ZanVegetarianEveryday staple
Roasted millet, buckwheat or maize flour stirred into boiling water to a stiff porridge and eaten with vegetables, meat, fermented cheese or chamin. The default meal of the belt, and the fastest one to make.
Monpa & Tawang Belt · Eastern Himalaya & Brahmaputra Belt
Dishes
Two registers sit side by side. The everyday one is grain and dairy — zan, khura, thukpa, butter tea — eaten at home and unaltered by anything from the plain. The ceremonial one appears at Losar, at weddings and when a guest arrives: rice brought up from below, meat, butter, and ara poured. The Sherdukpen and Sartang villages of the foothill shelf eat a related but distinct food, with more maize and more of what the forest supplies.
PutaVegetarianMain
Buckwheat noodles pressed straight into boiling water, drained and eaten with a vegetable stew, fermented cheese or plain butter. Buckwheat's earthiness is the whole flavour; nothing is added to disguise it.
KhuraVegetarianBreakfast
A thick buckwheat pancake cooked on a griddle, eaten with butter tea, chamin or a vegetable curry. The bitter buckwheat version is darker and more assertive than the sweet.
Gyapa khaziNon-vegetarianFestive main
Rice cooked with fermented cheese, small dried fish, chilli, ginger and butter. A festive dish, because the rice and the fish both have to be brought up from lower ground — it is a dish that announces an occasion by its ingredients alone.
ThukpaVegetarian and non-vegetarianMain
Noodle soup with minced meat, vegetables and chilli. Local variants substitute the grain — dheb-thukpa uses rice, and a maize-and-bean version is made in the middle valleys.
MomoVegetarian and non-vegetarianMain
Steamed dumplings of minced meat or vegetable, served with a bowl of the steaming broth and with chamin. Ubiquitous across the Himalayan belt and made here with a coarser filling and more fat than the town versions sold on the plain.
ChaminVegetarianCondiment
Chilli ground with fermented cheese, sometimes with garlic or a wild herb. It is on the table at every meal and it is the single seasoning the kitchen cannot do without.
Churpiཕྱུར་བ།VegetarianSnack and ingredient
Yak cheese in two states — soft, used in cooking, and hard, dried on a string and chewed for an hour at a time. Arunachal Pradesh Yak Churpi holds a geographical indication registered in 2023.
SujaButter teaVegetarianAll day
Boiled brick tea churned with yak butter and salt. Salty rather than sweet, drunk continuously, and the first thing put in front of a visitor. Refusing it is difficult and not advisable.
BresiVegetarianCeremonial
Sweet rice with melted butter, raisins and sugar, made for religious occasions and for guests. One of the few sweet dishes in the repertoire.
Ashum thukpa and dheb-thukpaVegetarian and non-vegetarianMain
The maize-and-bean and the rice-based versions of the noodle soup. Which one a household makes is mostly a question of what its own land grows.
Dried yak meatNon-vegetarianSide
Strips hung in the roof space above the hearth until hard, then either chewed as they are or pounded and dropped into a stew. Smoke from the cooking fire does the preserving as a by-product.
Fermented greens with churpiVegetarianSide
Soured and dried turnip tops or mustard greens rehydrated and cooked with soft cheese and chilli — the winter vegetable in a valley with no winter vegetables.
ChhangVegetarianDrink
Home-brewed beer from millet, barley, maize or rice, brewed in every household and offered as a matter of course. The millet-and-buckwheat version made for Losar is sweeter than the everyday brew.
AraVegetarianDrink
Grain spirit distilled at home in a pot-over-pot still, served hot in small cups, sometimes with butter or a beaten egg stirred in against the cold. The same drink, and the same still, as across the Bhutan valleys.
Staples
Buckwheat and barleyMillet and maizeYak butter and cheesePotato, radish and turnipChilli
Sweets
Bresi — sweet buttered rice with raisinsKhapse — fried dough shapes made for LosarHoney from the high pastures
Street food
Momo, steamed and friedThukpa from the small kitchens along the Tawang and Dirang market streetsRoasted maize in seasonChurpi sold by the string at every market
Drinks
Suja, salted butter teaChhang and its Losar variantAra, drunk hotPlain black tea in the towns
The food of Monpa & Tawang Belt — signature dishes, staples, sweets, street food and where to eat them. (15)