"Its land is not like our land, its sky is not like our sky," wrote Mullah Darvish of Herat, after visiting the fringes of what is today Arunachal Pradesh."…its roads are frightful like the path leading to the nook of death…. Its forests are full of violence like the hearts of the ignorant / Its Rivers are beyond limit and estimate, like the minds of the wise."

Today, of course, Arunachal's roads are no more frightful, and its forests no longer full of violence. But its "otherness" still remains; Arunachal, or NEEFA as it was called before, still seems so uncannily different form mainstream India, so enchantingly mysterious. As darkness fell and our vehicle negotiated hairpin bends, a thousand twinkling stars flashed from the roadside forest, a thousand tiny fireflies. There was a buzz of a million insects, adding to a continuous drone at places. And ever so often, the headlights picked out the lumbering mithuns, huge strange cow-like animals (a cross between the wild gaur and the buffalo) that are of great religious and economic value to the tribesmen.

The tribesmen, more than Arunachal's eerie jungles, its blue-green rivers and wild tangle of mountains, make this remote corner of northeast India so amazing and wonderful. Arunachal is home to about two dozen major tribes, each with its own language, culture and attire. But if there are differences, there are also similarities. Apart from the Monpas and other tribal groups of Tawang and adjoining western districts, who are Buddhists, most Arunachal tribes are animist, believing in a supreme god called Doni-Polo (Sun-Moon).