I just got back from another wonderful & totally enjoyable visit to Arunachal Pradesh. This remote islolated state at the north eastern tip of India has certainly become one of my favourite travel destitantions! On this visit I managed to venture a little deeper & visit the town of Ziro, which is home to the Apatani tribe. This picturesque, quite town certainly appears to be locked in the fragments of time – untouched & unspoilt.

  

Ziro is a 4 hour drive from the state capital Itanagar, although the road can only be called a road after the first 20 kilometres! Travelling in the monsoon months of Aug-Sept certainly is not the best thing, but it does give one an adventurous experience, skidding and bouncing your way through the muddy & slippery terrain. 

Around almost every corner were signs of landslides or huge puddles of mud, where vehicles would often get stuck & would need to struggle to get free. We were travelling in a 4 wheel drive, driven by an experienced driver & still had a some difficulty in making that trip. Nevertheless, we were very lucky that the roads had been cleared & no mud slides blocked our path.

  

Ziro, the district headquarters of Lower Suabsiri district is a few degrees colder than Itanagar. There is absolutely no internet connection! Mobile phone services are very limited to certain hot spots & BSNL was the only telephone operator that serviced a handful of locations.

We headed into the out skirts of Ziro, where the 6 main villages were scattered across the country side each only a kilometre or two away from one another. The houses were mainly built with bamboo and set on stilts that lift that house about a meter off the ground. Inside, the wooden floor and bamboo walls gave it a warm comfortable feel. It is hard not to notice the fire place in the middle of the room, cause it has a huge load of firewood suspended above it so it would be smoke dried over time.

  

The Apatanis grow rice in the paddy fields along with fish. These rice fields give the surroundings a calm look and feel that is really refreshing. A nice hot cup of tea is always readily offered to warm the deserving traveller. 

Face painting and piercing of the nose is a distinctive feature of the Apatanis – although it is not practised any more among the younger generation. As I went with some good friends, I managed to visit a few of their relatives who lived in the village. I  was also lucky enough to be able to relish some excellent home made food of a different kind. Fish cooked inside bamboo was one such dish. I also managed to taste a small selection of home brewed wines - both sweet & dry, made from a type of grain/barley that grew along the sides of the rice fields.

   

I’ve been invited to visit Arunachal Pradesh again during their festivals - January during 'Murung rituals', March during 'Myoko rituals' & from 4 to 7 July during the  'Dree Festival'.

I was in Itanagar – the state capital, during the 64th Independence celebrations, which was attended by the new Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister – Mr. Jarbom Gamlin. This was his first public appearance and thus was something a little special. Its worth mentioning, that late Mr. Dorjee Khandu ex-CM passed away in a helicopter crash a few months ago. In a previous blog article I mentioned how exciting it was to take a helicopter ride in Arunachal Pradesh, serene in all its beauty. We had travelled last year from Itanagar to Guwahati (in Assam). The CM’s copter had gone down near the Tawang area - the snow capped extreme West of the state.

Coincidently the Air India in-flight magazine that month featured an article exclusively about Ziro ! What are the chances of that! :)
I was rather surprised when the passenger next to me picked up the magazine and turned to that page. I was so tempted to tell him that I was returning from that place... but decided to let it pass. Ziro deserves its peace and quite. I have taken a piece of Ziro with me - but only in fond memories and photographs. 

You can download and view that article in the magazine from here.