Dirang & Bomdila

Every road to Tawang climbs through these two towns, and most travellers rush them; they should not. Bomdila, the headquarters of West Kameng, sits on a ridge at about 2,400 metres, a scatter of tin roofs and prayer flags with an upper gompa, Gentse Gaden Rabgyel Lling, founded in 1965 by the twelfth Tsona Gontse Rinpoche, and a viewpoint where on clear mornings the snow peaks of Kangto and Gorichen stand up behind the ridges. Chinese troops reached Bomdila in November 1962, and the town remembers.

Forty kilometres on and nearly a thousand metres lower, Dirang is a Monpa valley on the Kameng river, warm enough for apple and kiwi orchards, with a seventeenth-century stone dzong whose huddled houses and narrow lanes still shelter families, hot sulphur springs on the riverbank, the national yak research centre at Dirang with its high-pasture farm at Nyukmadung, and the new Thupsung Dhargye Ling monastery consecrated by the Dalai Lama in 2017. Ten kilometres up a side valley, the Sangti meadows draw black-necked cranes from Tibet between November and February, one of the very few wintering sites in India. A day here is orchard walks, a soak in the springs, an afternoon drive to Mandala Top where 108 stupas ring a hill at 3,000 metres, and thukpa by the stove as the valley goes dark.

Dirang and Bomdila are also where you acclimatise before Sela, and where Monpa life is easiest to meet. Give them a night each.