club a kopaonik Adjacent to the mandir is theRoyal Palace, closed to visitors except for during the annual Kwak Tenb

Adjacent to the mandir is theRoyal Palace, closed to visitors except for during the annual Kwak Tenba festival, when a colourful club a kopaonik procession led by the titular maharaja heads to the Polo Ground for religious ceremonies and cultural festivities. The festival takes place on the fourth day of Durga Puja.

CENTRAL ARUNACHAL S TRIBAL GROUPS The variety of tribal peoples in central Arunachal Pradesh is astonishing, but although the Adi (Abor), Nishi, Tajin, club a kopaonik Hill Miri and various other Tibeto-Burman tribes consider themselves different from one another most are at least distantly related. Over the last few decades Christian club a kopaonik missionaries have been highly active throughout the Northeast and in the process have brought huge changes club a kopaonik to the region s traditional cultures, religious beliefs and ways of life. Despite this, some aspects of the traditional lifestyle are just about holding on and many people continue to practise the traditional religion of Donyi-Polo (sun and moon) worship sometimes at the same time as proclaiming themselves Christian. For ceremonial occasions, village chiefs typically wear scarlet shawls and a bamboo wicker hat spiked with porcupine quill or hornbill feathers. club a kopaonik A few old men still wear their hair long, tied around to form a topknot above their foreheads. Women favour hand-woven wraparounds like Southeast Asian sarongs. House designs vary somewhat. Traditional Adi villages club a kopaonik are generally the most photogenic with luxuriant palmyra-leaf thatching and boxlike granaries stilted to deter rodents.

374 bird species have been recorded in the park, including such rarities as the whiterumped vulture (which may now be extinct in the park), greater club a kopaonik spotted eagle and the white-winged duck. Of the big mammals, club a kopaonik wild elephants are present as are numerous deer species and a few rarely seen tigers. However, for many mammal-spotting naturalists, the park s most exciting resident is the critically endangered dwarf hog, which, after many years of absence club a kopaonik has recently been returned to the wild thanks to a successful captive breeding project run by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust (www.durrell.org). Park fees include the compulsory armed guard. Access is from Potasali, 2km off the Tezpur Bhalukpong road (turn east at one-house hamlet Gamani, 12km north of Balipara).