Some pictures from the state of Meghalaya in the North-East of India – indigenous cultures, archery counters, charcoal landscapes.
In winter dry season it’s really hard to believe this is the wettest place on Earth with average annual rainfall as high as 1200 cm.
Rice Terraces in Meghalaya
Posted in Rainbow
Tagged cycling, India, North East India
Wandering the hilly and sylvan Land of Nyishi – one of the biggest tribes in Arunachal Pradesh – can bring you all sorts of increaqdible encounters. Just step off the beaten paths, cross the jungle, climb the faraway hills – and meet all these fabular people in their usual rural settings. Be sure – you will be the first foreigner they ever meet. We, actually, were!
Nobody knows what is a saw here. So they just take their knives and their daos (Asian type of machete, a mixture of a sword and a knife, for cutting paths in the jungle) and cut their doors from whole tree trunks. This takes really big effort!
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Tagged Arunachal Pradesh, India, indigenous minorities, Nyishi, North East India
Just after the breakfast we made a discovery. Trying to cut through the jungle with no path would be a bad idea, so we returned to the path junction, where our sylvan friends turned yesterday. We expected to find anything there – a hut, a field or some fishing spot – but a real manufactury! Here, in the middle of jungle!
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Tagged Arunachal Pradesh, jungle, India, indigenous minorities, discovery, North East India
So we deepened into the Jungle, wandering who could have cut this marvelous smooth path up here?
The answer came soon and quite unexpected: just as we stopped for a rest break, a strange cavalcade of halflings caught up with us. The tiny people were barefooted, carried huge wooden logs on their backs and were absolutely not scared away by our gloomy looks with huge backpacks.
A strange procession in the jungle
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Tagged Arunachal Pradesh, jungle, India, indigenous minorities, North East India
Ships of the Changtang plains – yaks.
Far, far away from the roads of silk and tea, on the very edge of the Roof of the World – on North-Eastern outskirts of Changtang – lies a boundless ginger land. Thousands of blue pads of lakes are scattered in the swash of hills, where dreamy clouds and cloudy yaks graze in peace. Time here is as thick as ripe honey, and air is as brisk as meltwater.
There, on ginger plains beneath the very sky, since the dawn of time live people free like birds. Their tents flutter on the wind like sails and they know not attachment to their place nor to belongings. The name of the highland country is Amdo and it is inhabited by nomads.
On the Great Bend of Yarlung Tsangpo, in the sacred lands of Pemako, live Memba people – one of those lucky to be officially recognized 56 ethnic groups of China. A very small one, though. Geographically, Memba are also Tibetans, they have a lot in common with the peolple of U-Tsang, and Buddhism is also a fundamental spine of their being. Still this is a different ethnicity. You won’t see the traditional white Tibetan houses with decorated windows, the altitude is too low for the wooly yaks. And they plant banana trees here instead of barley.
Eternal mists raise from river gorges and cloudy forests, and whenever they melt away a Fata Morgana of fantastically beautiful Gyalha Peri and Namcha Barwa levitate in the thin air above the villages.
Gyalha Peri at dawn
Posted in Rainbow
Tagged Brahmaputra, indigenous minorities, Pemako, Tibet
We hit the road and fly to Beijing today.
Our expedition is assumed to take half a year of research in different countries – China, India and Burma. But once you set off, you fall under the dramatic rules of the unfolding story, not being able to stick to the plans that you cherished and meticulously built in Moscow.
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