Culturally magical and scenically spectacular, a mountain-hopping journey to Tawang’s ‘little Tibet’ is one of the northeast’s greatest attractions. Ideally budget at least five days’ return from Guwahati (or Tezpur) breaking the journey each way at Dirang or less interesting Bomdila. Consider stopping at Nameri’s wonderful Eco-Camp, too. Be prepared for intense cold in winter.
Category: Northeast States
On the route to Arunachal Pradesh, Upper Assam is a sweet spot to sip tea in a colonial mansion or to visit tribal villages.
Tripura is culturally and politically fascinating, and the state’s royal palaces and temples now draw a growing flow of domestic tourists from Kolkata. However, if you’re expecting the exotic grandeur of Rajasthani castles, Tripura might seem a long detour for relatively little.
Tezpur is probably Assam’s most attractive city thanks to beautifully kept parks, attractive lakes and the enchanting views of the mighty Brahmaputra River as it boldly caresses the town’s central underbelly. Internet access is available at Softec Point (NB Rd; per hr Rs 20; 9am-10pm), 250m north of the Baliram Building restaurants.
From 1874 until 1972, this sprawling hill station was the capital of British Assam. Since Independence it has developed into a fairly typical modern Indian town, but it still retains elements of charm and the air is refreshingly cool, if you don’t mind a good chance of rain.
Nestled before a curtain of luxuriantly forested foothills, Pasighat holds the Minyong-Adi tribe’s Solung Festival (1–5 September), while Adi Banekebang (2104075; [email protected]) publishes Adi books and is making a movie about Adi history. Sleep at friendly, central Hotel Oman (2224464; s/d Rs 300/450) or plusher Hotel Aane (2223333; tw/d Rs 600/1000, d with AC Rs 1500), which has hot showers and an appealing rooftop terrace.
Northwestern Assam is paradise for wildlife lovers, with a range of national parks. The most famous by far is Kaziranga, home of the world’s best rhinoceros-spotting safaris.
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Northeast States India Travel
India’s 1947 partition left the northeastern states dangling like a crooked cartographic handle, way out on the edge of the national map and consciousness. Yet the great, flat Brahmaputra valley was traditionally a Vedic heartland and backdrop to several Krishna tales. And Assam’s beautiful tea plantations remain India’s most productive. In contrast, most of the mountainous surrounding states are home to a fascinatingly fragmented jigsaw of ‘tribal’ peoples. Cultures and facial features there have more in common with Burma and Tibet than with mainstream India. Arunachal Pradesh offers an especially phenomenal patchwork of hill tribes amid seemingly endless mountain ranges. These are mostly forested but crest in a series of gorgeous Himalayan ridges dotted with colourful Tibetan-Buddhist monasteries, including India’s largest at wonderful Tawang.
The Naga peoples originated in Southeast Asia and are distributed all along the India/Myanmar border. However, in Nagaland they form a majority everywhere except Dimapur. For centuries some 20 headhunting Naga tribes valiantly fought off any intruders. In between they kept busy by fighting each other and developing mutually unintelligible languages. Today inter-tribe communication uses a ‘neutral’ lingua franca called Nagamese (a sort of market Assamese). Major Naga groups include the developed Angami and Rengma of Kohima district, the Lotha of Wokha district (locally famed for their cooking) and the Konyak of Mon district, whose villages have the most striking traditional architecture. For festivals, Naga women wear a hand-woven shawl that’s distinctive for each subtribe, while the men dust off their old warrior wear, loin cloth and all.
Seen from the sky, Mizoram seems to have been ploughed by a forgetful god who left the deep north-south furrows with a green fuzz of bamboo. Mizoram is tidy and almost entirely Christian. You’ll see very few Indian faces amongst the local Thai-Chinese style features. People are surreally but uninvasively friendly. Don’t be surprised if you’re warmly thanked by total strangers for bothering to visit their state.