Untamed Is a Direction
Arunachal Pradesh; words, whether simple or decorative, cannot fully hold nor justify the raw, non-performative truth of India’s easternmost state. Nestled in the Himalayas, it opens into mist-filled valleys, forests untouched by human hands, and terrain that does not soften itself for you. You arrive here not as a visitor, but as someone stepping into something older than language.
When you drive into these mountains, whether you are going from one village to another or toward Sela Pass; danger waits at every turn. Death is not dramatic here; it is possible. And yet, just beyond each blind curve, there is startling aliveness.
Time moves here the way the rivers move, descending clean and certain from glacial heights. The riverbeds without distortion are astonishing in their honesty.
You feel as alive as the mountains because they breathe. You can sense a slow, ancient inhalation. They know you are there. They know how to keep you safe. So do the people. Their spirituality does not announce itself; it rests quietly in the air. On the sharp bends of treacherous roads, five Buddhist prayer flags stand in colour and wind, placed deliberately for protection and blessing.
And as you climb higher, even when the road narrows and the drop deepens, something in your body softens. You know you will be safe. The blessings are already there and they are holding you.
Time flows here, and it teaches you to move. You cannot stand still against a current like this. You learn to go forward the way the river does, without resistance and without an apology. Sitting by the water at Choskurung, you understand that no moment can be kept. The next river waits beyond the hours that must pass in between. Beauty is not meant to be possessed. It is meant to be met and released.
I arrived during Losar without knowing I had. The festival does not perform itself for visitors. It folds inward. Yes, there is dancing and ritual and celebration. But what lingers are the days after when the fifteen-day stretch belongs entirely to family and community. Circles tighten. Doors close gently. Time is given to what matters most. You gather. You stay. You do not divide yourself outward. At night, people gathered at their temples. That night the people of Tawang moved together not for display, but for joy.
The next day, Chug Valley unfolded quietly beyond Dirang. A true valley enclosed, intimate, with traditional Monpa homes and a population small enough that everyone knows everyone. There, I had a three-course Monpa meal that became the finest of my journey: chicken stew, yak stew, flavors deep and unadorned. Nothing extravagant and everything earned.
During Losar, gambling becomes part of the rhythm. I don’t usually gamble, but I joined a group of women for Housie (Tambola). I came close, but didn’t. Then came Dice: six yellow cubes hidden in a wooden bucket, shaken and overturned to reveal chance. I placed Rs. 50 and won Rs. 150. Then I placed Rs.100 and lost. I left with exactly what I had arrived with.
People drank. People laughed. People gambled. Everyone knew one another. It felt rooted.
But Losar is not a time for outsiders to be centered. It belongs to the people of Arunachal Pradesh and comes once a year. That boundary is not exclusion, it is devotion.
The monasteries carry a stillness that does not ask to be noticed. The landscape remains unpolished and beautiful, but never curated. It does not perform. It simply is. In that quiet certainty, something shifts inside you. You realize you are not accidental here.
You stand where Sela Pass cuts through the mountains, where the Sela Lake holds the sky, where Bumla remembers history. You stand in the same wind. The same dust. The same light. You are made of the same stardust, the same earth, the same sky, and it changes you.
The art, the vastness, the altitude, all shape your posture toward forward motion. You stop trying to refine yourself into acceptability. You stop smoothing your edges.
Untamed is not chaos. Untamed is a direction.
Arunachal Pradesh teaches you that it is alright to be non-curated, to move boldly, dangerously, and openly.
I arrived here thinking I am traveling through a place. But slowly, quietly, I understood that I was traveling toward myself. This is not something I chose. Arunachal chose me.
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