the hills covered with pines and found some freshly sawed lumber stacked together.  Through the paddies I soon reached a large village, called Hija, with friendly people.  Almost every house had some sort of totem in front of it, only two or three feet high and made of bamboo, egg shells, and feathers.  A young guy showed me around the village for a while and said they were put there when someone was sick.  The Apatani are small people (my guide was 5 foot, three inches, he told me) and he introduced me to a guy he described as the tallest person in the village, at five feet, eight inches. 

In the village I also saw several very high poles, maybe 20 or 30 feet high, with pieces of wood dangling from cords from the crosspieces at the tops of the poles.  And I saw several small wooden buildings, too small for people.  A few women with nose plugs were around, too.  As I was leaving the village I came across a thin old man with his hair gathered in front, in a sort of top knot, just over his forehead, and with some sort of thin stick, maybe a foot long, in it. 

Leaving the village I reached again the main road and walked along it to Ziro, a little more than a half mile away.  There isn't much to see in Ziro, though I did see some more women with nose plugs.  I walked through the small town and back.  The valley seems to end and hills rise again just beyond the town.  An airport is under construction on the valley floor next to town.  About 4 I caught a tempo back to Hapoli and stopped in at the market, now more active than in the morning.  A couple of ladies with nose plugs were selling greens alongside the road behind the market.  In the covered market itself only four piles of bugs remained.  Two piles must have been sold since morning.

The next day was cloudy, with rare sunshine.  A light rain fell in the early morning as I visited the market, which had few vendors and customers, maybe because it was a Sunday morning.  About 8:30 I walked out of Hapoli heading for Hong village, which I reached on a muddy dirt road under a light rain.  I saw an old woman with nose plugs pulling out clumps of rice from a paddy right next to her wood and bamboo house at the edge of the village.  I also saw some tall narrow wood and bamboo buildings that perhaps are rice storage barns.  The sun came out briefly over the quiet, scenic village.  Not a lot of people were out and about.  As on the day before, I think a lot of them were already out in the rice paddies. 

From Hong I walked north on a dirt road along the east side of the little valley with rice paddies to my left and sometimes to my right.  Bamboo and pine trees grew along the road and in the nearby hills.  I came to another dirt road that cut across the valley to the first village I had visited the day before on the west side of the main road, and walked to that village again.  I wandered through that village and then south to a nearby village called Michi Bamin, up against the hills on the western side of the valley. 

I followed a path up an incline to the top of the village, up against the edge of the forest, and came across a small Baptist church.  Two little girls were hiding (from me, I think) behind a flat stone erected on the ground with the Ten Commandments written on it in Apatani.  I could see a woman praying inside with her hands raised.  Another woman, the mother of the two little girls, came out and tried to reassure them I meant no harm.

I walked up into the forest of bamboo and pine, rising about 400 feet above the valley floor, with a few good views of the valley and hills beyond through the trees.  In places bamboo fences lined the steep and muddy path.  I picked up three leeches, one on each foot and one on my leg.  I came upon a young couple repairing a gate.  As I headed back down to the village, they passed me carrying bamboo on their heads.  The little Baptist church was deserted when I passed by it again, at about 2. 

I walked through the friendly village.  As I was leaving it on its southern end, a man working in a paddy called out to me and posed for a photo. His son was kicking around a mostly deflated soccer ball and we kicked it back and forth.  The son spoke some English.  I walked back to Hapoli on the main road.  There seemed to be fewer workers in the paddies than the day before.  In marshes just west of the main road big clumps of purple flowers grew.  I got back to Hapoli after 4 and visited the market.

The next morning I didn't get up until after 7 and went to the market, where I met an Indian couple from Guwahati in Assam.  They had come to the Ziro Valley to buy kiwis to sell in Guwahati and were heading to a kiwi farm north of Ziro.  On the way they dropped me off at the village of Mudang Tage between Hapoli and Ziro about 9.  I walked just south to an almost adjacent village called Dutta on another cloudy day. 

While I was wandering around Dutta I met a young guy, about 20, who offered to show me his mother's house, made of wood and bamboo and raised above the ground.  We entered from the bamboo porch and the interior was dark, with no windows.  No one was there.  A clay stove was on the floor.  Firewood and a big slab of pork were stored on shelves near the ceiling.  On the walls hung a basket and a picture of Jesus.  We went out onto the back porch, also made of bamboo, with a pig sty just below it.  His mother, with nose plugs, came in and was friendly. 

He next took me to his brother's house, a few houses away.  It was more modern, made of concrete and wood, but still had a fire on the floor in a dark interior.  Several women were inside, including the mother of a two-day old baby girl.  He led me out back where about 20 men and boys were preparing for a feast the next day to celebrate the new birth.  They were all very friendly and I ended up spending about five hours there. 

When I  got there they were killing chickens, plucking out their feathers after immersing the chickens in hot water, singeing the featherless chickens with a blow torch, and then pulling out their innards.  The chickens were eventually cut up into pieces, the edible organs separated, and the intestines cleaned with water from a bucket.  I was given a stool, rice wine, and milk tea as I watched and talked with them.

They were working for the most part under an overhang behind the house.  Further back in the yard grew millet and vegetables.  Nearby several men were cooking chicken organs and intestines stuffed into bamboo sections, with some green vegetables stuffed in on top, over an open fire.  I went out to watch.  The cooking done, they used machetes to cut the bamboo open and we ate the contents, which tasted spicy.  Some other bamboo sections had bamboo shoots and leafy green vegetables mixed in with the chicken organs and intestines.  I also ate some roasted bamboo shoots, which were delicious.  Other bamboo sections had liver and blood cooked together in them, which looked like shit and tasted like liver.  I was happy when they gave me a can of Sprite to help wash away that taste.

I walked back to the overhang as huge slabs, maybe five feet by four feet, of pork were brought out of the house to be cut up.  A man used a machete to saw through the tough meat, making strips about four inches long.  As he did, dozens of white maggots sprouted from the pork.  The strips were then cut into more or less square blocks with a machete whacked by a piece of wood.  The pieces, maggots and all, were then placed into baskets.  I was told that each chunk of pork, along with a chicken piece and a hard boiled egg, would be put into individual plastic bags for the guests the next day.  Three hundred women were expected.  It seems the feast the next day would be primarily, or maybe even solely, for women.

More chickens were being killed.  The men used a machete, but not to chop their heads off.  Instead, they whacked the back of the chickens' heads with the dull side of the machete.  Some flopped around quite a lot and needed extra blows.  Once the chickens were cut up into pieces, the pieces were tied together with bamboo strips and boiled, then hung up along a wall under the overhang.   I was told they would be roasted the next day before being placed in the plastic bags with the pork and hard boiled eggs. 

I spent a lot of time just sitting on my stool and talking to whoever came over to talk to me during their breaks from other activities.  Three quiet old men sat nearby on their stools.  One introduced himself to me, saying he was owner of the house.  One young guy told me he was the head of the clan and that all the men there were part of the Chinging clan.  Women came out occasionally from the house.  Two or three of them wore nose plugs.  It rained hard several times during the five hours I was there.  Occasionally the sun came out.

Several of the young guys were particularly talkative and spoke good English.  They told me the names of the seven villages in the valley:  Hong, Hari, and one other whose name I didn't catch on the east side, and Michi Bamin, Mudang Tage, Dutta, and Hija on the west side.  They told me that Abotani ("Father Tani") was the ancestor of not only the Apatani,, but also the Nishi, Galo, Adi, and Tagin, and that they originally came from western China, near the Yellow River.  I was also told that two tigers had been caught nine years previously and that they still hunt for jungle cats and flying squirrels in the forest.  One guy, I can't remember if he was old or young, asked me how many wives I had. 

About three we all had lunch, brought to us by the women inside.  It consisted of a bowl with a heap of clotted cold rice with a broth poured over it and a plate of chicken intestines, organs, and feet.  Everyone sat around under the overhang and wolfed it down.  Or maybe I should say everyone but me.  I ate most of the rice, one chicken foot (well, only bits of it), and several mouthfuls of the intestines and organs. 

About 3:30 or 4 I thanked them and said goodbye.  Three young guys walked me from the village to the main road, past women working in rice paddies.  One yelled at me and I waved to her, and she waved back.  The sky was cloudy and dark, but there was no rain, as the three guys waited with me for a tempo to take me back to Hapoli.  All that came by were full, so they hailed a young guy from their clan passing by and heading to Ziro, a bit more than a mile away, and had him take me there where it would be easier to get a spot in a tempo for Hapoli.  In Ziro I bought some cookies to help dilute the organ taste in my mouth.  I got back to Hapoli about 4:30.  Rain fell again and afterwards I took a walk around town.

April 21-23, 2015: Bomdila and Itanagar

I left Tawang on the morning of the 21st, getting up at 5 on a cloudy morning.  I was out at the sumo stop at 5:30, but we didn't leave until 6:30.  I had a window seat in the second row on the right side.  We made two stops in town to pick up two soldiers at an army base and three members of a family at their home.  Even though the day was cloudy I enjoyed the scenic journey.  We drove down to the river (I think it may be called the Tawang River), crossed it at the bridge near where we had stopped for lunch on the way to Tawang, and drove up to Jang at about 8000 feet, where we arrived about 8 for a breakfast stop. 

I ate vegetable momos for breakfast, after which we zigzagged up towards Sela Pass.  The sky was hazy and I couldn't tell if I could make out Tawang Monastery in the far distance.  Clouds hid the tops of the peaks as we neared the pass.  We reached the stunted trees, and then the snow and the lake just before the pass.  Fog swirled around under a very cloudy sky as we reached the pass about 10:30.  On the other side of the 13,500 foot pass we drove through a thick blanket of fog until we reached about 10,000 feet, after which we had great views under a cloudy sky.

We arrived in Dirang, at about 5400 feet, about 12:30, where we made a 20 minute stop and encountered a few raindrops.  We continued down the river and then climbed up towards Bomdilla.  The views were good, despite the clouds.  Some rain fell.  We made a couple of lunch stops, each for about 20 minutes.  We reached the pass at about 8500 feet elevation and then drove down to Bomdila, at about 8000 feet, arrayed across a steep hillside.  We arrived about 3 and I found a very nice hotel, but comparatively expensive at 1250 rupees, about $20. 

I took a walk around town, mostly under a light rain and swirling clouds and fog.  A new gompa sits high above the town, but I didn't walk up.  I did walk to the bazaar and then on to a small old gompa in the lower town.  Inside was a photo of the Dalai Lama in his 20's.  I could see some other gompas on the hillsides below town, but the rain drove me back to my hotel.  The temperature in my room was 59 degrees at bedtime, just after 9.   

I was up at 4:30 the next morning, at first light.  I was out at 5 in a drippy rain as the manager of my hotel had told me there would be a bus to Itanagar, the Arunachal Pradesh state capital.  There was no bus, and at 6 I went back to my hotel, got back into my room and went to bed for another hour, though I didn't get back to sleep.  I was out again at 7, booked a sumo ride to Itanagar, and walked around town until about 8 in the still dripping rain.  I did get a few views over the lower part of the town through swirling clouds and fog. 

I had breakfast and then left in the sumo for Itanagar.  The sky was still very cloudy.  My altimeter showed the bottom of the town at about 7500 feet, and we continued descending to the Tenga River valley at about 4000 feet.  We traveled along the river and then up to about 6000 feet through fog and rain and lush forest.  Then we headed down to the Kameng River valley, getting below the clouds at about 3000 feet.  We reached the border at Balukpong just before 1 and made a lunch stop.  I ate chicken momos as a few more raindrops fell.

We crossed the Arunachal Pradesh-Assam border after 1:30.  It seems there is no road from western Arunachal Pradesh to the state capital at Itanagar through the mountainous state itself, necessitating a return to the flat terrain of Assam.  From the border the sumo headed south, then east, crossing the now wide Kameng River, soon to merge with the even wider Brahmaputra.  The sky was cloudy, but there was no rain.  The hills of Arunachal Pradesh to the north were mostly cloud covered.  The countryside was green, with huge tea estates.  Maybe 80 miles from the border crossing, at about 4:20, we turned north, with Itanagar now less than 20 miles away.  We crossed the border, at about 600 feet elevation, and began to climb into the hills again on a road made very muddy by rain and road construction.  We climbed to about 1300 feet in the forested hills and then traveled up and down until we reached Itanagar, at about 1300 feet, at 5:30, just before dark.  I went to bed about 9. 

I was up about 6 the next morning.  There was a heavy rainfall from about 7 to 8, and the sky was cloudy all day, with dark clouds.  After breakfast I walked to the open market and then on to the State Museum, about an hour walk away along the main road through town, filled with traffic.  The shoulder was muddy, with many puddles.  No sidewalk.  Itanagar is strung out along the main road and was founded only in 1972 to serve as the state capital.  There doesn't appear to be much to see other than the museum.  I did have some views of the forest beyond town as I walked to the museum and I saw lots of tribal faces, and some Indian ones.

The museum is excellent.  I spent five hours there. For the first three hours I looked at all the exhibits.  Twenty-seven dioramas with mannequins dressed in the traditional clothes and ornaments of the various tribal groups are very well done.  I read that there are 26 tribal groups and I noticed that the Nyishi were depicted in three dioramas and the Adi in two, so I suppose two tribal groups have been left out.  Also on display are weapons, shields, tools, musical instruments, ornaments, hats, Buddhist thangkas, Apatani nose plugs (made of cane), penis shields (made of bone, cane, and wood), and much else.  There are great maps.  A few school groups came through and I posed for a lot of photos.  One Tagin boy and girl, teenagers, were in very modern dress, the girl wearing lipstick.  I heard a heavy rainfall for about half an hour and even went out to see it for a few minutes.

After I had looked over all the exhibits, I sat and read through some books, including ones on the Monpas and on the Siang District to the east, where I was heading eventually.  I talked with a young Apatani woman who worked in the museum and she was very interesting.  She told me her mother, aged 60, has nose plugs and tattoos.  (The nose plugs expand holes drilled on both sides of the nose.)  She told me the tattooing and wearing of nose plugs started young, when the girls were children, but that Indira Gandhi had stopped it with 500 rupee fines.  She said that had happened after Gandhi visited the state, in the 1980's she thought, though I've seen photos of Gandhi visiting Arunachal Pradesh in 1967, before it was a state.  She told me the Apatani originally practiced the Donyi-Polo religion, but that now most are Christian.  She is Catholic. 

She was very friendly and gave me some rice wine she had brought to work and told me how it was made.  Boiled rice and burnt rice husks are wrapped in a leaf with yeast for 15 days.  Then water is dripped through to make the wine.  It is tan colored and sweet.  She also showed me photos on her phone of Apatani and of the Ziro Valley, where they live and where I was headed next.  I walked back to my hotel under dark, cloudy skies.  The air felt a little chilly, but I was wearing only trousers, a shirt, and sandals.

April 15-20, 2015: Tawang

I was up before 6 in Dirang on the morning of the 15th, which was sunny and clear.  At 7:30 I caught a sumo coming from Bomdila and heading to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh's northwest corner, close to the border with Tibet.  In fact, it was to Tawang that the Dalai Lama initially fled when he escaped from Tibet in 1959.  I had purchased a window seat in the sumo, but on arrival the sumo was full.  They did manage to fit me in in the front seat with two others and the driver.  At least I was next to the window.  Unfortunately, the sumo had a thick opaque strip at the top of the windshield, for protection against sun, but hindering visibility.  That was a shame, for the 85 mile trip northwest to Tawang is spectacular, crossing the Sela Pass at 13,500 feet. 

From Dirang the sumo headed  northwest, along the river.  It crossed the river and followed another.  The hillsides were covered with trees and the sun was out, with a few clouds at the tops of ridges.  We passed army bases and stopped at about 6600 feet elevation for breakfast at a small place high above the river, with great views upriver.

As we left the river and zigzagged up towards the pass, we passed more army bases.  The trees eventually began to thin out.  Close to the pass the terrain was rocky with stunted trees, perhaps cedars.  The sky had clouded up and at about 12,000 feet we were enveloped in fog.  You could just barely see the mountainside through the fog. A small rockslide tumbled down, hitting our vehicle with the sound of gunshots.  A couple of miles before the pass we began to see patches of snow. 

We reached snow covered 13,500 foot Sela Pass, decorated with prayer flags, about 10:30.  Just as we got there, the fog parted, revealing a blue lake with snow covered banks just beyond the pass.  Snow-streaked peaks, wreathed in white clouds, stood behind the lake.  I had to get the driver to stop at the lakeside so I could get out and enjoy the spot, though only for maybe ten minutes.  The prayer flags at the very top of the pass, just behind us, appeared dim in the fog, while the lake and mountains in front of us were clear, with the clouds constantly shifting, revealing and obscuring the peaks.  The air was cold, but not too bad, even though I was wearing only a windbreaker over my shirt. 

We drove along the lake, past a berm at one end, and followed the stream flowing out of it down through a spectacular rocky canyon.  We passed a memorial to an Indian soldier who is said to have single-handedly held off the invading Chinese for several days in 1962.  In places the rock walls are almost vertical.  At first only a few stunted evergreen trees were growing, but as we descended there were more and more, and they were taller.  To the north a high ridge of jagged, snow-streaked peaks was visible. 

More varieties of trees appeared as we zigzagged down towards a town and a river beyond the town.  On the opposite side of the river we could see villages and fields clinging to the hillsides, with snowy peaks beyond and the river far below.  We zigzagged down to the town, Jang, at about 8,000 feet, give or take 500 feet, reaching it about noon.  We continued zigzagging down to small restaurant for a 20 minute lunch stop just before the river at about 6700 feet, arriving there about 12:30.  The sun was out and the air warm.  The countryside was very green.  Across the river I could see some army trucks pulling big artillery pieces.

After the lunch stop (I enjoyed the scenery outside rather than eat), we crossed the river over a small bridge and climbed above the river, heading west.  The river flows into Bhutan.  Looking back, we could see an impressive waterfall near Jang.  We passed more army camps and two towns before reaching Tawang about 2.  My altimeter registered 9600 feet in the town center, though one of my guidebooks gives the elevation as about 10,000 feet. I checked into a fairly decent hotel for only 600 rupees (a little less than $10).  From my hotel I could see Tawang Monastery, out of town a couple of miles on a ridge to the west.  Established in 1681, it is supposed to be the second largest Buddhist monastery in the world. 

The sun was out and I took a walk around town, passing a small gompa in the center and walking up along not very busy streets to the northern edge of town for the view from a ridge.  Looking south,  I could see the town just below and beyond it a green slope with many buildings, with the great gash of the river valley beyond.  On the other side of the river valley rises a high ridge of snow covered peaks.  The monastery is to the west, as was the setting sun.  To the north is an army base on another ridge and beyond a high ridge of spectacular peaks, sharp edged and snow covered.  I stood just below a mutli-storied copper statue of Buddha that was almost finished, covered with scaffolding.

I walked up the road that eventually reaches the border with Tibet up to another army base at about 10,000 feet, according to my altimeter, so about 400 feet above the town center, passing a couple of yaks, or maybe dzos, on the way.  I walked back to the ridge with the giant Buddha statue and hung around until sunset, just before 5, and then walked back.  I ate some delicious momos for dinner. By 7 just about all the shops were closed.  I went to bed about 9:30, with the temperature in my room 61 degrees.  I could hear lots of barking dogs.

The next morning I was up at 6.  The temperature in my room was 57 degrees.  The sun was out and I could see the Tawang Monastery and snowy peaks from my little balcony.  About 6:30 I walked up to the giant Buddha.  The majestic peaks to the north were free of clouds, as were the peaks to the south, across the deep river valley, but high thin clouds were approaching from the south.  They eventually reached the sun, dimming it.

About 7:30 I started the hour or so walk to the big monastery, with great views of it on the way.  I passed houses, shops, and at least one school.  The road is mostly level and the sun was out most of the time.  I passed some uniformed school children.  Just before I reached the monastery, at its northwest end, I passed a derelict ropeway with an enclosed carriage attached leading to a hill to the north with an anigompa, or nunnery, on it.  A patch of lawn with trees and prayer flags led to the main entrance gate.  Instead of entering that gate, I walked on the road just below the walls of the monastery on its east side, facing the town of Tawang.  The ridge slopes down comparatively gently on the monastery's eastern side, with a precipitous drop is on its western side.  I stopped to watch some wood cutters using axes on a big pile of wood just below the walls.  A little further I came across an old woman at a little shrine outside the walls wearing the distinctive old Monpa hat, looking like a hairy spider.  The hat is black, flat, and looks like hair, with five or so "legs" only three or four inches long leading off it.  These, I was told, are to channel rain away.  These hats do look quite odd.   

At the far end, the southern end, of the monastery, just outside a small entranceway, I came upon about 100 young monks in red robes all gathered together.  They soon dispersed, perhaps to school or chores.  I entered through that gate and wandered all around inside the walls.  I walked up to the big main hall, originally built in 1681 and apparently rebuilt in 1997.  I wandered around inside and outside, through the plaza in front and the little lanes below where the monks' quarters are.  A big building just to the north of the main hall is where the young monks go to school.  I visited a small museum across the plaza from the main hall, with interesting Tibetan Buddhist paraphernalia and great photos of the very young (23 years old) Dalai Lama after this arrival on horseback in 1959.

Eventually, I walked up to the roof of a building to the east of the main plaza, with great views.  The yellow roofs of the residential quarters were just below me and a few monks were relaxing on the roofs in the sun.  One young one was blowing bubbles, using a little plastic wand with a circular ring at the end and a little bottle of liquid, something you'd get in a variety store. 

I walked out the entranceway I had come in and walked down the steep grassy slope to a big chorten, passing cows and an old man wearing one of those spider hats.  I ate my breakfast of the cookies I had brought with me sitting on the grass.  A few worshippers were circumambulating the chorten.  The sky had clouded up and a few raindrops fell, with dark clouds coming from the west.  I walked back up to the monastery and started back to Tawang about 3:30.  I got rained on for most of the 45 minute walk back, though it never rained hard.  There was some thunder.  The rain stopped about 5:30 and I walked around town a bit, though it was wet and cold.  I met two Australians, the first other tourists I met in Tawang.  I had another momo dinner.  When I walked back to my hotel after dinner there were no stars in the sky.  My room temperature at bedtime, before 10, was 59 degrees, but a hot water bucket bath had helped warm me up.

I was up before 6 the next morning, another sunny morning.  The temperature in my room was a chilly 55 degrees.  I walked up to the ridge top at the northern edge of town for the great views and then onto the monastery.  At the monastery I watched some painters at a new shrine outside the long eastern wall as they delicately painted figures in bright colors.  I wandered up to the main hall, from which I heard music and chanting.  Inside were 100 to 200 monks arrayed in rows, chanting and playing instruments at certain points in the chants.  Among the instruments were five or six big drums  and two of those long horns that telescopically fold into themselves.  Two older monks sat at the front, one with cymbals.  The chanting ended about 8:45, soon after I got there.  The teenage monks with the long horns collapsed them, the chanting finished, and they all rushed out to the courtyard and beyond. 

The courtyard had big patches of both cooked and uncooked rice drying in the sun.  A man used a wooden rake to turn over the uncooked rice.  Another man walked through with one of those spider hats.  At 9 a young monk with a gong walked through the plaza heading to the residential area.  Soon young monks were scurrying to the smaller courtyard in front of the big building just north of the main hall.  About 200 of them gathered there in rows maybe 20 monks long and 10 monks deep, the teenage ones supervising all the younger ones.  They did some chanting and singing before an elderly monk, leaning on a cane, spoke to them for 20 or 30 minutes.  Most of the boy monks were fidgeting and not listening.  Finally, the old monk finished and the young ones all piled into the building for their lessons.

I wandered around until about 11 and then started for the anigompa on the side of the hill to the north.  The ropeway was out of operation so I walked.  I wonder why the authorities felt they needed to build a ropeway.  I took the road along the ridge leading from the north end of the monastery to a new road cut into the mountainside, with workers still working on it.  A big pile of boulders almost blocked its far end.  I passed road workers, including women sitting and using hammers to break up rocks into gravel.  I noticed they wore sections of what I suppose was plastic pipe to protect their fingers, with just their fingertips sticking out. 

Beyond the boulders at the end of the road was a path that led down to small stream crossed by three planks and then up from the stream to a path along the hill with the anigompa.  I passed a few small rhododendron trees along with way.  A few raindrops fell.  I passed some concrete steps, perhaps leading up to the anigompa, but I wasn't sure, to I stuck to the path and walked under the ropeway along the cliff.   Eventually I reached trees and beyond the trees a grassy ridge top with great views of Tawang Monastery above the precipitous drop to its west.  Several yaks or dzos, or both, with red tassels on their ears,were grazing or just sitting on the grass.  Nearby were a few shacks and a couple of friendly guys came along. 

I could now see the anigompa again and climbed the grassy ridge and then through trees to reach the anigompa at about 10,500 feet.  It comprised more than ten buildings, all with yellow roofs.  I looked through the small main hall and met a couple of friendly nuns.  A teenage cook, with a shaved head, invited me into the kitchen next door to the main hall and gave me a big cup of tea of delicious milk tea.  The kitchen had an open fire and several wooden butter churns, among other items.  On the walls were drawings of designs in white paint, with the words "Losar" (a Tibetan holiday), "Rose," and "C U Again" in the designs.  The cook told me 45 nuns lived in the anigompa before she went off, talking on her cell phone.  After finishing my tea, I walked around outside, but the clouds were getting dark, so I started back about 1:30. 

I took the concrete stairs down to the path.  I saw the road workers hurrying back from the boulders and they motioned me to go back.  They all huddled in a recess in the cliff wall and I figured they might be dynamiting at the road end.  I walked back a bit until I heard the boom and saw them returning.  I didn't notice any difference when I got to where they were working.  I did notice that one middle-aged woman carrying rocks in a basket to the women with hammers was wearing a sweatshirt with "Spunk" written on it, and I noticed a sweatshirt on a guy with "Oxford University" on it.  I watched them all for a while, and they were friendly.  Two pretty nuns came along, heading to the anigompa. 

A little further on I sat for a while and ate some cookies, as the sun had come out again briefly.  I walked back to Tawang , getting there about 4:30 and getting rained on for the  last 15 minutes or so of the walk. 

At dinner I sat with three young women of the Adi tribal group studying at the University of Itanagar in the state capital.  They told me 55 students were in Tawang on a field trip studying oral traditions.  The three of them were history students.  The Adis, one of Arunachal Pradesh's 27 tribal groups, are originally from the Pasighat area in eastern Arunachal Pradesh.  They told me that there was no written Adi language until recently, and that education at schools had begun only in the 1950's.  One told me her grandmother liked the changes, but was worried about losing traditions and their Donyi-Polo religion.  She was particularly talkative and told me how much she loved America, Justin Bieber, and Miley Cyrus.  She liked that in America women could smoke and drink, and that it was very clean and without corruption. They were charming and very interesting to talk to.

I was up the next morning at 6:45.  Rain was falling and it was very cold in my room, 54 degrees.  I got up but wrapped myself in a blanket over my fleece and windbreaker.  About 8 I went down to the kitchen in the hotel, with a wood stove, for a breakfast of an omelet, parotha, and tea.  The rain stopped and I headed up to the ridge at the north end of town about 9.  Massive clouds ranged in all directions, with the mountain peaks hidden.  The sun did break through occasionally, and the sky was quite dramatic.  The sky clouded up completely again and the wind was cold.  Rain started again, and after only a half hour up on the ridge, I headed back.  In the hotel I ordered tea and sat and read next to the stove in the kitchen until about 11:30. 

The rain stopped and I again walked up to the ridge above town, with rain beginning again as I walked up.  I watched the clouds for a while and then sheltered from the rain in the nearby Circuit House, a lodging place for visiting government officials.  I was offered some tea and cookies and talked to young Monpa woman whose father worked at the Circuit House.  She is studying botany in a university in Rajasthan and aiming for the ICS, the Indian Civil Service.  She told me Monpas cannot understand the Tibetan language. 

The rain stopped and I walked out again to the ridge for the views.  There were only a few moments of sun before it clouded up again and I walked back, about 3.  On the way, I met Nitin, whom I had first met in Cherrapungee and who had just arrived in Tawang.  I went back to my hotel room, with a temperature of 55 degrees.  I had dinner with Nitin.  Rain was still falling as I walked back to my hotel at 7:30.  I read next to the stove in the kitchen and then took a hot water bucket bath before going to bed.  My room temperature was 54 degrees.

The sun was out and the sky was clear the next morning.  I was up before 6.  Nitin and I had planned to hire a sumo to take us north to see mountain peaks and lakes, but he then decided against it.  I walked to the monastery, getting there about 7:30 and heading to the main hall, but there were no monks chanting.  It was a Sunday, though I wouldn't think that would matter to Buddhists.  I spent the day wandering around the monastery.  In the morning I went up again to the rooftop next to the main plaza for the views.  The sky was very clear, quite a contrast to the day before.  A friendly monk gave me some yak butter tea, some sort of puffed rice, and a small carton of mango juice.  I talked with an Indian tourist from Delhi and a man from Ladakh who has worked in Tawang for three years.  He told me he could read but not understand spoken Monpa. 

I walked down to the grassy area above the big chorten and walked all around the wide grassy area.  Cows, dogs, and young monks in red robes playing cricket were enjoying the sunny afternoon.  I enjoyed the great views over the river valley before walking back up to the monastery.  Two older women were winnowing rice in the courtyard before the main hall.  I watched them and took some photos.  One poured me a cup of tea from her thermos, so I sat down on the pavement to drink it and watch them.  I returned to the rooftop next to the courtyard for the views.  A few monks were relaxing in the sun on the yellow rooftops below me, with some red robes and yellow undergarments drying on the rooftops in the sun. 

I walked around some more.  Some monks were doing chores.  I saw one toting jugs of water.  Some were playing cricket in an open space along the main hall leading from the main courtyard to the building to the north of the main hall.  I met a couple of other tourists who had just arrived and walked back with them to town as the sky finally clouded up.  The three of us plus Nitin had dinner together.

I was up about 6 the next morning and ate an early breakfast of an omelet, parotha, and tea.  The sun was out and the four of us hired a sumo (4000 rupees, about $63) to take us sightseeing to the north, towards the border with Tibet.  I was glad to finally find others to share the cost.  We left at 7:20 as clouds began to gather early.  We passed the army camps outside of town and drove up switchbacks into the higher mountains.  Cedars grew everywhere. 

We reached snow at about 12,000 feet, according to my altimeter, and soon the ground was covered in snow.  About 8 we reached scenic Ptso Lake, at 12,700 feet and a little less than 10 miles from Tawang.  We stopped to enjoy the views over the lake and snowy countryside, with jagged peaks looming over the river.  I could see another army base, a small one, just up the road, and army trucks passed by as we were stopped.  The sun was out but clouds were quickly forming.  By the time we left the lake was fogged in. 

A little further up the road, however, the sun reappeared.  We passed about ten or fifteen artillery pieces set up and apparently ready to fire, with lots of soldiers around.  The snow along the road looked about a foot deep.  We drove past a road work crew of local people, mostly women, some with babies on their backs. 

The sumo reached a junction with a sign saying we were 27 kilometers (17 miles) from Tawang.  A sign indicated Bumla Pass, on the border with Tibet at 15,200 feet, was 13 kilometers (8 miles away).  This is the pass used by the Dalai Lama to escape from the Chinese in 1959 and by the Chinese when they invaded India in 1962.  We weren't allowed to go to the border and were planning to take the other fork in the road and head to Sangesar Lake 11 kilometers (7 miles away) away, but the snow was too deep on that road so we had to content ourselves with stopping at a small army base.  A sign said it stood at 14,600 feet elevation, but my altimeter read 13,800.

We were there for quite a while.  The sun was out and the views were great.  Soldiers on a hill appeared to be sighting objects or locations in the distance.  A lot of them were Sikhs, recognizable by their turbans and beards.  We walked up a slight rise to an observation hut, with great views all around, particularly north, where a small flat valley was backed by snowy peaks.  Clouds were closing in.  We walked down to the canteen for momos and coffee.  The soldiers were all very friendly. 

We started back in a dense fog.  Not until reaching about 12,000 feet did we emerge from it and get a view of Tawang about 2000 feet below.  There was no sun.  We reached Tawang about 12:30 and the four of us had a yak momo lunch.  About 2 I walked up to the ridge at the northern edge of town and stayed there until after 5 enjoying the views.  The sky was cloudy, but there was no wind.  The clouds were dramatic and the sun did pop out for about five minutes sometime after 4.  I had dinner with the three others plus a Punjabi guy from Bombay we met at the restaurant.   

April 7-14, 2015: Tezpur and Dirang

Heavy rain fell on Majuli early in the morning on April 7.  The sky cleared and about 9 I walked to the village center to get transport to the ferry.  The ferry upriver didn't leave until 10:30 and wasn't crowded.  Against the swift current of the Brahmaputra, it traveled much more slowly than it had going downriver.  We passed small sand cliffs, just a few feet high, on the riverbank, quickly eroding. 

The ferry arrived at Nimatighat about 12:15.  I got transport into Jorhat and left on a 1:30 bus bound for Tezpur, about 100 miles west.  The bus passed tea estates and forests, retracing about half the route I had already taken from Guwahati, but then it turned north to cross the wide Brahmaputra, taking about four minutes to cross the long bridge.  We arrived in Tezpur, on the north bank of the Brahmaputra just west of the bridge, about 5:30.  I had to try five hotels before I could get a room.

Heavy rain fell early the next morning, but then it was sunny the rest of the day. I spent much of the day walking around town, looking unsuccessfully for travel agents who could arrange Arunachal Pradesh permits, locating banks, and checking sumos to Arunachal Pradesh.  When I realized I would have to arrange a permit by phone and internet, I spent a good deal of time trying to do so.  In the late afternoon I walked to the banks of the Brahmaputra, an undeveloped area just past a Ganesh temple.  The river is very wide here, with small sand banks just offshore and a small hill just upriver.  I could see the long bridge over the Brahmaputra further upriver.  Few boats were on the river. 

There was no rain the next day.  In fact, the day was sunny, with only a few clouds.  I had been told the previous day by a travel agent (the one I had used before, when I was on Majuli)  that if I wired him $70 by 11 this morning, he could get me a permit for the next day.  I got to the bank before it opened at 10 and, lo and behold, got the money wired at 10:35.  I went to an internet café, where I received a message from the agent not to wire the money.  That was frustrating.  I emailed the agent back asking what was going on and spent some time in the internet café and reading in my room.  Eventually, the agent replied saying he could get me a permit for April 11, two days later. About 3 I headed to the river, past the Ganesh temple, and then along the river to the hill upriver and climbed it.  The views over the wide river from the top were good.  Again, there were few boats.  I walked back to my hotel before dark.

The next day was sunny but windy.  Waiting for my permit, I walked to the Brahmaputra about 10:30 and stayed there until about 1, reading Conrad's Victory, for maybe the third or fourth time, and watching sand excavators.  I finally received my permit in the late afternoon, but it didn't start until April 13, two days later than promised, and three days later than originally promised.  That again was frustrating, but I was glad at last to get a permit. 

The next day was alternately cloudy and sunny, with a cool wind blowing. I bought a sumo ticket for Dirang in Arunachal Pradesh and spent the rest of the day in an internet café and reading in my room.  I was glad to have a few sunny days.  I had had so much rain in Kaziranga National Park and on Majuli Island that I was afraid I might have rainy weather in the mountains of Arunachal Pradesh.

The next day, my last day of five full days in Tezpur, was sunny.  There really isn't much to do in Tezpur other than go down to the river, and I did so in the afternoon.  Other than that, I spent the day in my room reading.  I had finished Victory and started Jude the Obscure, for the second time.

The next morning was cloudy as I walked to the sumo stand, getting there about 5:15.  We left Tezpur about 6, and I had the front window seat in the sumo.  I was looking forward to the ride north into the mountains of Arunachal Pradesh, but the sky to the north was filled with dark clouds.  We had a view of the hills as we approached them over the 40 miles of flatlands and then gently rising terrain to the border.  About 8 we reached the border at about 700 feet elevation, according to my altimeter.  My permit was checked and we stopped for breakfast. I ate chana puri.  A few raindrops fell. 

From the border we headed north up the heavily forested Kameng River valley, with the river far below the road in a rocky bed.  The sky was cloudy and a few raindrops fell, but it was clear enough to see the hills.  The road was good and the forested hills very scenic.  We saw army trucks and buses transporting soldiers and supplies.  Still heading north, we left the river and climbed to about 5700 feet, where we stopped at a small town or village.  The air was cold. 

We continued north, now descending and eventually reaching the Tenga River at about 3500 feet.  Crossing the river and heading west, we drove along its north bank.  This valley was drier than the Kameng valley.  There were still lots of trees but also dry grass.  The Tenga also had a very rocky riverbed and there were more army camps along it.  We left the river east of the town of Rupa and climbed north, reaching the big town of Bomdila at about 8000 feet and then climbing higher to the pass at about 8500 feet just north of it. 

We descended to the north and then west until we reached another river at about 5000 feet.  We continued west along its south bank, heading upriver.  The sun came out about 1, though the sky was mostly cloudy.  No rain fell.  We passed through old Dirang, and by its tiny citadel on a small hill above the river, about 2 and reached the new town of Dirang, three miles up the road, about 20 minutes later.  The sun was out and my altimeter gave the elevation as 5400 feet.  I checked into a pretty good hotel for 1000 rupees, about $16, a night. 

Arunachal Pradesh has 26 different tribal groups.  Monpas, Buddhists of Tibetan origin, live in this western part of the state, with Bhutan just to the west and Tibet to the north. I walked around the little town.  Men were stringing Tibetan-style prayer flags over the road in the city center in preparation for a holiday the next day.  A crowd of people had gathered at a little window in a wood building right in the center, but I never found out why.  Most had faces very reminiscent of Tibet. 

After wandering around the town, about 3 I walked up to Yewana village about a mile away.  People were friendly but shy.  Many houses were of stone or wood, with metal roofs, but there were also new houses made of concrete, among fields of green wheat and many cows.  Beautiful trees grew in small groves and I could hear cicadas.  The sun was out.

I walked up to the small gompa (monastery), fairly new by its looks, above the village at about 6000 feet, reached through a wheat field full of green wheat and a colorful arch just before the gompa.  The gompa was closed but I heard and later saw some young monks in a building next to it.  Lots of colorful pray flags were arrayed all around the gompa.  There were great views up the valley beyond Dirang.  I could see snow covered peaks.  The sun set soon after 4 behind a hill. 

I lingered at the gompa, looking around and enjoying the views, and then headed down through another part of the village.  I passed goats and cows, old and new houses, vegetable and wheat patches.  Some little kids were tied to their mothers' backs.  Concrete paths led through the village, funded by MGNREGA, the government program creating jobs for rural people.  (I think MGNREGA stands for the "Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.")  I got back to town at dark, about 6.  There were few lights in town.  I had thukpa (Tibetan noodle soup) for dinner and went to bed about 9:30.

I was up the next morning about 6:30.  My thermometer registered 64 degrees in my room.    The sun was out, though there were clouds in the sky.  I wandered through town and then west on the highway out of town a bit, with a view of a lower part of the town and a new gompa near the river.  I came back to the center for breakfast in an unappealing fly filled restaraunt and then about 9 started walking east along the highway I had arrived on towards old Dirang.  The sun was out and the hour or so walk was pleasant. Looking back I had great views of snow covered peaks.  Just outside of town I passed an army camp, with a friendly soldier in a camouflaged uniform on guard.   From the highway above the river I could see another road right along the river on the other side.  The highway (just a two lane road without much traffic) rose about 300 feet and then descended to old Dirang. 

Reaching the edge of old Dirang, I first headed up to small gompa above the village.  It was closed but had some interesting paintings on the outside, including the always interesting depictions of Buddhist hell, and great views over the town and countryside.  I could see that a smaller river flowed from the south into the main river at the town.  I could make out the remnants of the citadel on the small hill near the confluence, with a modern bridge carrying the highway over the river flowing from the south.  Almost all the roofs in the old town are now metal. 

I walked down to the old town passed a white painted chorten (stupa).  In town I walked past old stone and wood houses, though now with metal roofs, through narrow lanes now made of concrete.  The little river was full of garbage.  To reach the citadel I climbed steps up the hillside to an entrance arch, flanked by old houses in varying states of disrepair.  Inside are houses and the dzong, a small stone fortress three stories high and partially in ruins.  It was locked.  I wandered around the small hilltop neighborhood.  Kids and adults were friendly and some of the kids followed me around.  I found some stone houses with deteriorated bamboo roofs, but they were abandoned.  A mani wall had Tibetan letters (probably Om Mane Padme Hum) inscribed on flat stones.  I watched some kids racing down a cement lane in a homemade wheeled wooden cart. 

I started back to new Dirang about 1 on the lower road along the river.  Few cars passed.  The valley was pretty, but up close to the river I could see all the trash in it.  I crossed two bridges on the way back to new Dirang.  Reaching the outskirts I stopped outside a house where a woman was mashing soybeans using a stone pestle and wooden mortar.  She offered me a little wooden stool, so I sat down to watch.  Then she brought me a cup of tea.  She had a six year old daughter named Sonam who spoke fairly good English and was a lot of fun.  She had two other daughters, ages 3 and 1.  The youngest woke up from her nap while I was there and was brought outside to join everybody else.  Besides the mother and her three daughters, a pre-teenage girl and two woman were in the group.  I watched the mother roll mashed soybeans into little rolls.  Eventually, her husband and a friend of his showed up and sat down.  They were a very nice group.

I crossed a pedestrian bridge over the river and walked to a new gompa on the other side.  On the grounds a group of women were counting rice kernels in baskets.  I'm not sure why, but I imagine for some religious reason.  I went over to watch and one brought me a chair, a glass of water, and an orange.  They were very friendly, young and old, Mompa and Indian.  I was a little surprised to see Indian looking women at the gompa. 

I continued walking along the river, crossed another pedestrian bridge bedecked with prayer flags, and walked further upriver.  I passed some kids playing cricket in the street and stopped at the modern gompa I had seen from the highway west of town that morning. A plaque said it had been dedicated by the Dalai Lama in 1983.  A woman brought me butter tea, made of ghee, salt, and cow's milk.  I sat and talked with her and some other women.  One young woman spoke good English.  From the gompa I climbed up onto the highway and made my way to my hotel, arriving about 5.  The hotel, as the night before, was filled with noisy Indian tourists, and I didn't get to sleep until after midnight.  I had to get up early the next morning for a sumo to Tawang.

April 2-6, 2015: Majuli Island

On the 2nd it rained all morning in Kohora, with heavy rain at times.  There is no bus station in that little village, so you have to stand on the highway and wait for a bus to stop, not so pleasant in the rain.  I finally got one about 11 heading east to Bokakhat and then another further east to Jorhat, arriving about 1.  It rained all the way.  We passed tea estates on the way, with some of the workers wearing big bamboo hats for protection against the rain.  Others had colorful umbrellas attached to their backs.

The rain stopped in Jorhat and I took a small vehicle a few miles north to Nimatighat on the very wide, very fast flowing Brahmaputra, arriving at the port about 2.  The sky was cloudy, with the sun trying and failing to break through. A chilly wind blew.  I boarded a low lying wooden ferry and watched as it filled up with people, cars, and motorcycles.  It left shortly after 3, heading northwest, downriver.  The Brahmaputra here is a maze of islands and the ferry was heading to one of them, Majuli, said to be the largest river island in the world at about 160 square miles, but in fact smaller than the big island at the mouth of the Amazon.  The island is eroding rapidly as the Brahmaputra reclaims it.

The ferry trip wasn't very scenic, with few other boats on the muddy gray river under gray skies.  On the south bank grew some trees while to the north were mostly sand banks.  The ferry took less than an hour to reach Kamalabarighat on a sand bank.  There I boarded a waiting open-windowed vehicle taking ferry passengers across the sand (and past a beached boat) for about ten minutes before climbing the bank to the village of Kamalabari, and then continuing on to the village of Garamur, three miles further, where I got off. 

I had a little difficulty finding the little bamboo hotel on stilts, rather elegantly named La Maison da Ananda, but I found it by about 5.  It has only four or five rooms, with bamboo floors and walls, except for the bathrooms, and a long bamboo veranda running in front of all the rooms.  The beds have mosquito nets and the floors creak.  Rain started again just as I got there.  I ordered a dinner, which I ate in the kitchen of the manager's house next door.  It was delicious:  fish, small potatoes, olives, and eggplant, all (except the olives) cooked over an open fire.  The manager and his wife were very hospitable.  The electricity was out so I took a hot water bucket bath by flashlight in my bathroom.  Two tourists I had seen in Nongriat were also staying there. Some rain fell during the night.

 I was up about 6:30 the next morning.  The sky was still cloudy, but the sun came out later.  I was bought tea to drink on the bamboo veranda.  About 8:30 I walked to the village center for breakfast and then walked to a nearby satra about 10.  Majuli has 22 Hindu satras, which are monasteries for Majuli's distinctive brand of Vishnu worship.  The center of a satra is a big hall with a roof said to resemble an overturned boat.  Inside the hall were interesting wooden carvings, particularly of Vishnu and Garuda, and drums.  About 30 white clad women showed up when I was there.  They gathered for a short puja with a priest in the inner sanctum at the end of the hall opposite the entrance.  Later, five men sat in the main hall, with one of them reciting from the Bhagavad Gita.  The people on Majuli are predominately Mising, who arrived centuries ago from Arunachal Pradesh to the north.  One local guy told me they are called Mising because so much of Majuli has been eroded and is "missing," but that seems unlikely.  I walked back to my guesthouse about 11:30 and took a nap until 1:30.

About 3 I walked to a nearby village and then beyond it towards the river.  I walked along rutted dirt roads, seeing lots of bamboo, dogs, pigs, and cows.  The island is very green.  People were friendly.  One guy had a bike loaded with grass for feeding his cow.  I watched two young women, maybe waist deep in the river, carrying big, almost flat baskets and searching for something in the vegetation.  Small fish, maybe, or even frogs?

I came across a couple of kids with wet brown sugar on slices on banana trunks, the banana trunk slices used as a sort of plate.  Nearby in a field I saw people standing around two large and flat vats on the ground, with fire below, where the sugar was being made.  I walked over to watch and the friendly group of men working gave me a lump of warm, dark, smoky sugar.  In one vat the sugar was done and they were scooping it out and packing it into metal containers and plastic jugs.  The little kids around the vats had big dollops of sugar on slices of bamboo trunk, and the men gave me one, too.  I ate about a third of the warm but cooling sugar and then put the bamboo slice on the ground, where a dog ate the rest of it.  More kids gathered to eat sugar and watch me.  A man continued stirring the second vat, with the watery liquid slowly thickening.  Nearby cows were munching the remains of the cane husks, which were also used for the fire pits under the vats.  I watched until the second vat was finished and the men started scooping it out, and then headed back to the guesthouse.  I was back by dark and had another great dinner, this time chicken.

It rained hard that night, which help muffle the loud snoring of an Indian man who had checked into the room next door.  Bamboo walls are certainly not soundproof.  He and his noisy family were up at 5:30 the next morning, and I was glad to hear them go. I got up at 8.  The morning was cool, dark, and rainy.  The rain stopped eventually and the sky brightened, but there was no sun.  I had tea, sat on the veranda, and talked with the other two foreigners, one from Israel and one from Greece.  About 1 we went to lunch in the village center.  After lunch I sat on the veranda and read and then went for about an hour and a half walk before dark.  I ate another excellent fish dinner in the kitchen next door.

The night was again rainy, but it was sunny in the morning.  About 9:30 I rented a rickety old bike and pedaled three miles on a paved road to the Uttar Kamalabari Satra.  About 90 or 100 white-robbed monks, of all ages, reside there, in quarters ranged around the central hall.  When I arrived about 20 women were sitting and eating inside the central hall, near the entrance.  They were friendly, as I wandered around inside, looking at the wooden statues, Garuda being  prominent.  Above the entrance door were paintings of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva.  I wandered around outside, too, and the monks were friendly.  I kept hoping to see a ceremony at one of these satras with the dancing and play-acting they are famous for, but never saw one.

I ate lunch in the nearby village of Kamalabari and then biked east on a raised paved road, with fields and houses on my left and a few houses and then the river, or the sandy bottom of what had been the river in the wet season, on my right.  I saw lots of bamboo and rice, and many women at handlooms.  I also saw some women pounding with pestles.  The sky clouded up and I made a brief stop at a satra full of monks, with one reading the Bhagavad Gita.  I biked further along the road through green and pretty countryside, with lots of trees. 

Rain began to fall just as I reached Chamugari Satra about 1.  It was quiet, but I was able to escape the rain while looking over the fantastic masks on display in a building next door. The son of the renowned mask maker showed me the 20 or 30 masks on display in the house.  They are made of  bamboo frames covered with clay, brightly painted, and often with tufts of hair. One mask was of a god or demon with no head, just a face in his chest, with ears near the shoulders.  I saw one mask in the process of being made and that was interesting.  After seeing the masks, I sheltered from the rain under the gateway arch of the satra with two guys also on bikes.  One was a salesman with piles of fabric loaded onto his bike.  The other had several very small goats in bags, only their heads sticking out, fastened to his bike.

The rain stopped about 2 and I headed back towards Kamalabari, maybe five miles away.  The sun came out on the way.  I stopped to watch two girls at handlooms, with lots of little children around them.  At Kamalabari I turned north towards Garamur, passing a Sunday afternoon cricket match and stopping to watch a young woman waist deep in a pond and carrying one of those big, almost flat baskets while searching for something in the vegetation.  I got back to the guest house about 4:30, glad to get off that slow, rickety bike.  Taking a walk just before dark, I spotted bats flying off from trees just south of the guest house.

I heard no rain during the night, but there was rain the next morning.  The rain stopped, the sky cleared, and the sun came out.  From Majuli I wanted to head to Arunachal Pradesh, the only remaining state in the northeast for which foreigners need a permit to visit, allegedly because it sits on the border with Tibet and the Chinese claim it.  The Chinese did invade it in 1962, but then withdrew.  In fact, the permits are not too difficult to obtain and seem more of a subsidy to travel agents and bureaucrats. 

I had been given the phone number of a guy who could get me a permit, and had met others who had used him to get permits.  A permit needs at least two names on it (though the two persons need not travel together or even enter the state together), so sometimes it takes some time to get at least two people for a permit.  I had talked to the agent on the phone the night before and this morning had to email him details and wire him 4340 rupees ($70) for the 30 day permit.  I had trouble finding an internet café, but finally was able to send him the information.  The very small village State Bank of India office was packed, but I asked to see the manager, and no doubt because I was a foreigner I got expedited service and only had to spend about an hour getting the money wired. 

I went back to the guesthouse, had lunch in the village, and spent the afternoon on the veranda.  Late in the afternoon the agent called and said the starting date of the permit, which he could email me, would not be the next day or the day after, as he had promised me, but four days later, on April 10.  I should have taken it at that, but I was unhappy he had misled me and thought I could get a permit in the city of Tezpur on the way to Arunachal Pradesh, so I asked for my money back and he had the lodge manager, a friend of his, give me the 4340 rupees.  Frustrated, I took a short walk before dark, spotting macaques in clumps of bamboo and watching the bats take off at nightfall.  I should have stuck with that permit.  I wouldn't get to Arunachal Pradesh until April 13.