Places
Pangsau PassHeritageChanglang
The saddle on the international boundary at 1,136 m, about 12 km beyond Nampong. It is the lowest practicable crossing in the eastern hills, which is why the Ahom migration used it in the thirteenth century and why the Ledo Road was pushed over it in 1943 and 1944. Wartime engineers called it Hell Pass, for the gradient and the mud rather than for anything that happened there.
Best time: November–March. Getting there: By road from Ledo through Jairampur and Nampong; access to the pass itself is regulated and permission-dependent.
Jairampur cemeteryHeritageChanglang
A Second World War burial ground on the Ledo Road, about 7 km from Jairampur and 25 km short of the pass, holding the graves of Chinese, Indian, Kachin, British and other dead — soldiers and the unnamed labourers who cut the road. It was found again in 1997 after decades under forest, and its upkeep has been intermittent ever since.
Stilwell Road, Indian sectionHeritageChanglang
The 61 km from the railhead at Ledo to the pass — the beginning of a road that ran on for well over a thousand kilometres to Kunming. It is an ordinary hill road for most of its Indian length, and the interest is in what it is rather than what it looks like.
Lake of No ReturnNatureChanglang
Nawng Yang, a lake lying just beyond the watershed on the Myanmar side, visible from the ridge near the pass. Its name comes from the wartime and refugee crossings of the 1940s and the aircraft and people that did not come out of the surrounding swamp forest.
Namdapha National ParkWildlifeChanglang
Around 1,985 km², running from about 200 m of lowland tropical wet evergreen forest to 4,571 m at Dapha Bum — one of the widest altitude ranges of any protected area in India, and the reason it holds four pantherine cats: tiger, leopard, clouded leopard and snow leopard. Notified a wildlife sanctuary in 1972 and a national park and tiger reserve in 1983. The Namdapha flying squirrel is known from a single specimen collected in 1981 and has not been confirmed since.
Best time: November–March. Getting there: Entry from Miao; permission from the park authority there. Deban, on the Noa-Dihing, is the base.
DebanNatureChanglang
The forest rest house on the Noa-Dihing inside Namdapha, and the practical limit of vehicle access. Everything beyond it is on foot, and the river crossing is the daily fact of life for anyone working further in.
Miao and the Choephelling settlementUrbanChanglang
The entry town for Namdapha, and the site of a Tibetan settlement relocated here in 1975 from Changlang, running a cooperative that farms, weaves carpets and operates the settlement's businesses. A monastery, a carpet loom and a rainforest gate within a few hundred metres of one another.
VijaynagarNatureChanglang
A settlement beyond Namdapha near the international boundary, home to Lisu and to families of former Assam Rifles personnel settled here in the 1960s. For most of its history it has been reachable only by a multi-day walk through the park or by air, and it is among the most isolated inhabited places in India.
KhonsaUrbanTirap
The Tirap headquarters town, on the ridge, and the market and administrative centre for the Nocte villages around it. The approach from the Assam plain via Deomali climbs the whole escarpment in a few kilometres.
Longding and WakkaHeritageLongding
The Wancho headquarters and one of the large hilltop villages above it. Wakka is where the carved posts, log drum and morung architecture are still to be seen in a working village rather than in a museum. Oriah at Longding falls in mid-February.
Best time: February.
Changlang town and the Namchik–Namphuk coalfieldUrbanChanglang
The district town, and the Tertiary coal measures beside it. The coal is shallow, sub-bituminous and high in sulphur, and mining it has been intermittently permitted and intermittently halted — the single largest question about land and livelihood in the district.
Bordumsa and InnaoHeritageChanglang
Singpho villages in the foothills, with Theravada temples and households that still cure phalap in bamboo over the hearth. This is where the tea story of the subcontinent actually begins, and it is not marked as such anywhere.
Kamhua NoknuHeritageLongding
A Wancho village that has become the reference point for the documentation of the language and of the Wancho script, through work done there over the past two decades. An ordinary hill village that is also, for linguistics, a type site.