Recently, I joined four solo travellers in spending a week in Dibang Valley. We came there with the purpose of experiencing the valley closely with the locals. Rather than arriving with a packed checklist of sights and activities, we would live in the Idu Mishmi people’s houses, eat their food, walk through their farms, jungles and roads, hear their stories and spend time learning and introspecting.
While attempting to write this blog post beyond the first paragraph, I found that my words were failing me, and were unable to really capture the experiences I had, so I’m going to rely on some of the photos taken by me and my fellow travellers instead.
Note: I’ve not named specific places (villages, rivers, waterfalls, hills etc.) here to avoid geotagging.
On our way, we cut and consumed many freshly picked fruits. I thought this shot of pineapples we had by a river, looked particularly scenic.
Mithuns have an abundant love for salt (we sprinkled it across the wooden plank here.) As a member of the Idu Mishmi tribe, the number of mithuns you own is a proxy of your wealth, much like gold.
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The traditional fishing net. We laid out a bunch of these across a stream and among our catch the next day was four aquatic rats! These are rare to catch, and are considered a delicacy that’s specially consumed by the women of the tribe.
One of our many dinner spreads. We had a lot of “idu dhal”, eggs, king chilli, pumpkin, and setheka over the week.
Biker gangs’ stickers adorn the doors of this homestay in Roing, where we met Jibi Pulu (who we called “Naba Jibi”, which translates to “Father Jibi” in the Idu language) an environmentalist who’s currently leading the development of a community-conserved area nearby.
The insides of a couple of bamboo stems we cooked for dinner - fish that we caught earlier in the day, stuffed along with chinese coriander, cherry tomatoes and chilli oil.
The gaon bura’s wife makes handicraft bags and necklaces (called Anney), which she sometimes sells but mostly keeps for herself.
There are only 3 houses in this entire village, one of which we stayed in for a couple of nights. The house harboured a slightly dramatic dog named Enama or “black nose.” Here, you can see his displeasure at us trying to make friends with him.
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In one of the last villages in the northern border of Arunachal lies a waterfall with a spectacular hiking trail. The trail has been crafted by locals with intricacy and care.
The stunning view of the waterfall itself was probably the highlight of the hike.
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We were shown and taught how to make bamboo rafts, and it was a surprisingly simple process for how sturdy they are in the waters. They consist of bamboo stems laid in a v-shaped manner to cut through currents, and strips of cane to tie it all together.
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We spotted many beautiful birds and butterflies over the week. My favourite was the white capped redstart, a beautiful small bird with a red tail it copiously swished. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to click a photo of it so here’s a photo of a Taiwanese silkmoth we spotted instead.
The beach in the campsite we stayed in for a couple of nights, that quickly became the setting for nightly gatherings around the fire, barbequing and verbal games like story-building.
A traditional Idu house, made almost entirely of bamboo, containing a fireplace in the centre and sometimes hunting trophies displayed on one of the walls. Spare bamboo and food to smoke is laid on the stands above the fireplace.
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While hiking through a forest, many random tidbits of knowledge about forests were shared between us, among other things - that bamboo flowers are a bad omen and the presence of ferns is the sign of a healthy forest.
There is only one man in Dibang who knows how to make “achiproo”, wide mugs made entirely of bamboo. In this photo, we’re sitting by him at his workplace. He’s been experimenting with some new designs for the mugs.
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We drank a hearty amount of local rice wine almost every night. This is the home in which we also met Dr. Sahil Nijhawan, who is known for discovering a thriving tiger population in Dibang Valley through his PhD research project, conserved purely through strong beliefs in folklore (the Idu Mishmi people consider the tiger the older brother of the human.)
A quiet drive back from Anini to Roing on the last day of the trip, was sprinkled with beautiful sunset viewpoints.