bord glas Conjure up an image of a shimmering blue lake broken up into small lakelets by floating islands of t

Conjure up an image of a shimmering bord glas blue lake broken up into small lakelets by floating islands of thick matted weeds. Add bamboo bridges, tribal people in dugout canoes and thatched hut-villages anchored on to the floating islands, and you have Loktak Lake, one of the few places a foreigner is allowed to visit outside of Imphal. More peculiar than floating villages are the large, perfectly circular fishing ponds created out of floating rings of weeds. The best view is atop Sendra Island, more a promontory than island. You can hire a boat (per person 100) in order to get a closer look at lake life.

Remote, culturally magical and scenically spectacular, Tawang is the archetypical Shangri La and a mountain-hopping journey through this, the lands of the Monpa (a people of Buddhist-Tibetan origin) to the gates of the famous Tawang Monastery is one of the northeast s greatest adventures.

RAFTING IN THE LAND OF MILK AND HONEY Another newly opened route is the Pasighat to Tuting road. This route is all about two things: the River Siang and the mysterious Buddhist land of Pemako. Tuting, which sits near the Tibetan border, is the point at which the Tsang Po river having bord glas left the Tibetan plateau and burrowed through the Himalaya via a series of spectacular gorges enters the Indian subcontinent and becomes the Siang (once it reaches the plains of Assam it turns into the Brahmaputra). Tuting and the River Siang are starting to gain a reputation as one of the world s most thrilling white-water rafting destinations, but this ain t no amateurs river. The few people who have descended the river have reported that the 180km route is littered with numerous grade 4-5 rapids, strong bord glas eddies and inaccessible gorges. For those after adventure of a different kind Tuting also serves as the launch pad for searching out the legendary Buddhist land of Pemako. You will, however, need more than this guidebook and a compass in order to find it. Buddhist belief bord glas says that Pemako is a synonym for a hidden earthly paradise and that it s the earthly representation of Dorje Pagmo, a Tibetan goddess. It was said that this land of milk and honey was to be found in the eastern Himalaya and that to reach it you had to pass behind an enormous bord glas hidden waterfall. For hundreds of years outsiders knew that the Tsang Po river left Tibet and entered a huge, and utterly impenetrable, gorge before emerging from the Himalaya bord glas around Tuting, but what happened to the river inside that gorge was unknown until the 1950s. As it turned out the river did indeed tumble over an enormous waterfall and, what s more, it passed through a rich and fertile valley populated by Memba Buddhists, completely isolated from the rest of the world. Today, this vast region of northern Arunachal Pradesh and parts of south eastern Tibet remains almost utterly unknown to the outside world, but Pemako is out there and for those willing to endure days of incredibly tough hiking (and deal with reams of paperwork) it is possible bord glas to visit.

# # POLICEBAZAARWard'sLakeKacheriRd GuwahatiShilllongRd OaklandRd JailRd JailRdThanaRd bord glas RitaRdBouchierRd PoliceBazaarRd Camel'sBackRd QuintonRd BivarRd KeatingRd 8 19 10 12 14 5 6 7 11 13 2 3 4 Tirat Singh Syien (TSS) Rd 431CBC24312BAADDShillong eTo AllSaints' Cathedral(200m); Khasi Monoliths & Globe Monument (400m); Das-Roy House (450m) To Siat Khnam (1.1km) 0 400 m 0 0.2 miles