Ziro Valley

The Apatani came to this high valley in the Subansiri hills centuries ago and made it the most productive farmland in Arunachal without a single draught animal or machine: terraces of wet rice irrigated by bamboo channels, with fish raised in the same water, and millet on the bunds between. That system, and the villages that run it, put the Apatani cultural landscape on UNESCO's tentative list. Ziro is really two places: Hapoli, the administrative town, and old Ziro on the plateau where villages such as Hong, Hija, Hari, Bamin and Dutta stand as dense clusters of wooden houses on stilts, each with its lapang platform and babo poles raised at the Myoko festival in March.

Older Apatani women still wear the nose plugs and facial tattoos of a tradition ended in the 1970s. A day here is slow: morning mist over the terraces from the Kile Pakho ridge, a walk between villages past bamboo groves and kiwi orchards, a meal of smoked pork, bamboo-shoot pila and rice with tapyo salt cooked over a hearth, an evening of O rice beer in a homestay. Talley Valley, a wildlife sanctuary of clouded leopards and silver fir a day's trek away, is the wilderness beyond.

Every late September the Ziro Festival of Music fills a paddy field with bamboo stages and independent bands from across India, and the valley becomes the country's most beautiful open-air venue. Ziro is Arunachal's easiest entry and its most complete picture of a tribe still living on its own terms.