Mechuka

Mechuka, or Menchukha, means something like medicinal water of snow in the Memba tongue, and the name fits: a broad, flat valley at 1,829 metres where the Yargyap Chu, the upper Siyom river, runs turquoise over white stones under pine forest and snow ridges, 29 kilometres from the Tibetan border. The Memba, Buddhists who came over the passes centuries ago, keep the Samten Yongcha monastery on a hillock at the western end, a Mahayana gompa said to be about 400 years old and to predate Tawang. The road from Aalo, 180 kilometres of hairpins and landslips, was cut only in recent decades; before it, the advanced landing ground built during the 1962 war was the only lifeline, and army transport planes still drop in beside the grazing yaks.

A day here is a walk across hanging bridges of bamboo and wire to Dorjeeling village, a picnic on river sand, a climb to the Hanuman face that nature carved on a cliff, an hour at the Gurudwara Guru Nanak Taposthan where legend says the guru meditated and soldiers now serve langar, and an evening of buckwheat pancakes and ara by a Memba hearth. The Adventure Festival in November brings paragliders and rafters; December snow brings silence. Mechuka is as far as most roads in Arunachal go, and its emptiness is the point.