The road away from hell

The nice thing about off-road vehicles is that you can mostly just point and go. This April, I pointed a Mahindra Thar down a rocky path leading from the road to the campsite at Geku, parked in line with the other vehicles in our convoy, and hauled my rucksack to my tent on a sandbar, on a bend of the Siang. Three years ago, we’d kicked off a four-day white-water rafting expedition at this spot. The chances of ever returning were vanishingly small—yet here I was, the same white sand, that iron sky over this same wild river. I couldn’t stop smiling.

The rafting trip had turned me into a slobbering adorer of Arunachal Pradesh, which is full of craggy mountains blanketed with thick forest or snow, crisp air, rushing rivers, birdsong, delicious pork dishes—and proud, hospitable Arunachalis, who come in a resplendent variety of tribes and customs, and are always up for one more drink and one more laugh.

So, when Lhakpa Tsering, president of the Arunachal Motor Sports Club, invited me to join the trans-Arunachal drive, I jumped at it. Geku was about midway along our east-to-west journey across the whole state, largely on the 2,500-km trans-Arunachal Highway.

Afterwards, in the grip of Delhi’s second Covid wave and the mirrored hothouse of isolation, it was the endorphin-soaked memories from this epic 12-day drive that kept me sane. Like peeing in Myanmar, because the only female-friendly spot at the Pangsau Pass was just across the border fence—nothing breaks the ice among fellow travellers like introducing yourself with your bum hanging out. Like peering at China from the military outpost at Kaho, the easternmost or ‘first’ village in India, where telephones don’t exist, and the 14 local families communicate via radio. Like being under a leaky canopy in a torrential cloudburst at the beach campsite at Hayuliang, by the Lohit river, laughing and singing and feeling aliiiiive.

When the devastation in Delhi felt like that Edvard Munch painting, I remembered making screamy noises as racing champion Gaurav Gill demonstrated ‘drifting’ on a mountain road. Staring at my empty bar, I thought of watching women making apong, that hangover-free fermented rice drink, on our rest day in Bomjir, by the banks of the broad Dibang river. When I was lonely, I remembered joining the Mopin festivities in Aalo, where someone in the crowd smeared my face with celebratory white paste, or the homestay in Basar, where the host family chatted with us around their enormous hearth, and four of us bunked down in one of their rooms.

Caged at home, I relived driving 13 exhilarating hours to Ziro, where I’d always longed to attend the famous music festival. Waking to each lockdown Groundhog Day, I pretended to be crawling out of my tent in a cold dawn at gorgeous Pakke Kesang or Shergaon, for a cup of hot sweet tea, and brushing my teeth with my eyes resting on some extraordinary river or valley or mountain vista.

When the Delhi heat rose, I thought of climbing up to the Sela Pass and the cool snows around Tawang, and dancing to a live band in rain and sleet at 12,000 feet, next to the ridiculously beautiful PTso lake. When my playlist got boring, I remembered the large-hearted groups of Arunachali men and women who welcomed us with song and dance at every stop.

I’m torn about telling everyone about a still-pristine place, but I can’t recommend a road trip in Arunachal Pradesh enough, if you’re up for a little adventure. Whether it was on boulders strung together with dust, or creamy world-class asphalt—there was plenty of both—the pleasure of driving through endless beauty in a fabulous beast of a car will stay with me a long time.

I think it might see me through the third wave.

(Mitali Saran thinks a good asteroid could solve all our problems @mitalisaran)