My friend had just finished telling me about her wonderful trip to Singapore. As she waxed eloquent about the many charms of Orchard Road, the wonders of the Night Safari at the Zoo, the Jurong Bird Park, the Botanic Gardens and the other hundreds of attractions of the Lion City, we lost our sense of time and before long, it was time for me to pick my son from his classes.
It was then that she asked me about my holiday, “How about Arunachal Pradesh? What are your favourite things from there?” I thought it over and came up with the most unsatisfactory response. “Apart from the chill in the air and the warmth of the people? Lambs, horses, yaks, rolling meadows, hillsides dusted with snow and frozen lakes.”
With that I picked my bag, told her that it was time for me to leave and promised her I would soon get back with all the details of my holiday. And so here I am, making good my promise.
Close your eyes for a moment and imagine yourself standing with me by a lake. It is frozen and snowed over, blinding in its brilliance and yet you cannot keep your eyes away, since in the middle of the lake lean, leafless tree trunks shoot out, giving it the appearance of a giant pin cushion. A couple of glittery-green headed mallard ducks are waddling on the lake unmindful of our presence while the ageless and fearsome mountains with snow-dusted firs, birches and junipers stand all around watching us while rearing for the sapphire skies as the skies pour golden sunshine on everything we can see. The only sound is that of the wind and Tibetan flags fluttering in the wind. This is Sungetsar Lake, difficult to get to, the cold biting through your clothing, but every bit as beautiful as the journey to the Lake is dreadful and the cold awful.
Now, come with me to a sheep farm. Set in rolling plains covered with heather at some places, and grass at others, a row of huts standing at the very edge, and beyond them the conifers on the mountainside, and even beyond them the blue mountains. At first, as the Scorpio rolls in inside the massive gates, there is not a soul to be seen even though it is almost flat and tree-less all around. So, we imagine that perhaps we have come to the wrong place. Then a lady beckons to us and asks in Hindi if we were there for the sheep, and when I confirm, she informs us that the sheep have gone off for the day to graze in the forest, and will come back only in the evening. Just as we are about to turn and leave, she adds, “But the lambs are here, the very young suckling lambs with their mothers”, and she gives us the directions to the lambs.
We walk up ahead and there they are, black and white and grey, frolicking amongst themselves in the yellowed heather. They do not seem bothered by us as we approach them, but, they aren’t as unmindful as they appear, for as we approach them they scamper away. In the process a few lose sight of their mothers for an instant or two and rend the skies with their pitiful calls till the mother comes and shushes them and has them follow her away from us. We laugh and run behind them, trying to catch up, but soon, its not the lambs we are trying to catch up with, but our breaths. This is the sheep farm at Sangti Valley in Dirang.
Sit by me in the car as we drive down the narrow meandering hilly roads lined on both sides by evergreen conifers, when suddenly we stop by a maple tree that’s been set ablaze, by autumn. Its leaves are in all shades of inferno, red, orange and yellow. We stop, not just to look, but to catch our breath, because it is breath-taking, this flame-coloured tree in a green forest. And while we have stopped, a couple of wild horses, their coats shiny brown, have suddenly appeared from over the crag and walked up from the ridge below with such sure footing that we are forced to lean and check if there are steps cut into the hills there, (no there aren’t) and step back battling vertigo. They seem so bold, we take a hesitant step forward to see if they tolerate being photographed. Since they do not flinch, we fish out our phones, and off they go. We follow them, on foot, down the road, brandishing our phone, and they have moved on again. If we are relentless, we can follow them all the way up to the top of the mountain, but since I am not particularly fit, we give up in a mile or so and wait for the car to pick us up. This is not one place, this is several places, along the roads, all over Arunachal Pradesh.
Have you been to a yak farm? Call it a yak shed if you will, yaks and cows are the same family after all. Have you? If you haven’t, let me lift the curtains on Nyukmadung Yak Farm. A mere 11 km from the NH 13, and yet, the treacherous roads go on endlessly, climbing up the mountain through menacing forests, where it is pitch dark on a cloudy day, and no sound except the humming of the woods. Long after you have resigned to the thoughts of never seeing the yak farm, or even seeing another human being, 3 kids, the eldest not more than 10, emerge from the woods, laughing and talking. They amble up to your car and point you in the direction of the yak farm, and then, they are off. We sit in the backseat, stunned by their child-like joie de vivre, so out of place in the middle of the woods, and their quiet confidence, that shocks city mums like us, who whisper the mantra “stranger danger” to kids, everytime they leave the house. Why don’t the mothers here do the same? Maybe they saw my little boy in the car and felt assured enough to approach? “Even if there is a child sitting in the car, DO NOT approach a vehicle, and if the vehicle approaches you…?” we leave the line unfinished for the kids to chime in with, “Run away and shout for help”, glad to have converted our morning excursion into a moral science lesson and then, just like that, we have entered Nyukmadung Yak Farm.
About 50 large, shaggy, dark-haired, beasts with beady eyes and scythe-like horns stop whatever it is they are doing and stare at us. There is a waist high fence all around the farm, but it looks rather fragile before the hulks inside. However, these are cows after all, rather large and ominous looking, but cows, nonetheless. So, we venture closer. Meanwhile they have lost interest in us and have gone back to whatever it is they were doing, save one, a calf, whom curiosity has got the better of. With a headful of shaggy hair, covering all of one eye and most of the other, he comes right up to the fence, putting his nose right through the fence to be petted. As we are about to pet its cold wet nose, the mother rears her head and comes and stands right behind him. Ahhh, Stranger Danger! Mothers, they form a species all by themselves, cutting across regions, ages, species. Though, we beat a hasty retreat, we do take away with us a lasting picture of the calf, the “Dennis the Menace” of yaks.
Of course, apart from all of this, there is the food too. From the oranges, hanging like large bright Christmas lights on the trees, their juices running cold and sweet; to the smelly Tibetan cheese, chhurpa, which our hosts at Tawang tried their best to dissuade me from having (it is an acquired taste, which, they guessed rightly, I was yet to acquire); and the hot meals that appeared magically on a cold and cloudy afternoon at the roadside Ama’s restaurant on our way to Bomdila, carried by a bunch of lively kids, who, in between serving us, played with their dogs and washed dishes in ice-cold water, all with the same ease and joy. All of it so exquisitely delicious, perhaps it was the organic produce or perhaps the dollops of love that came with the food!
Not all of the memories were happy too, like the War Memorials all over West Kameng, which are a grim reminder of the lives lost in the delusory belief that borders define a nation. With the white chortens set in sombre settings, as others glow with the quiet pride of “Indian-ness” I cannot help but think of the old parents, widowed wives and orphaned children, and wonder what happened to them afterwards, and if we, as a nation, failed them, and the so many others before and since then….
But all that for another day. Today is only about the nice and the wonderful, the playful lambs, the wild horses, the curious yaks, the frozen lakes and a flame coloured tree.
Not all of the memories were happy too, like the War Memorials all over West Kameng, which are a grim reminder of the lives lost in the delusory belief that borders define a nation. With the white chortens set in sombre settings, as others glow with the quiet pride of “Indian-ness” I cannot help but think of the old parents, widowed wives and orphaned children, and wonder what happened to them afterwards, and if we, as a nation, failed them, and the so many others before and since them….
