I left Tawang on Tuesday 13th June to travel to Tezpur, but not before visiting the Ugyenling temple, the birthplace of the 6th Dalai Lama, and on the way a group of Monpa women in traditional dress allowed me to take a photograph of them. The mode of dress is so distinctive to the Monpa community, and a vivid contrast to more mainstream Indian clothing.
There were yet more fabulous views as we drove around. This north-western area of Arunachal Pradesh really captures the imagination, and although tourism is bound to increase over time, I hope it remains as unspoilt as it is at present.
I'd arranged a trip to a tea plantation on the outskirts of Tezpur in a couple of days time, and then later to visit Meghalaya and its famous root bridges.
The journey to Tezpur from Tawang by sumo shared taxi was scheduled to take around 12 hours, and we set off at 6.30am. Those long journeys by road are pretty exhausting, although there is a daily helicopter service that leaves Tawang at around 11am, and reaches the state capital, Itanagar, after about an hour. I had half a plan to take the helicopter ride, despite being a little concerned that the former Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh actually perished in one of these helicopter rides a few years ago. Despite the extra cost of the journey, the chance to save all that time on the road journey, as well as the time in recovering from the tiredness induced by it, seemed well worth it.
However, the weather intervened again, and heavy rain forced the helicopter trip to be cancelled. So there was no alternative to taking the sumo. The further we travelled, the more incessant became the rain. As the vehicle descended the slopes of the mountains, soil had been displaced by landslides, so that huge chunks had become loosened and then fallen to cover large areas of road. At other times, streams had burst their banks and we had to drive through a couple of feet of water. This happened on a few occasions until we reached a point where the military blocked off the road entirely. It turned out that a number of vehicles coming round a bend towards us had become stuck in the mud, and needed to be pulled clear using heavy equipment.
We waited there for abour 4 hours, and many vehicles turned back along the road we had travelled. Leaving the sumo on foot to see what was hapenning ahead of us, it was quite something to see the land literally slide away towards the road in a trickle, or then more substantially, under the immense volume of rainwater that had accumulated over so many hours. One of my fellow passengers, a captain in the Indian army, was on an urgent visit to meet the family of a soldier who had died quite suddenly, and the road maintenance authorities had sympathy for his plight and we were told to wait while most other vehicles departed. It made me appreciate how challenging it is to maintain the roads in this part of India, as Tawang and the neighbouring districts rely on it entirely for all supplies. There is also the military angle, in that it seem the Indian government feels that Arunachal Pradesh is vulnerable to Chinese incursion, hence the strong military presence in an effort to protect it.
Eventually the trapped vehicles were cleared, the road opened and we could progress further. But within about an hour, and driving very slowly due to the treacherous state of the roads and that night had descended, we were halted by a huge tree that had fallen across our path. Somebody located a rope, attached it to a lorry which reversed so that the tree snapped in half, and we just about managed to get past the fallen tree, all the while mindful that there were other trees on the cliff above that looked like they were about to fall. As the winds swelled and people shone their phone torch lights up towards the swaying, it was all quite unnerving.
We finally arrived in Tezpur just after midnight, about 6 hours later than planned. It was a huge relief to get away from the mountains, and a real insight into how dangerous those mountain roads can become.
After a couple of days, I had an overnight stay in a tea plantation that was like stepping back in time. Despite the driver I'd hired managing to get lost on the way to the tea plantation, when I arrived they had arranged for me to visit a tea estate that stood next to the factory that processed the tea. Arriving at the Nahorani tea estate, and watching a group of women plucking the leaves in the hot sun, with their baskets strapped to their backs, I was reminded of watching the rice cultivation a few days earlier. Both processes don't seem to have benefited much, if at all, from mechanisation over the years. Collecting all of that tea is hard physical labour.
In the tea factory I was shown around by one of the managers, who explained the process of how the tea is brought directly from being plucked and put into a set of troughs in a room adjacent to the main factory, where the humidity is regulated with the use of water sprinklers. Shortly afterwards the tea is transported on pulleys into the main body of the factory, where there is a long process of applying varying levels of pressure and temperature to the tea, and all of this is strictly monitored. I was surprised to find that some of this equipment, and other equipment used to filter out finer grades of tea, dates from the pre-Independence era! It was a real pity that i wasn't permitted to take photographs within the factory, as some of those machines were really quite fascinating. As each process took place, a small team of workers, generally male, transfers the tea from one set of machines to another. Finally the tea was placed in sacks, and much of it is sent to Guwahati, the state capital of Assam, where it is sold at auction.
At the end of the tour, I was shown the internal monitoring and rating of tea quality carried out by staff in notebooks, with marks out of 5 awarded, with external validation by tea tasters, who provide weekly reports. I did carry out some tea tasting, although it was hard to differentiate between the varieties, apart from those that were far too bitter.
After the tour, I returned to the place I was staying, where I was given a tour of the accommodation of the tea planters, which has been maintained over the years, after being established in 1864. There are around 4 bungalows, and a tour of the main one graphically illustrated the opulent lifestyle of the British Assam Tea Company who ran it all those years ago. In the afternoon there was a tour of the botanical garden, with a variety of plants and their medicinal properties displayed.
The following day I planned to spend a night in Shillong on the way to Cherrapunjee, home of the famous root bridges. I was advised that the best way to get there was to return to Tezpur, and then catch a bus to a little town called Jorabat where it would be relatively easy to get a shared taxi to Shillong. Despite my misgivings, the journey worked out pretty well, and I reached the accommodation I'd booked in Shillong by around 7pm, although the taxi took longer than I'd hoped, so there was ittle chance to look round Shillong.
The manager of the B & B was really helpful on advising me on Cherrapunjee, and I took a taxi to the place with a driver who also gave me valuable insight on where to stay, such that i cancelled the place I had booked to be somewhere more central to the town itself. Arriving in Cherrapunjee after delays caused by yet more landslides, we visited some local landmarks, including waterfalls such as Wahkaba and the Mawsmai limestone caves. However we weren't able to see the famous Seven Sisters waterfalls or the international boundary with Bangladesh due to heavy mist, which was a pity.
With the help of the taxi driver / guide, I found somewhere to stay in the town, and the following morning commenced my trek to Nongriat, the site of the living root bridges. It was probably a trek of around an hour to the point where you begin to descend about 3,500 steps to Nongriat and the root bridges, although a group of engineering graduates gave me a lift for the final stretch of the way.
There was a fair amount of rain about, and quite a bit of mist. Starting to descend down the steps to Nongriat from a place called Tirna, however, the clouds lifted and the lush green foliage came vividly into focus. The landscapes of Assam beyond the urban areas are extremely beautiful as I had seen in other places, such as around Kaziranga, but here in the forests of Meghalaya that are home to the indigenous Khasi people, it became yet more beguiling, with thick vegetation providing a high canopy, vivid colours and a smattering of wild flowers.
Eventually I reached a fork in the road, with the right one leading to the single root bridge. A few hundred steps later and I had arrived. It's a peculiar sight; at first glance it isn't apparent that it has been constructed by weaving the roots of different branches at all, but the closer you move towards it at either end, the more clearer it is that roots have been fashioned in this way. Yet even then, the growth of the tree roots seems to come from the middle as much as the base of the trees, which in itself seems to turn logic on its head. The trees are apparently a kind of rubber tree.
In addition to being entwined in such a way that the roots form a collective network that forms the bridges, it was interesting to see how they were woven at either end around large boulders to provide enhanced stability. Some of these bridges are apparently hundreds of years old, and betel nut trunks are used to help guide the path of the roots so that they can become entwined with roots from opposing trees. The roots not only provide a strong footing, but thicker roots appear as a kind of bannister, at waist level, to hold onto. Walking across the bridge it felt completely sturdy, and as the roots grow, the bridge becomes stronger over time. The waters flowing fast beneath added to the spectacle.
From here I walked back the way that I had come, and then descended quite a way further to reach the double root bridge. There were a couple of metal bridges to cross before reaching the double root bridge, but they seemed less stable, swaying considerably and could carry no more than three people at a time, but no such limits applied to the root bridges. The double root bridges are a fantastic construction, with one leading easily to the other, and the view of the watefall was lovely.
I found a homestay that was a few yards from the bridges, and I spent the night there. I took a dip in the waterfall, which felt so refreshing after all that walking, and had dinner with a group of travellers later that evening.
In hindsight it would have been great to spend more time in Nongriat, as there is much to explore there, including the famous Rainbow Falls that were about an hour's hike away. I thought about going there early next morning, but in the end I had a rough night's sleep (waterfalls are great to look at, but not so great to sleep next to!), and I had a flight from Guwahati to Bangkok via Kolkata the next morning at 7.30am, which meant climbing back up to Tirna, where I started the descent to Nongriat, going back to Shillong to collect the bulk of my stuff that I'd left there, and then catching a sumo taxi to Guwahati, from where I was going to catch a few hours sleep at a guesthouse near the airport before catching the early flight next day.
Unfortunately I didn't feel too well the next day, partly I think due to lack of sleep, but I also felt a bit nauseous so perhaps i'd been overdoing it. So I hired a guide to carry my stuff up to Tirna, which made getting there slightly easier, although it was still a really tough climb. To be honest it also meant that I got there a bit sooner, as the guide was keen to keep up a decent pace as he had a few errands to run when we got there.
I was relieved to get to the top, and my calves were pretty sore for a few days. I think some other tourists go down to Nongriat and climb up again on the same day, but that seems a bit pointless and wouldn't allow much time for looking around, and climbing up again without a night's rest seems to turn it into more into an assault course, which kind of defeats the object of going there in my eyes. You need a minimum of a single night's stay to take in the majesty of that extraordinary place.
Getting to Shillong did not take too long, but finding a sumo taxi from there to Guwahati took a very long time, especially as the driver waited around for a full complement of passengers. Hence I only reached the guesthouse, located near to the airport, at around midnight. It didn't help that the driver couldn't locate the guesthouse, situated down a narrow gully off te main road.
The next morning was a bit of a frantic race against time to check in and board the flight, which I made by the skin of my teeth. I will always recall the look of bemusement on the face of the woman at the reception as she rushed me through the check-in procedures! i wouldn't have made that flight otherwise.
The flight from Kolkata went pretty smoothly, although somehow I ended up being the last person to check in at the gate for that flight too, which felt like some kind of record. But what a wonderful visit, albeit far too short, to Meghalaya. I can see why trekkers spend a few days exploring the natural beauty of the place, apparently this is the only place in the world where you can find such root bridges, a living testimony to tribal culture and ingenuity. Truly memorable.
There were yet more fabulous views as we drove around. This north-western area of Arunachal Pradesh really captures the imagination, and although tourism is bound to increase over time, I hope it remains as unspoilt as it is at present.
 |
| Monpa women |
I'd arranged a trip to a tea plantation on the outskirts of Tezpur in a couple of days time, and then later to visit Meghalaya and its famous root bridges.
The journey to Tezpur from Tawang by sumo shared taxi was scheduled to take around 12 hours, and we set off at 6.30am. Those long journeys by road are pretty exhausting, although there is a daily helicopter service that leaves Tawang at around 11am, and reaches the state capital, Itanagar, after about an hour. I had half a plan to take the helicopter ride, despite being a little concerned that the former Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh actually perished in one of these helicopter rides a few years ago. Despite the extra cost of the journey, the chance to save all that time on the road journey, as well as the time in recovering from the tiredness induced by it, seemed well worth it.
However, the weather intervened again, and heavy rain forced the helicopter trip to be cancelled. So there was no alternative to taking the sumo. The further we travelled, the more incessant became the rain. As the vehicle descended the slopes of the mountains, soil had been displaced by landslides, so that huge chunks had become loosened and then fallen to cover large areas of road. At other times, streams had burst their banks and we had to drive through a couple of feet of water. This happened on a few occasions until we reached a point where the military blocked off the road entirely. It turned out that a number of vehicles coming round a bend towards us had become stuck in the mud, and needed to be pulled clear using heavy equipment.
We waited there for abour 4 hours, and many vehicles turned back along the road we had travelled. Leaving the sumo on foot to see what was hapenning ahead of us, it was quite something to see the land literally slide away towards the road in a trickle, or then more substantially, under the immense volume of rainwater that had accumulated over so many hours. One of my fellow passengers, a captain in the Indian army, was on an urgent visit to meet the family of a soldier who had died quite suddenly, and the road maintenance authorities had sympathy for his plight and we were told to wait while most other vehicles departed. It made me appreciate how challenging it is to maintain the roads in this part of India, as Tawang and the neighbouring districts rely on it entirely for all supplies. There is also the military angle, in that it seem the Indian government feels that Arunachal Pradesh is vulnerable to Chinese incursion, hence the strong military presence in an effort to protect it.
 |
| Landslide |
 |
| Clearing the road |
Eventually the trapped vehicles were cleared, the road opened and we could progress further. But within about an hour, and driving very slowly due to the treacherous state of the roads and that night had descended, we were halted by a huge tree that had fallen across our path. Somebody located a rope, attached it to a lorry which reversed so that the tree snapped in half, and we just about managed to get past the fallen tree, all the while mindful that there were other trees on the cliff above that looked like they were about to fall. As the winds swelled and people shone their phone torch lights up towards the swaying, it was all quite unnerving.
We finally arrived in Tezpur just after midnight, about 6 hours later than planned. It was a huge relief to get away from the mountains, and a real insight into how dangerous those mountain roads can become.
After a couple of days, I had an overnight stay in a tea plantation that was like stepping back in time. Despite the driver I'd hired managing to get lost on the way to the tea plantation, when I arrived they had arranged for me to visit a tea estate that stood next to the factory that processed the tea. Arriving at the Nahorani tea estate, and watching a group of women plucking the leaves in the hot sun, with their baskets strapped to their backs, I was reminded of watching the rice cultivation a few days earlier. Both processes don't seem to have benefited much, if at all, from mechanisation over the years. Collecting all of that tea is hard physical labour.
In the tea factory I was shown around by one of the managers, who explained the process of how the tea is brought directly from being plucked and put into a set of troughs in a room adjacent to the main factory, where the humidity is regulated with the use of water sprinklers. Shortly afterwards the tea is transported on pulleys into the main body of the factory, where there is a long process of applying varying levels of pressure and temperature to the tea, and all of this is strictly monitored. I was surprised to find that some of this equipment, and other equipment used to filter out finer grades of tea, dates from the pre-Independence era! It was a real pity that i wasn't permitted to take photographs within the factory, as some of those machines were really quite fascinating. As each process took place, a small team of workers, generally male, transfers the tea from one set of machines to another. Finally the tea was placed in sacks, and much of it is sent to Guwahati, the state capital of Assam, where it is sold at auction.
At the end of the tour, I was shown the internal monitoring and rating of tea quality carried out by staff in notebooks, with marks out of 5 awarded, with external validation by tea tasters, who provide weekly reports. I did carry out some tea tasting, although it was hard to differentiate between the varieties, apart from those that were far too bitter.
After the tour, I returned to the place I was staying, where I was given a tour of the accommodation of the tea planters, which has been maintained over the years, after being established in 1864. There are around 4 bungalows, and a tour of the main one graphically illustrated the opulent lifestyle of the British Assam Tea Company who ran it all those years ago. In the afternoon there was a tour of the botanical garden, with a variety of plants and their medicinal properties displayed.
The following day I planned to spend a night in Shillong on the way to Cherrapunjee, home of the famous root bridges. I was advised that the best way to get there was to return to Tezpur, and then catch a bus to a little town called Jorabat where it would be relatively easy to get a shared taxi to Shillong. Despite my misgivings, the journey worked out pretty well, and I reached the accommodation I'd booked in Shillong by around 7pm, although the taxi took longer than I'd hoped, so there was ittle chance to look round Shillong.
The manager of the B & B was really helpful on advising me on Cherrapunjee, and I took a taxi to the place with a driver who also gave me valuable insight on where to stay, such that i cancelled the place I had booked to be somewhere more central to the town itself. Arriving in Cherrapunjee after delays caused by yet more landslides, we visited some local landmarks, including waterfalls such as Wahkaba and the Mawsmai limestone caves. However we weren't able to see the famous Seven Sisters waterfalls or the international boundary with Bangladesh due to heavy mist, which was a pity.
 |
| Mawsmai limestone caves |
 |
| Wahkaba Falls |
With the help of the taxi driver / guide, I found somewhere to stay in the town, and the following morning commenced my trek to Nongriat, the site of the living root bridges. It was probably a trek of around an hour to the point where you begin to descend about 3,500 steps to Nongriat and the root bridges, although a group of engineering graduates gave me a lift for the final stretch of the way.
There was a fair amount of rain about, and quite a bit of mist. Starting to descend down the steps to Nongriat from a place called Tirna, however, the clouds lifted and the lush green foliage came vividly into focus. The landscapes of Assam beyond the urban areas are extremely beautiful as I had seen in other places, such as around Kaziranga, but here in the forests of Meghalaya that are home to the indigenous Khasi people, it became yet more beguiling, with thick vegetation providing a high canopy, vivid colours and a smattering of wild flowers.
 |
| Starting the descent to Nongriat village |
Eventually I reached a fork in the road, with the right one leading to the single root bridge. A few hundred steps later and I had arrived. It's a peculiar sight; at first glance it isn't apparent that it has been constructed by weaving the roots of different branches at all, but the closer you move towards it at either end, the more clearer it is that roots have been fashioned in this way. Yet even then, the growth of the tree roots seems to come from the middle as much as the base of the trees, which in itself seems to turn logic on its head. The trees are apparently a kind of rubber tree.
In addition to being entwined in such a way that the roots form a collective network that forms the bridges, it was interesting to see how they were woven at either end around large boulders to provide enhanced stability. Some of these bridges are apparently hundreds of years old, and betel nut trunks are used to help guide the path of the roots so that they can become entwined with roots from opposing trees. The roots not only provide a strong footing, but thicker roots appear as a kind of bannister, at waist level, to hold onto. Walking across the bridge it felt completely sturdy, and as the roots grow, the bridge becomes stronger over time. The waters flowing fast beneath added to the spectacle.
 |
| Single root bridge |
 |
| Roots wrapped round a boulder for support |
 |
| At one end of the single root bridge |
From here I walked back the way that I had come, and then descended quite a way further to reach the double root bridge. There were a couple of metal bridges to cross before reaching the double root bridge, but they seemed less stable, swaying considerably and could carry no more than three people at a time, but no such limits applied to the root bridges. The double root bridges are a fantastic construction, with one leading easily to the other, and the view of the watefall was lovely.
 |
| Metal bridge |
 |
| At one end of the double root bridge |
 |
| Double root bridge |
 |
| Waterfall at double root bridge |
I found a homestay that was a few yards from the bridges, and I spent the night there. I took a dip in the waterfall, which felt so refreshing after all that walking, and had dinner with a group of travellers later that evening.
In hindsight it would have been great to spend more time in Nongriat, as there is much to explore there, including the famous Rainbow Falls that were about an hour's hike away. I thought about going there early next morning, but in the end I had a rough night's sleep (waterfalls are great to look at, but not so great to sleep next to!), and I had a flight from Guwahati to Bangkok via Kolkata the next morning at 7.30am, which meant climbing back up to Tirna, where I started the descent to Nongriat, going back to Shillong to collect the bulk of my stuff that I'd left there, and then catching a sumo taxi to Guwahati, from where I was going to catch a few hours sleep at a guesthouse near the airport before catching the early flight next day.
Unfortunately I didn't feel too well the next day, partly I think due to lack of sleep, but I also felt a bit nauseous so perhaps i'd been overdoing it. So I hired a guide to carry my stuff up to Tirna, which made getting there slightly easier, although it was still a really tough climb. To be honest it also meant that I got there a bit sooner, as the guide was keen to keep up a decent pace as he had a few errands to run when we got there.
I was relieved to get to the top, and my calves were pretty sore for a few days. I think some other tourists go down to Nongriat and climb up again on the same day, but that seems a bit pointless and wouldn't allow much time for looking around, and climbing up again without a night's rest seems to turn it into more into an assault course, which kind of defeats the object of going there in my eyes. You need a minimum of a single night's stay to take in the majesty of that extraordinary place.
Getting to Shillong did not take too long, but finding a sumo taxi from there to Guwahati took a very long time, especially as the driver waited around for a full complement of passengers. Hence I only reached the guesthouse, located near to the airport, at around midnight. It didn't help that the driver couldn't locate the guesthouse, situated down a narrow gully off te main road.
The next morning was a bit of a frantic race against time to check in and board the flight, which I made by the skin of my teeth. I will always recall the look of bemusement on the face of the woman at the reception as she rushed me through the check-in procedures! i wouldn't have made that flight otherwise.
The flight from Kolkata went pretty smoothly, although somehow I ended up being the last person to check in at the gate for that flight too, which felt like some kind of record. But what a wonderful visit, albeit far too short, to Meghalaya. I can see why trekkers spend a few days exploring the natural beauty of the place, apparently this is the only place in the world where you can find such root bridges, a living testimony to tribal culture and ingenuity. Truly memorable.
