(This story is part of my North-East travel series. For travel itinerary & tips, Arunachal guide is coming soon.)
Tawang, a beautiful city in Arunachal Pradesh bordering China, is home to the famous Tawang Monastery, among other things and can be reached by crossing the equally famous Sela Pass, second highest motorable pass in the world.
The Tale of Entering Arunachal
The most feasible way to reach Tawang is to hire an entire Tata Sumo for Rs.8000 one way, or Rs.800 per seat on sharing basis from Tezpur, a 4 hour drive from Guwahati. It is a 13-14 hours journey and one can’t travel in the dark in Tawang, hence the cabs start at 5.30 AM from State Transport bus stand in Tezpur and reaches Tawang by 7 in the evening. Since we were 8 people, we booked an entire car for Rs.18000 for 4 days in advance, a standard deal through any travel agency. However, if one can hire a car directly without an agency, they can get it for as low as Rs.16000.
One also requires an Inner Line Permit (ILP) to enter Arunachal Pradesh. We applied the same online at Rs.125 per application since it saved both time and cost, though one requires only one business day to get it approved.
After a rest day in Guwahati, we booked seats in a Traveller, costing Rs.200 per person from Guwahati to Tezpur. It was single-digit temperature in Tawang, so before leaving we decided to buy a bottle of rum to keep us warm, just in case. We left from State Transport bus stand in Paltan Bazar at 9.30 and reached Tezpur by 2.30 at night. Though the cars to Tawang leave by 5.30 in the morning, our travel agent agreed to provide us the cab whenever we would reach Tezpur.
The driver was a Nepali guy and seemed to be a jolly good fellow. He put on some Nepali songs and we started our journey from Tezpur at 3.30 am. We reached Bhalukpong, the first checkpoint in Assam-Arunachal border, by 4.30-5 AM. The sun didn’t rise yet, but the police at the checkpoint let us enter Arunachal.
The Tale of Beautiful Roads
Usually March is the best time to visit North-East since it’s neither too cold nor rainy during March. But this year it was raining the whole month, and the weather was bad in entire North-East. We were literally passing through the clouds and were travelling with almost zero visibility for an hour or two, until sunrise. We finally could see the sun-rays by 6, and it was a beautiful sight to pass through hills and heading towards the mountains. We stopped at a place for breakfast at around 9.
We crossed the Indian Army administered Tenga Valley, with Army buildings on both side of the road. We also crossed a place called Fikar Not, literally meaning “don’t worry”, which was quite amusing. All the highways in the region are constructed and maintained by Border Roads Organization (BRO). There were numerous witty road signs with quotes about safe driving, under which the word BRO was inscribed, which we found quite funny since ‘bro’ was a frequently used term in our lingo.
We crossed Bomdila and Dirang on our way, though we didn’t stop there as we planned on stopping on our return journey. We had lunch by 12.30 at a place named Ganga (not sure of the name) right before the unforgiving Sela Pass started. We tried the vegetarian Thukpa there, which is a local version of soupy noodles, but found it quite bland and not to be of our taste. The chicken momos however were really good. We also found a couple of places with 4:20 and tried our luck there. We changed to our warm clothes, including thermals etc.
The Tale of Getting Stuck in a Blizzard
Half an hour later, we experienced our first snow in the journey. However, it was not snowfall but rather a sign of a blizzard. About an hour later, we reached the entrance of the Sela Pass by 2 PM. It was unbearably cold, but we still went out to get our pictures clicked. Our hands were freezing whenever one of us removed gloves to press the camera button. As we travelled merely for 15 more minutes, our hearts froze, when we saw the long traffic jam ahead of us, created by blockade of roads by snow. Jaswant Garh, the other end of Sela Pass, was about 6-10 km ahead. But we knew that it’s going to be a really long journey.
I hardly remember the next 5 hours of our journey. The driver kept the engine going on, even though we didn’t move forward an inch for minutes. The heater in the car kept us a little warm. Since I didn’t sleep the past 24 hours, I felt sicker because of the suffocation and the cold. Thankfully, Mohit didn’t let me sleep as he feared I’d pass out and tried his best to keep me awake. I swore I’ll never fall in love with snow ever again.
Indian Army was removing the snow while we were freezing. After 5 hours of excruciating pain, we somehow managed to cross Sela Pass and reached Jaswant Garh. It was 7 PM and quite dark. The road was mostly clear after that. The driver was quite an experienced one, and he drove the car quite cautiously yet fast to make up for the lost time. We stopped at a dinner place at around 8, and only then I completely came back to my senses. After about half an hour, we resumed our journey, and reached Tawang by 9.30.
Like most the other hill stations in the North-East, everything in Tawang gets closed by 7-7.30. We couldn’t find a single soul awake at 9.30, except for a couple of dogs barking. We somehow finally managed to wake up the manager of a hotel in Nehru Market, who showed us a couple of rooms. They were quite warm, we crashed on the beds by 10 pm and were fast asleep with the exhaustion creeping in.
The Tale of Calm and Peacefulness
Since we slept quite early, we woke up and got ready by 9. We had breakfast and waited for our driver. Losar, the Tibetan/Buddhist New Year, is celebrated quite religiously in Tawang as well, for 13-14 days. This year, Losar celebrations got over just the day before and we unknowingly missed it by a day. Hence it was a rest day for everyone in Tawang, and the driver warned us not to expect much shops and places to be open during the day. Incidentally, that day was Holi as well, and hence whatever little hope we had of seeing a lively city died.
We first went to see the giant Buddha statue. The huge statue, with Himalayas in the backdrop, was a nice place to hang around, relax and take pictures. It was a lazy day for the yaks as well, who were grazing lazily in a nearby field. There were some other statues depicting various stories of Buddha’s life as well. The Dharma Chakra was quite a huge one, and we had fun while taking turns to roll it.
We could see the Tawang Monastery from where we were standing. The bright yellow roofs were hard to miss. We reached about 15 minutes after we left from the Buddha Statue. Right from entering the compound of the Monastery, we could feel the serenity the place holds. I can’t describe how exactly I felt, but it was an out of the world calming experience. The place, as colorful as a place can be, was still creating a perfect balance between all the colors in the world. We tied our offering to a cloth we bought and hung the cloth with similar clothes that were hung there. I prayed, again made a round of the monastery from the ground floor as well as from the first floor, and then came out back to the world where we belong.
We could see cute little children playing around in monk’s clothes. We clicked some pictures, and headed downward, right below the monastery, where there was an open field. It was a picturesque location, with Buddhist flags blowing in the wind. We chilled there for some time, before making our way to the Tawang Emporium. Being a holiday, we found the Emporium to be closed. We travelled through a long road covered on both sides by tall trees, which was a nice journey.
The Tale of an Arunachali Picnic
We reached the Ugyenling Temple by 1.30pm, which was a temple built in 15th century and was the birthplace of the 6th Dalai Lama. The place was again quite beautiful, though small. We met some really nice ladies who offered us snacks made especially for the Losar festival. We could also see the famous tree which supposedly grew from the walking stick of the Dalai Lama.
We headed for the big monastery which we could see from the Ugyenling Temple and which was not far from Ugyenling. (Can’t recall the name of the monastery.) Once we got inside, we realized how big this monastery is. The place was so windy and breathtaking that we liked spending time enjoying the surrounding. We could see a big group of people sitting together in a circle on the lawn, with food, probably there for picnic. Neha approached them and they turned out to be quite friendly. We also joined them, and they offered us food saying that they were done almost done eating anyway.
When asked about their picnic, they said that it was a post-Losar get together for the families. There were different kinds of dishes. The local rice was very big and hard to chew. The mushroom curry tasted quite different, and when I asked about it, they said that it is preserved mushroom. The beef turned out to be very chewy and I had to struggle my way to finish the piece I picked up.
The highlight of the food, however, was the local rice beer. From what we understood, it is called ‘ong’ (or something that sounds similar). The fermentation process takes a week and it is drunk hot, as opposed to the foreign beer we drink, with ghee mixed with the beer. It tasted more like whiskey and less like beer. The driver said that it is very cheap, where one bottle costs probably only Rs.30 and is enough to make two-three people fully drunk. We, however, didn’t try to be too adventurous and stopped our drinking episode with two-three sips each.
After bidding farewell to them, right before leaving the monastery, we saw a lot of people gathering to play archery, which is a regular sport in the region. While the elders were playing a professional match between two teams, the younger ones were practicing with bows and arrows made of bamboo. We asked them if we too can try, and I successfully put an arrow through the log.
The Tale of Chilling Around
We next went to Tawang War Memorial, with names of martyrs engraved and a couple of artifacts from the 1962 Indo-China war put up. It is situated in an army-controlled area. If one needs to go to Indo-China border via Bumla Pass, one needs to take army permit one day in advance from here. When we enquired about the next day, the army officer we met said that due to heavy snowfall the whole road from Tawang to Bumla is closed for tourists. That means we can’t go to any of the places ahead of Tawang, including Madhuri Lake, P T Tso Lake and the magnificent Bumla Pass itself. Had we been given permission, I’m sure it would have been an amazing journey.
Since the local sightseeing ended quite early, at around 4 pm, we decided to do some shopping. However, when we reached Nehru Market even that was closed due to Holi and end of Losar festival. The sky too was cloudy and we didn’t want to risk ourselves getting drenched in the rain. So we went back to our hotel to play cards and have some fun. We ordered food from the restaurant on the other side of the road from our hotel, since we were hungry by night (due to ‘obvious reasons’), ate and went to sleep.
There were other sightseeing places in and around Tawang that were covered during our return journey spanning over the next two days, which will be covered in the next story.
(To read about a chill trip, chiller night and local Arunachali experience, please click here for the next story.)