INDIA: MONKS, TRIBES & RHINOS V

Posted January 20, 2008

Now in Itanagar and there have been some positive developments. Yesterday and again today we have had a few meetings with our first choice operator in the region – comprising Komkar and his wife Aruna – and they have been very good on the whole. They are very experienced and come across as very competent. They have both been in Europe for some time and are also used to westerners.

They are also involved in projects to maintain the local culture and their general business practices come across as matching with what we hope to do too. Our planned itinerary they also felt was a good one, and they helped us to organise a jeep and driver for the next week to ten days to discover the loop of Ziro-Daporijo-Along, where we should encounter a whole array of tribes. There is not a lot to see in Itanagar but it is pleasant enough for a stop off and we found a very friendly new restaurant with a local owner who was particularly happy to see an Irishman in the region for some reason! Aruna and Komkar brought us there and they seem to know of good places. The food was excellent.

People here have been very friendly and welcoming though not a huge amount of English is spoken. The only negatives so far are that it seems accommodation in Arunachal is very basic, and costs are more than other parts of India and more than we had initially expected. We will figure out this more as we continue around the region.

Tomorrow we leave for Ziro, which is at a higher altitude, and from what everyone tells us is a “very cold place”! Ziro is where the Apatani tribe leave, a tribe characterised by tatoos and nose-plugs for the women. After talking to Aruna and Komkar we decided it was best to rent a jeep and driver so we could stop off at various tribal villages which would have been too difficult were we to try to do it by public transport. From here we will most likely have no internet or mobile coverage until we get back to Itanagar.

– Rahul

This blog is part of an Off-The-Beaten-Track Travel Diary. Click on the links below to navigate through this journey.