Land of the Dawn-lit Mountains

by Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent

  Sitting on a motorbike for six weeks isn’t the ideal training for a walk in Pemako, and the next morning my tired, clumsy legs felt like they’d been filled with concrete. But we had a long way to walk that day, to Tuting, almost twenty miles to the west. From Paynigem’s ridge we could just make out the town’s distant roofs glinting beneath the white wall of the Tibetan frontier. It looked a very long way to walk by sunset, I thought, lacing up my boots. But if Dorje, a sexagenarian survivor of heart surgery, could make it, then so jolly well could I.

  We set off at a lick and, by 10 a.m., we’d wound down a knee-jarring 800 metres and crossed the roaring river on a hanging bridge that was more air than anything else. Most of the slats had rotted away and I inched across, stepping carefully on the metal cables, my stiff legs pummelled to jelly by the punishing descent. On the far side we met an Idu family trotting the other way, their heads bowed under loaded bamboo baskets. A boy of about eight jogged at their heels, letting out a startled yelp when he saw me. If I thought we had a long way to walk today, it was nothing compared to them: as they dashed past they said they were going to the last village in the valley, a sixty-mile journey.

  ‘It nothing for us mountain people,’ said Dorje. ‘I went on my first two-week pilgrimage to Padma Shri when I eight. My parents say no, so I run away with a lama. I had no shoes and we sleep in jungle.’

  It was midday when we sat under the branches of a mountain ash to eat trakzen and omelette for lunch. Beside us the river thundered around a boulder-strewn bend between forest that pressed against the water’s edge like crowds jostling for a riverside seat. It was a beautiful spot. But black swarms of dam dum flies put paid to any ideas of a restorative snooze under the whispering boughs. We tucked our trousers into our socks and wrapped our jackets around our heads, but there was no stopping the determined little blighters. After twenty minutes they’d doubled the mass of red, itching, oozing bites on my hands, neck and ankles. It was astonishing that something so miniscule could produce such a maddening bite.

  Afterwards we swung along a flat footpath beside the river, through rice paddies dotted with stilted grain stores. It was hot now, and we strode along on tired legs with our umbrellas up for shade. Suspecting I already knew the answer, I gently asked Dorje why we hadn’t taken this route on the way. He’d been worried about his heart, he admitted, and when the tractor appeared he’d jumped at the chance of a lift. I wasn’t cross; things happen for a reason. If we hadn’t taken the tractor I wouldn’t have experienced the impact of the new road to the same extent. Looking at the Dorje that walked through the sunlit paddy now, he seemed years younger than the man who’d climbed aboard that tractor only a week ago. Perhaps the Rinpoche was right – maybe Pemako really could make old men young again.

  In a forest clearing a few miles outside Tuting we came to Garuda Rock, a grey, car-sized monolith with an uncanny resemblance to an eagle with outstretched wings. Garuda, if you remember, was the name of the sacred eagle ridden to Mount Kailash by Vishnu in the story of the goddess Sati. Believed to cure pain and illness, it was draped in white khatas and surrounded by offerings of biscuits, alcohol and oranges. Around it the clearing was thick with prayer flags.

  ‘It used to have beak,’ said Dorje, muttering a mantra as he walked around it. ‘But long time ago some Adi hear it make a noise like eagle and they very afraid. They come here and break beak off. When they do this, big white bird appear from rock and fly into jungle. Soon after, most of Adi village die from dysentery.’

  When we reached the bridge at Tuting we found that the same sudden storm that had struck Tashigong after the puja had wreaked havoc here, destroying much of the hanging bridge and ripping off a number of roofs. Now the bridge swarmed with Adi, cutting and fitting new slats and lashing them on with strips of cane. We stepped over men and gaps, our feet on the steel cables, the peacock-green waters of the Siang whorling below. Soon afterwards we flopped down on the veranda of Dorje’s house, jubilant, panting, soaked in sweat. Dorje removed his boots to reveal shredded socks and blackened, blistered toes. Kabsang did the same, then pulled a bottle of chang out of his rucksack and took several large gulps.

  ‘Painkiller,’ he gasped, grinning as he handed me the bottle.

  Excellent idea, I thought, downing some myself. I couldn’t have walked a step further.

  Kabsang was staying in Tuting so, the next day, Dorje and I travelled south without him, roaring down the mountains in another juddering disco bus. I’d felt a lump in my throat hugging Kabsang goodbye, but it was time to leave Pemako, time for the next chapter. Numbed by the usual cocktail of jolting and ear-perforating Hindi pop, I looked pensively out of the window on what I’d come to know as a typical Arunachal day. Clouds drifted through the valleys like smoke and clung to the dark shoulders of the mountains, casting their gossamer veils around the slopes with a wraithlike possessiveness. I imagined them as shape-shifting dakinis, masking the secrets of those unknown forests from prying mortal eyes. Never the same for more than a second, it was a view you could gaze at forever and not become bored.

  Time plays tricks when you travel. It slows and thickens, like a river turning to treacle. Rich with new experiences, vistas, people and insights, my time in Pemako had felt like a month. It was almost impossible to imagine that we’d roared up this road only nine days before. So much had happened since then. There’d been no witches, or poisoning cults, or fanged beasts, or vipers, or demons, or cannibals armed with poison darts. Nor had I found the key to eternal life, a portal to another dimension or plants that magically propelled me into the stratosphere. But then again, I’m not a naked, dreadlocked Tibetan mystic who’s spent decades meditating alone in a Himalayan cave, guided by visions of a tiger-riding Tantric sorcerer. I might know my utkatasana from my trikonasana, and do the occasional twenty-minute meditation with Andy on Headspace but, well, it’s not quite the same.

  What I did find, though, was a breathtakingly beautiful, remote valley inhabited by people of exceptional jollity and occasionally astonishing youthfulness. I’d met reincarnated lamas, heard wondrous stories and spent numerous happy nights around glowing fires. And I’d been fortunate to travel in the company of two marvellous people. Dorje, the king, had in many ways remained an enigma, as hard to fathom as the mysteries of Pemako itself. A man of contradictory nature, he was at once childlike and wise; a lama and a politician; intense yet light-hearted; of this world yet drifting in and out of it; affectionate and aloof.

  Just before we said goodbye the following morning he told me he’d move to Tashigong soon, to go on near-permanent retreat in his father’s old hut in the forest.

  ‘I’m tired of samsara,’ he’d sighed. ‘Inside, outside, middle side. I need to relax.’

  How lucky I’d been to find him and Kabsang, to reach Pemako, to experience the place before the road was completed. My time there had been everything I’d hoped for, and more.

  *

  I’m sitting on a chair, at a desk, in a hotel with sheets, towels (white, medium fluffy), hot water and REAL GIN. So excited was I by all this when I arrived last night that I’m having a day off to rest, wash my fetid belongings and wallow in gin.

  So read my diary entry from Daporijo, the headquarters of the Upper Subansiri district, three days later.

  Reunited with my Hero, it had been a long two-day ride down from Yingkiong, via Along, following the spiralling descent of the Siang through a landscape that eased from a sharp undulance of hills to gently rolling hummocks. By the time I dragged my luggage into the pristine reception of the Singik Hotel in Daporijo, I was dog-tired and in dire need of a wash. Catching sight of myself in a mirror, I hardly recognized the thing that stared back at me. Half-human, half-hobbit, it had wild, strawlike hair forming dreadlocks at the back, a face smeared with dust and oil, black creases of grime encircling its neck, and stinking, mud-caked clothes. The shower water (my first hot shower since Kaziranga) went an unmentionable shade of brown, the white towels would never be the
same again, and I gingerly handed a reeking bag of laundry to the set of teeth on reception. There was of course a man attached to these teeth – a young Assamese with a permanently startled expression. But his teeth were so prominent it was hard to see beyond them. They stuck out like bowled wickets, exactly like a set one might buy in a joke shop. How the poor boy was ever going to kiss anyone was a mystery.

  The only disappointment was the gin. Sitting down for supper, my gaze wandered lovingly across the alluring shelves of bottles behind the bar. They promised a wildly decadent night of gin and tonics sipped from long, cool glasses fizzing with ice and fresh lemon. How I’d looked forward to this moment.

  The barman walked over to take my order. ‘A gin and tonic please.’

  He looked at me blankly. ‘Tonic?’ he repeated uncertainly.

  Thinking this to be a simple matter of a barman who’d never made a gin and tonic before, I offered (perhaps a little eagerly) to come and make it myself. But a search behind the bar revealed a far more critical situation. There was no tonic. Not a whiff of it. Instead I had to make do with gin and soda water; a poor, but drinkable, substitute.

  My impromptu rest couldn’t have fallen on a better day. It was Holi, the Hindu festival of colours – a riotous celebration that marks the arrival of spring and the triumph of good over evil. For two days India turns into a joyous orgy of colour, its cities, towns and villages thronged with merry revellers armed with bags of multi-coloured powder. It’s perfectly acceptable to smother a stranger’s face in yellow powder, pump them with a water pistol and smear their cheeks pink. Men, women, children, rich, poor – everyone is fair game. Lubricated by copious amounts of bhang, an edible cannabis preparation, and booze, it’s like playschool with intoxicants. Holi was my idea of a good day out.

  Holi isn’t celebrated by the tribal people of Arunachal Pradesh, but there were enough Hindus living among the Galo, Tagin and Nyishi population of Daporijo to make it an event. Most of the shops were shuttered and the streets were staggering with drunks, their faces and clothes splodged in a messy kaleidoscope of powder. I spotted a colour-smeared rabble of about thirty men sitting around a table inside the Border Roads Organisation compound, their fat bottoms overflowing the edges of white plastic chairs. Empty bottles of whisky lay like fallen skittles between them.

  Excitable shouts of ‘Madam! Madam! Please come! Please come!’ erupted from them as I walked past.

  I looked at the green moustaches, powder-splatted turbans, ruined shirts, blue foreheads, and thought, Why not?

  ‘Happy Holi!’ they yelled in a fug of boozy breath, eager hands rubbing my face with green, yellow and pink powder. It flurried around me, trickling off the end of my nose and settling on my clothes and camera. A chair was pulled up, a glass of whisky thrust into my hand and the usual round of questions flung at me in rapid succession.

  ‘What is your good name?’

  ‘What is your country?’

  ‘Where is your group?’

  ‘Where is your husband?’

  At the hotel, I lied.

  A wall of wobbling heads and smartphones popped up around me. ‘One click, Madam?’

  More hands smeared green powder on my cheeks. Sweaty, moustachioed faces loomed close. Arms slid around my shoulders. Men from Bihar, Assam, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab took it in turns to grin triumphantly at my side. A toast was made in my honour.

  Sensing the alcohol might loosen the odd wandering hand, I left a while later, happily returning to the hotel smeared in a messy array of colours.

  ‘Happy Holi!’ shouted passers-by, bounding over to proffer a hand and ask my good country. When I stopped to take a selfie, a drunk, shrivelled old Tagin appeared behind me and pressed his nose against the lens, as if he’d never before seen such a contraption.

  While I enjoyed a Holi-day it seemed only fair that my Hero have some attention too. It had been spluttering on the ride down from Yingkiong and the waterlogged horn had now given up the ghost completely. I wasn’t in the mood for mechanics, so readily handed the keys to a lanky, enthusiastic teenage porter at the hotel when he offered to help, watching as he sprang onto the Hero and careered off to the local mechanic, my ‘Be nice to my bike!’ falling on absent ears. Feeling like a duchess, I retired to my room to sit on my chair, at my desk, and write. But I was disturbed five minutes later by a knock on the door. It was the porter, wide-eyed with urgency and panting slightly.

  ‘Madam. I need one hundred and fifty rupees for oil change.’ I handed over the notes and, with a brisk head-wobble, he was off, dashing down the corridor like a terrier after a ball.

  Five minutes later there was another rapid knock at the door.

  ‘Madam, bike need new horn. Need extra four hundred and fifty rupees.’ I dug around in my pockets for a 500-rupee note, passing it to him without question.

  He returned fifteen minutes later, breathing heavily and flushed with success. As evidence of his good-doings he held up the ruins of the old horn and handed me the bill, then off he galloped, happily pocketing his tip. Who’s to say I wasn’t ever so slightly had by him, that I was too trusting. But if he had diddled me, it was to the tune of no more than two English pounds, and I admired his cunning and entrepreneurial spirit.

  When I checked the bike afterwards I found that the new horn had the pitch and tone of a startled guinea pig. My poor Hero. But in India any horn was better than nothing.

  I hadn’t come across any tourists since Kaziranga, but that evening, as I ate rice and vegetable curry in the empty white dining room, a minibus disgorged a noisy Italian tour group into reception. Grey-haired, mottle-skinned and chattering, they swarmed around poor Teeth in a sea of functional clothing, pressing him with passports and questions. One of them, I noticed, had lips like Lola Ferrari, grossly swollen from collagen injections. Compared to the people with whom I’d spent the last few months, they appeared another species entirely, and their presence gave me a sinking feeling that I’d left Arunachal’s Wild East behind me.

  A few minutes later, a harassed-looking Teeth hurried through the dining-room door and stopped beside my table, addressing me with all the whispering urgency of a presidential aide in a nuclear crisis.

  ‘Madam, we must make adjustment to your room. We must remove one bag.’

  ‘Which bag?’ I replied quizzically, wondering which of my bags had so offended the staff, or if I’d exceeded some small-print bag quota.

  He shook his head and corrected himself. ‘Sorry, Madam. One bed.’

  A troupe of six staff followed me up the stairs, and I watched as they disassembled one of the twin beds and dragged it down the corridor to an Italian’s room. Escaping to the quiet of my single-bedded room after dinner, I slipped between the sheets with a tumbler of Jura. At the cost of five pounds from the hotel bar, it was worth every sip.

  A crowd gathered around the bike to watch me pack after breakfast, hands behind their backs, necks craning for a closer look.

  ‘How does your husband allow you to roam around like this?’ asked a middle-aged Assamese man as I battled with a bungee.

  ‘It’s very dangerous to travel alone here, you know,’ he added, sucking his teeth. ‘Arunachal is full of outsiders.’

  Being an outsider himself, I wasn’t sure what he meant by this, but by now I’d learnt to largely ignore people’s warnings and negativity, seeing them as more a reflection of their own fears than anything else. It was clear, though, that a lot of men in India were unsettled by the idea of a woman travelling alone, as if the natural order of things had been unlawfully rearranged. Women were for cooking, cleaning and having sons, not for gallivanting around the jungle alone on a motorbike.

  Ignoring his naysayings, I rode out of Daporijo, its patchwork of corrugated roofs and the idle, inky waters of the Subansiri falling away as I climbed back into the hills. It was a perfect day for riding, and I buzzed west under a flawless sky on a narrow tarmac road that snaked around the shoulders of shining, forested hills. They press
ed against the road in a tangle of greenery – ferns, palms, bamboo, wild cardamom, thorny lianas and feathery tufts of pampas grass – and the warm air hitting my face carried with it the intoxicating scent of herbs, pines and flowering frangipani. Small scarlet-bottomed birds skipped through the air ahead of me. Pairs of kites wheeled overhead. Fantastic, saucer-sized emerald green and turquoise butterflies danced around a waterfall where I stopped to fill my water bottle. A snake as black and shiny as polished onyx slithered across the hot tarmac. The first rhododendrons dotted the forests red. And as far as I could see the hills bubbled away to the distant horizon, a roiling ocean of wilderness, fading from green to blue to grey as they merged with the adamantine sky. It was as if nature, like a strutting male peacock, was showing off its spring wares. In the villages chickens clucked across the road trailed by a fluffy wake of chicks, reminding me that today was Easter Friday. Hymns and Easter eggs couldn’t have felt further away. I swung happily around numberless corners, beeping my guinea pig horn, a rising sense of anticipation as to what lay ahead. For somewhere, hidden among those hills ahead of me, was the fabled Apatani Valley.

  PART THREE

  UP AND OVER

  16

  EASTER IN THE HIDDEN LAND

  In the chaos of the Great War and the intervening decades, China’s 1914 rebuttal of the McMahon Line had all but been forgotten. As far as the British were concerned the matter was settled and the mountainous, tribal lands that lay between Tibet and the Brahmaputra were unquestionably pink. But the issue resurfaced in 1943 when the Chinese produced maps that claimed the territory as theirs; awkward timing, given the Allies were currently spending billions propping up Chiang Kai-shek against the encircling Japanese. Afraid of risking this valuable East Asian alliance, the British quietly dispatched an army of surveyors, anthropologists and Political Officers into ‘The Excluded Areas of the Province of Assam’, north of the Brahmaputra. Their aim was to map the frontier zones and ‘make India’s right to the . . . boundary very clear indeed’. If we couldn’t fight the Chinese with gun and sword, we’d fight them with compass, pen and quadrant instead.