Monpa & Tawang Belt · Eastern Himalaya & Brahmaputra Belt
Dress here is built for cold and for wind, and it is closer to Bhutanese and Tibetan dress than to anything in the plains. Wool, yak hair and sheep hair do the work; the loom is a backstrap or a simple frame; and the single most recognisable object in the belt is a hat made of yak hair with long tassels hanging off it. Monpa Textile was granted a geographical indication in January 2024.
What is worn
A sleeveless, ankle-length wrapped dress of wool or yak hair, fastened at the shoulders and belted, worn over a full-sleeved blouse and with a jacket over it. Warm, heavy, and cut so it can be layered rather than replaced as the season changes.
Worn for: Everyday and festival
A long wrapped robe on the Tibetan chuba pattern, belted at the waist so the upper part makes a pouch that carries everything from a bowl to a lamb. Worn over trousers, with a jacket and a woollen or yak-hair cloak.
Worn for: Everyday and formal
A black skullcap felted from yak hair with five long twisted tassels hanging from its rim. The explanation given locally is drainage — rain runs down the tassels and off, instead of down the wearer's neck. It is the one item that identifies a Monpa at any distance.
Worn for: Everyday
A sleeveless wool coat and a woven skirt on the foothill shelf, with a distinct motif vocabulary and a different hat from the high valleys — a reminder that the Sherdukpen are a separate community with a separate language, not a variety of Monpa.
Worn for: Everyday and Khiksaba
Coarse woven yak hair, felted stiff, worn over the shoulders. It sheds sleet, does not need to be dried, and is made by the herding households themselves.
Worn for: Working dress at the pastures
Weaves and textiles
Woollen and yak-hair weaving on backstrap and frame looms, using natural dyes and a geometric border vocabulary, made up into shingka, jackets, cloaks and blankets. Granted a geographical indication in January 2024.
Hand-knotted woollen carpets and rugs in the Tibetan idiom — dragon, snow lion, phoenix and geometric medallion — produced at the government craft centres as well as in households, and used on monastery floors and seating platforms as much as sold.
Foothill weaving with its own stripe and motif system, worked on backstrap looms in Rupa, Shergaon and the Sartang villages. Not covered by the Monpa Textile registration.
Jewellery
Traditional dress of Monpa & Tawang Belt — garments, handloom weaves, GI-tagged textiles and jewellery. (8)