chalet los angeles Forty-five kilometres north of Kohima is the small town of Tuophema, which can make a useful overnig

FACIAL TATTOOING Historically famous for their beauty, Apatani women were all too often kidnapped by warriors of the neighbouring Nishi tribes. As a defence , Apatani girls were deliberately defaced. They were given facial tattoos, like graffitied beards chalet los angeles scribbled onto living Mona Lisa paintings, and extraordinary nose plugs known as dat fitted into holes cut in their upper nostrils. Some men also have tattoos. Peace with the Nishis in the 1960s meant an end to that brutal practice, but many older women still wear dat. Photography is an understandably sensitive issue, so ask first. Some Apatani women have had cosmetic surgery to remove their tattoos.

India s wildest and least explored state, Arunachal Pradesh, the Land of Dawn-lit Mountains is the final frontier in Indian tourism. The state rises abruptly from the Assam plains as a mass of densely forested, and impossibly steep, hills. These in turn rise to fabulous snow-capped peaks along the Tibetan border. At least 25 tribal groups live in Arunachal s valleys; high up in the dramatic Tawang Valley are several splendid Monpa monastery villages. Arunachal has yet to be fully surveyed and mapped, but slowly its high passes and deep valleys are starting to open up to those with an adventurous heart.

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