Arunachal Pradesh

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Northeast India

Tawang's monastery at three thousand metres, valleys with no one in them, and a permit to sort first.

High passes, monastery towns and river valleys along India's far eastern Himalaya.

Start here

Tawang

Ziro

Bomdila

Dirang

Sela Pass

Namdapha

What Arunachal Pradesh is known for

HimalayaMonasteriesForestsTribal cultureRoad trips

Arunachal starts with paperwork. Indian citizens from other states need an Inner Line Permit; foreign nationals need a Protected Area Permit instead. Arrange it before you travel rather than at a check gate, and build the trip around it. The state is vast and the roads are slow, so take one arm of it and leave the rest. The western run goes Guwahati to Bomdila, over Sela Pass to Tawang, where the monastery is the largest in India and belongs to the Gelug school. The central run is Ziro, the Apatani valley on UNESCO's tentative list, and on towards the Siang. Linking Tawang, Ziro and Namdapha in one trip is the standard mistake, and it is mostly days in a car. Namdapha, in the far east near the Myanmar border, climbs from 200 metres to over 4,500 and is the one park in India holding four big cats. Reaching it is real effort and it rewards people happy to walk. October to April. Seventy to eighty per cent of the year's rain falls between May and October, and it takes the roads with it.

Best time to visit

October to April is the workable window, with clear skies and open passes. Torgya at Tawang Monastery falls in mid-January, cold and worth it. Avoid May to October, when most of the rain arrives and landslides shut the mountain roads.

Browse Arunachal Pradesh by theme

India's far north-eastern corner — high passes, monastery towns above the cloud line, and valleys that see almost no visitors at all.

Heritage Spiritual & Pilgrimage Hill Stations Wildlife & Safari Hidden Gems

Heritage

Forts, temples and old towns.

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Gomsi

Fifteen kilometres southwest of Pasighat, at Rani Village, about 11.5 acres of ground hold a fortified settlement: a central habitation complex ringed by an outer zone of twenty small earthen mound…

Ita Fort

Itanagar is named after this fort: ita is brick in Assamese, so the capital is simply the town of the brick fort. And there is a great deal of brick, 16,200 cubic metres of it, dated to the 14th or…

Jawaharlal Nehru Museum, Itanagar

An hour in here before you head out to the districts is worth more than an hour anywhere else in the capital. The state museum, set up in the 1980s, is built around tribal material culture: headdre…

Spiritual & Pilgrimage

Places people come to pray.

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Golden Pagoda, Namsai

Nothing here is old. The pagoda opened in 2010, Burmese in style, spread over a 20-hectare complex on land given by the state and known in Tai-Khamti as Kongmu Kham. Age is not the point; scale is,…

Malinithan

What survives here is stonework, not a working temple: the ruins of an early medieval shrine on the northern bank of the Brahmaputra, generally credited to the Chutia kings of the 13th and 14th cen…

Parshuram Kund

Parshuram Kund, on the Lohit river where it leaves the hills, is Arunachal's holiest Hindu site — the pool where, by legend, sage Parshuram washed away the sin of matricide and the axe fell from hi…

Tawang Monastery

India's largest Buddhist monastery holds the slope above the Tawang Chu valley, close to both the Chinese and Bhutanese borders. It is three storeys high, ringed by a compound wall 282 metres long,…

Hill Stations

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Itanagar

The state capital is an administrative town before it is anything else: the legislative assembly, the seat of government, and the Gauhati High Court's permanent bench out at Naharlagun. It runs tog…

Mechuka

Mechuka (Menchukha) is a remote, wide-floored valley in the Shi Yomi district of Arunachal Pradesh near the border, ringed by pine-clad mountains at around 1,900 metres. Long isolated and only rece…

Wildlife & Safari

Parks and reserves.

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Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary

The name is not about birds of prey: it comes from the Red Eagle Division of the Indian army, posted here in the 1950s. The ground climbs from 500 to 3,250 metres in West Kameng, which is the whole…

Kamlang Wildlife Sanctuary

Few places in India can list a Bengal tiger and a snow leopard on the same sheet. Kamlang does, along with leopard and clouded leopard, which says more about how far the ground climbs than about yo…

Sessa Orchid Sanctuary

Start at the nursery. It holds representative specimens of the sanctuary's orchid species along with a demonstration farm of Cymbidium hybrids grown for cut flowers, and half an hour there will tea…

Hidden Gems

Quieter than the rest.

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Bhismaknagar

Kaolin pottery came out of the ground here, and it is the most interesting thing found on the site, read as evidence of early contact with China and of ceramic ideas moving into Northeast India. Ro…

Chumi Gyatse Falls

Local Buddhist tradition counts 108 falls here, spilling from between the mountains and read as the blessings of Guru Padmasambhava, who is said to have stayed five days in the Domtsang region. It …

Ganga Lake (India)

Gyekir Sinyi is the local name, and the one worth using. It is a natural freshwater lake 6 km out of Itanagar, inside the Itanagar Wildlife Sanctuary, and the city treats it as its recreation groun…

Gori Chen

Not one summit but a group of them, glacier-fed, with the tallest counting as the third highest peak in northeast India. This is expedition and trekking ground rather than a viewpoint you drive to:…

Naksaparvat

Archaeologists rate this higher than most visitors will, and for a fair reason: it is one of the few medieval sites in Arunachal Pradesh to have been dug systematically. The fortified settlement li…

Nuranang Falls

A hundred metres of falling water, two kilometres northeast of Jung on a road you can drive, which makes this the easiest big waterfall to reach in Tawang district. Jung sits 40 km southeast of Taw…

Sangetsar Tso

It sits above 3,708 metres (12,165 ft) on the road that climbs from Tawang to Bum La Pass, close to the border with China, so the drive is most of the day and the lake is the pause in it. The name …

Food & cuisine

Signature dishes and local flavours to look for while exploring Arunachal Pradesh.

5 dishes

Pika Pila

A tangy, spicy pickle of fermented bamboo shoot, pork fat and king chilli, from the Apatani tribe of Ziro Valley.

Khaw Tai

A short-grain aromatic rice grown by the Khamti tribe, Arunachal's first GI-tagged rice, eaten with fish soup.

Chura Sabji

A Monpa curry of leafy greens cooked with churpi (fermented yak cheese) and chilli, from Arunachal's high-altitude west.

Pehak

A pungent chutney of fermented soybeans mashed with king chilli and salt, a spicy side across tribal Arunachal.

Lukter

Sun-dried or smoked meat, pan-fried with red chilli flakes into a warming, smoky side dish.

Festivals in Arunachal Pradesh

Dates move each year — check before you book.

All festivals

Losar

Monpa new year at Tawang, usually February, with masked dances at the monastery.

January

Torgya Festival

religious

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February

Losar (Tibetan New Year)

cultural

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February

Nyokum

cultural

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March

Myoko Festival

cultural

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July

Dree Festival

cultural

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September

Solung

cultural

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September

Ziro Festival of Music

music

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Road trips in Arunachal Pradesh

Long, slow and worth it. Inner Line Permits are required — arrange them before you travel.

All road trips

Tezpur to Bomdila to Tawang

Two days minimum, over Sela Pass at about 4,170 metres. Break the journey at Dirang.

Itanagar to Ziro

Up into the Apatani valley — terraced rice fields and pine ridges.

Aalo to Mechuka

A hard road to a wide green valley near the border. Few people make it.

All places in Arunachal Pradesh

Every published place, across 6 themes — pick a theme, or browse them all.

23 places

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Arunachal Pradesh

Bhismaknagar

Kaolin pottery came out of the ground here, and it is the most interesting thing found on the site, read as evidence of early contact with China and of…

Arunachal Pradesh

Bomdila

Bomdila is a scenic Himalayan hill town in the West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh, perched around 2,400 metres with sweeping views of snow-capped peaks.

Arunachal Pradesh

Chumi Gyatse Falls

Local Buddhist tradition counts 108 falls here, spilling from between the mountains and read as the blessings of Guru Padmasambhava, who is said to have…

Arunachal Pradesh

Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary

The name is not about birds of prey: it comes from the Red Eagle Division of the Indian army, posted here in the 1950s.

Arunachal Pradesh

Ganga Lake (India)

Gyekir Sinyi is the local name, and the one worth using. It is a natural freshwater lake 6 km out of Itanagar, inside the Itanagar Wildlife Sanctuary, and the…

Arunachal Pradesh

Golden Pagoda, Namsai

Nothing here is old. The pagoda opened in 2010, Burmese in style, spread over a 20-hectare complex on land given by the state and known in Tai-Khamti as…

Arunachal Pradesh