A First-Timer's Guide To Arunachal Pradesh

My first brush with Arunachal Pradesh happened in 2006 when my parents got posted in a tiny, deep-in-a-forest kind of location called Hoz, right next to the roaring Ranganadi River (meaning red river because of the colour of the water). The first meeting with Arunachal Pradesh was great, even though it looked like a chapter that could have been from an Indiana Jones movie. It had rained relentlessly, and the whole mountainside was deposited in a state highway. This was just a few kilometres from Doimukh, a village in Papum Pare district, not too far away from the state capital Itanagar. In their defence, my parents did warn me about the absence of roads, but the trip was made nonetheless, and I lived to tell the tale.