Ziro Valley
Apatani Cultural Landscape, On UNESCO'S Tentative List · Ziro, Arunachal Pradesh
A high, flat valley at about fifteen hundred metres in the Lower Subansiri district of Arunachal Pradesh, surrounded by pine-covered hills, and home to the Apatani people, whose way of farming has shaped it into a cultural landscape on UNESCO's Tentative List. The Apatani grow rice and fish together in carefully managed terraced paddies, without draught animals or machines, and manage bamboo and pine groves around their villages. Older Apatani women can still be seen with the traditional facial tattoos and large nose plugs, a practice abandoned since the 1970s. The villages of Hong and Hari, with their dense rows of stilted houses, are the ones most visitors see. Each September the Ziro Festival of Music, held in the open fields, draws independent musicians and audiences from across India, and the Myoko festival in March is the great Apatani celebration. Ziro is reached by road from Itanagar or North Lakhimpur in Assam. Indian visitors need an Inner Line Permit and foreigners a Protected Area Permit. Roads are slow and the monsoon brings landslides.
Hapoli, Lower Subansiri District, Ziro, Arunachal Pradesh, 791120, India
NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The usual pattern: villages and paddies are visited in daylight, and dark comes early in the northeast, around 5 pm in winter. Permit check gates on the roads into Arunachal operate in the daytime. The Ziro Festival of Music runs over about four days in late September, the Myoko festival in March and Dree in early July. Monsoon landslides from June to August can close roads for days. THE TRAPS: arriving at the state border without a permit, setting off from Itanagar too late in the day, and turning up for the festival without a booked tent or room. Confirm permit rules and festival dates before travelling.