George Lowe's Tribal & Monastic Expedition

The Journey Begins

George Lowe's fourteen days in Arunachal Pradesh began, as most Eastern Himalayan journeys do, in Guwahati. With his guide Kanak he drove north and east out of the Assam plains, watching the land fold upward into the hills that would hold him for the next two weeks.

What followed was less a sightseeing circuit than a slow reading of a region — its faiths, its building traditions, and the people who maintain both.

First Stop: Orchids at Tippi

The road left Guwahati for Bhalukpong, on the Assam–Arunachal border, and climbed a few kilometres further to the orchid centre at Tippi, where hundreds of rare species are held under glass.

It was a fitting opening. Arunachal is one of the most botanically rich states in India, and Tippi gives a compressed first sense of what grows in the valleys ahead.

Into Monpa Country: Dirang

From Tippi the road climbed to Dirang, the first Monpa valley of the journey — a Buddhist community whose culture is closely tied to the Tibetan plateau across the mountains.

George walked the old Dirang dzong and the market, where wood carvings, thangka paintings and hand-woven carpets are made and sold. The Monpa are known for their devotion and for a distinctive architecture of stone, timber and flat-roofed courtyards suited to high, cold valleys.

Over Sela Pass to Tawang

The crossing of Sela Pass, high and cold above the treeline, delivered the journey into Tawang. The monastery there was one of the high points of the expedition: founded in the seventeenth century and set above the valley, it is among the largest Buddhist monasteries in India and remains an important centre of learning.

George was struck less by its scale than by its atmosphere — the quiet of the courtyards, the rhythm of study and prayer that has continued there for four centuries. A day in Tawang took in Urgelling, birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama, and the nunnery of Ani Gompa above the town.

Thembang and Bomdila

Returning south, the route paused at Thembang, a walled Monpa village of stone houses and old gateways, before descending to Bomdila and its monastery — the last Buddhist ground before the road turned east.

From Bomdila the journey dropped out of the high mountains and ran to Itanagar, the state capital, where the cultural map changes entirely.

Nyishi Country: Itanagar to Yazali

East of Itanagar begins the country of the Nyishi, Arunachal's largest community. Around Yazali George saw the long, low houses of split bamboo and cane, the ceremonial headgear worked in cane and hornbill motif, and a way of life ordered by clan rather than monastery.

The contrast with the Monpa valleys behind him was immediate — a different faith, a different building tradition, a different relationship to forest and hillside.

Exploring Ziro Valley

After the Nyishi territories the road climbed onto the high plateau of Ziro Valley, home of the Apatani people, and one of the most organised agricultural landscapes George encountered anywhere in the Eastern Himalaya.

Intricate wet-rice terraces, bamboo irrigation channels feeding field after field, and permanent settlements built to last generations contrasted sharply with the shifting hill cultivation he had seen earlier. Fish are raised in the flooded paddy alongside the rice — a single system producing two harvests from one field.

He spent his days in the Apatani villages of Hong, Hari, Bulla and Dutta: bamboo groves at the village edge, granaries set apart from the houses against fire, and elders whose faces still carry the traditional tattoos of an earlier generation. Ziro was, by his own account, the highlight of the expedition.

Hill Miri and Tagin: Rang to Daporijo

Leaving Ziro eastward, the road drops through the Hill Miri country around Rang before following the Subansiri to Daporijo, the town of the Tagin.

Here the houses impressed him most: long, generous structures raised on tall timber stilts, walled in bamboo, roofed in thatch and split cane — buildings shaped precisely by climate, material and skill, and rebuilt communally when they age.

Galo Villages: Basar and Aalo

From Daporijo the route continued to Basar and then Aalo, in the heart of Galo country, with days spent in Pobdi, Paya and the villages along the Siyom.

The Galo stilt house is a masterwork of bamboo joinery, with an open verandah at the front and the hearth burning at the centre of the long room. Evenings passed there — rice beer, smoked meat curing in the roof smoke, and conversation that ran late.

Adi Country: The Siang at Pasighat

Below Aalo the Siyom joins the Siang, and the river that becomes the Brahmaputra widens as it leaves the hills. Following it down to Pasighat brought George into Adi country and to the oldest town in Arunachal Pradesh.

A day here took in Adi villages, their cane suspension bridges and communal halls, and the grasslands and river islands of the Daying Ering Memorial Wildlife Sanctuary on the Siang's floodplain.

Down to Tea Country

From Pasighat the last drive crossed into Upper Assam and the tea districts around Dibrugarh.

This is tea country — estates running to the horizon. He walked a garden, followed the leaf from plucking through to processing, and saw how completely the industry has shaped the landscape and society of the upper valley.

Friendly Faces and Living History

Throughout, George returned to the same observation: the warmth of the people. He found communities welcoming, curious and confident in their traditions despite considerable modern change.

Kanak, his guide, carried the journey — supplying context, history and story at each stop, and turning a route into an understanding of the region.

A Journey to Remember

At the end of fourteen days, what remained was not a list of places but a sense of continuity: monasteries still teaching, houses still built the old way, fields still farmed by methods older than record.