directly from owner FACIAL TATTOOING Historically famous for their beauty, Apatani women were all too often kidnapped by

The ASTC bus station directly from owner (AT Rd) has frequent services to Sivasagar ( 35 to 45, 1 hours), Tezpur ( 120 to 140, four hours) and Guwahati directly from owner ( 260, eight hours, eight buses 6am to noon; buses pass Kaziranga en route).

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 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.