Seat of Our Pants » Arunachal Pradesh

Personal Space Revisited

Jaime — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:49:32 +0000

It was ten days ago that I reveled in Martin’s encounter with a cuddly Indian man. I laughed. I thoroughly enjoyed his awkward half-smile, half-grimace when it was happening. I made fun of him for days.

Well, karma is a b-tch. I just spent our two hours of our bus ride from Miao in Arunachal Pradesh to Tinsukia in Assam with this grease-ball on my shoulder.

I believe that makes us even. Hear that, universe! Personal space is now officially reinstated.

Personal Space – A Relative Term, Really Personal space means one thing to us and something all...
Getting Into Arunachal Pradesh Traveling out here sure has its quirks and oddities. Like...
Arunachal Permit Impasse View Larger Map Our current travel plan has...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Arunachal’s Tibetan Village

Martin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:06:14 +0000

This is a sight you don’t see every day: a Tibetan settlement, complete with gompas and prayer flags, transplanted onto the sweaty plains of eastern Arunachal Pradesh.

The village has been around since 1976. It was originally set up as a refugee camp for people that fled the madness that was the Cultural Revolution in Chinese-ruled Tibet.

Nowadays the refugees are pretty much settled into their new location. They are focused on building a life for themselves in this far-flung corner of the world – odd as it may seem: a proud high-altitude mountain culture 30 meters above sea level.

How to Get an Arunachal Pradesh Permit in Guwahati How to receive a travel permit for Arunachal Pradesh trough...
Tawang Valley India is a large enough country to have corners that...
Getting Into Arunachal Pradesh Traveling out here sure has its quirks and oddities. Like...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Lake Disappointment

Martin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:53:58 +0000

Much to our disappointment, we didn’t make it to the Lake of No Return. Here’s Jaime explaining why. (Above: the check point where we were turned back by the Assam Rifles).

Inle Lake – One of Myanmar’s Big Four Tourism in Myanmar tends to focus on the Big Four...
Kalaw to Inle Lake Trek in Photos Martin already gave a fantastic breakdown of our trek from...
Getting Into Arunachal Pradesh Traveling out here sure has its quirks and oddities. Like...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Getting Into Arunachal Pradesh

Martin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:49:35 +0000

Traveling out here sure has its quirks and oddities. Like the other day when we tried to cross into Arunachal Pradesh from Assam. To the horror of the border guards, we attempted to do this on a public bus. This could simply not be permitted: nay, we had to have our own vehicle. Unlike the usual foreigner out here (mostly oil men and missionaries), we could only afford a scrappy little auto rickshaw for the last 25 kilometers to Miao.

Bump-eee.

How to Get an Arunachal Pradesh Permit in Guwahati How to receive a travel permit for Arunachal Pradesh trough...
Not Buying a Hand Knotted Carpet – Regret No. 5,673 Carpets are a weak point for me (as seen here...
Arunachal Permit Impasse View Larger Map Our current travel plan has...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Not Buying a Hand Knotted Carpet – Regret No. 5,673

Jaime — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:25:48 +0000

Carpets are a weak point for me (as seen here and here). It’s not always been that way. Maybe it happened after I hit 30, maybe I just miss having a home to decorate. Either way, I can’t stop imagining our future home filled with beautiful carpets.

That being said, we stopped by the random Tibetan settlement just outside Miao to check out their handicrafts center. As usual, our timing was impeccable. It was a Sunday and everything within a 1,000 kilometer radius was closed. But we were there and figured we might just get lucky. And, lucky we were. A really nice guy let us into the carpet weaving section of the village.

Tibetan carpet factory in Miao, India

Wow, wow, wow: I was in nerdy carpet-weaving heaven. He lead us to a loom that was being worked on by three ladies. We watched them hand knot a carpet that was going to take a total of 15 days at 8 hours a day to complete.

Having been taught how to use a loom to weave rag carpets in Sweden, I was curious how a hand knotted carpet was constructed. And, well folks, I still don’t know. Check out the video below to see why: the hand was truly faster than the eye. How the heck are those knots made? I still can’t tell.

We left the shop regrettably empty handed. We’ve bought our fair share of carpets on this trip and, with no home to speak of, it really is just plain dumb to buy any more decorative items. But at $180 for all that knotting, I have to slot not buying one of their carpets as regret number 5,673 of my souvenir shopping.

Choices, choices, choices We’ve become obsessed with the Kashmiri knotted wool rugs that...
Kashmiri Rug Winner The vote has been counted, the tally has been double...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The Curious Incident of the Poking Stick in the Night

Jaime — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:34:04 +0000

The lights had been out for three hours when a pop woke me from a deep sleep. Not yet awake but no longer sleeping, I lay on my side with my back to our window, drifting back toward sleep.

A cool draft slid over my exposed shoulder. Funny, I thought, the window was closed when I fell asleep. In that twilight sleep, where thought hovers between dream and reality, a draft could just be part of a dream – so I let it go.

That is, until I felt a sensation similar to something pressing down onto my bed. Still confused and not yet awake, I rolled over to find my window and screen open. Reaching through the window was an arm and a long stick. It was the stick that I had felt pressing on my bed. It was now pressing into my back.

“What the…” was all I could get out before the arm and stick withdrew into the darkness.

I lay frozen for a few minutes, willing myself to do something about the open window. Springing into action, I closed the screen. That done, I realized the window that I so desperately wanted closed was on the outside of the screen. Closing it meant reopening the screen and reaching my arm into the darkness, a place I was unwilling to go. At least not without some assistance from Martin, who lay snoozing on the other side of the room.

Crouched as low as I could get to the ground and still move, I inched over to Martin’s bed.

“Martin. Martin. Martin. Martin. Martin!” I repeated while shaking him, too scared for pleasantries. He woke slowly and tried to comfort me, thinking I’d just woken from a bad dream.

“Someone is outside. They were poking me with a stick. I’m really freaked out,” I said. My voice had taken on a quiver of one who was truly, deeply terrified.

“He’s there!” I hissed as a head appeared in silhouette just outside my window. Hearing my hiss, the head disappeared, only to reappear at Martin’s window a moment later and duck down again. Realizing the severity of the situation, Martin crept over to my window, assuming that would be the next place the head would turn up. Sure enough, it reappeared a moment later. Tapping into his Viking heritage, Martin erupted into a terrifying battle cry and lunged for the face that hovered in silhouette. The head disappeared and we heard the sound of someone fleeing.

Figuring it was a kid playing a prank, our fear quickly turned to anger. Who pokes someone through their window while they’re sleeping? How profoundly rude! We unlocked our room and stepped into the common area of the guesthouse in search of a security guard. Within minutes there was a team of boy workers scouring the area in search of the Poker.

Ten minutes passed and we heard a commotion. The Poker had been found and was in the process of receiving a whooping by the search team. Phone calls were placed and the police arrived, delivering a fresh walloping (I guess innocent until proven guilty is largely ignored in this part of the world). Away he went to jail and out we crept from our room to get the story.

This intrusion is apparently the fifth time for the man, not boy as we had assumed. The jail time for such offense is three days, so we can rest easy – the reaching arm and bobbing head will be behind bars for the remainder of our time in Miao.

It was a terrifying experience, but one not without lessons. Bars on the windows are put in place for a reason. The Poker would have had easy access to my sleep sodden self had they not been there. Secondly: he’s the most squeezable guy, my husband can be one scary son of a bitch when he wants to be. I’m pretty sure that whatever was on the end of that poking stick went to jail with soiled pants.

The Big Fingernail Incident of 2010 I’m a girl and girls sometimes cry. We can’t help...
Movie Night in Tawang Yay for local culture! The other night, we were invited...
Carry a Big Stick and Poke Gently at Coconuts This is how people around here harvest coconuts. They poke...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Tawang Valley Villages

Jaime — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:04:23 +0000

The Tawang valley is not only home to the massive Gompa, but also to a number of traditional villages. Because we’d spent so much time getting up there, we told ourselves that we would stay at least two days in the area. Our rear ends needed a rest and the thought of traveling again made our eyes glaze over. So, to fill our extra day, a traditional village tour was organized with three of our traveling buddies.

Our tour consisted of visits to three hillside villages. Because our group of five were the only foreigners in the area, we had the villages to ourselves. We didn’t receive much explanation from our guide, rather we were allowed to cruise through the villages, snapping photos and exchanging smiles with the locals.

It was in these villages that we saw the Monpa hat in action. We were also introduced to the fairytale-like stone tower homes of the Monpa people.

Check out our photo gallery below for some of the highlights.

[View with PicLens]

Tawang Valley India is a large enough country to have corners that...
Movie Night in Tawang Yay for local culture! The other night, we were invited...
Tawang Gompa We’ve come to the state of Arunachal Pradesh in northeast...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The Doors

Martin — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 10:17:05 +0000

What do you do when resources are scarce, but you really need new garage doors?

In Dirang in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang valley, you save your cans of mustard oil, smash them flat and voila – the door is yours.

We’re definitely going to start saving our mustard oil cans from now on. You just never know!

Tawang Valley India is a large enough country to have corners that...
Tawang Gompa We’ve come to the state of Arunachal Pradesh in northeast...
How to Get an Arunachal Pradesh Permit in Guwahati How to receive a travel permit for Arunachal Pradesh trough...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Helicoptering above the Himalayas

Martin — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:13:32 +0000

Geography and politics have conspired to make the Tawang Valley very hard to reach. In fact, the only way to get there is to either bounce around in a jeep for two days, or to fly there with a helicopter. We did the jeeps on the way in – a scenic if somewhat uncomfortable way of reaching our destination.

On the way out, we opted for the chopper. Since people are comparatively poor in this part of the world, the Indian government partially subsidies the ride – an hour-long ride set us back ~60USD each.

While the weather was a bit hazy, the trip was still a memory for life. It’s not every day you find yourself cruising in a 1950s Soviet helicopter above the rice terraces of eastern Bhutan.

...but what's up with that beard??

Movie Night in Tawang Yay for local culture! The other night, we were invited...
I Stand Corrected I told you that we’ve ridden all forms of transportation...
Our Favorites – India’s Ladakh & Himachal Pradesh Region Edition We’re still on our Annapurna trek in Nepal, which is...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Movie Night in Tawang

Martin — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 10:06:01 +0000

Yay for local culture! The other night, we were invited to the premiere of the movie ‘Journey of Life’, a film made by young Tawang people. We spent three dollars each on the entrance fee, something that entitled us to sit on the nice couches pictured below. The plastic chairs were a dollar less. Everybody else sat on those. Embarrassing but hey – we even got bottle service (well, I had one bottle of beer).

The movie itself was a surprise: a healthy old-fashioned slap-stick comedy, starring two slobbering country fools that stagger around Tawang town, messing up royally wherever they go. Even though the movie was entirely in the local Monpa language, we had no trouble following the ‘plot’.

Unfortunately we had to leave after an hour because the ear-splitting sound effects were so loud that we had to stuff napkins in our ears. Good times.

Tawang Valley India is a large enough country to have corners that...
Tawang Gompa We’ve come to the state of Arunachal Pradesh in northeast...
Sound Advice From a Fool A strange thing happens around day three of touring amazing...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.