village at winter park Only 40km from Guwahati, this small national park has the highest concentration of rhinoceros in the

Only 40km from Guwahati, this small national park has the highest concentration of rhinoceros in the world. Entrance fees are the same as Kaziranga National Park (see p 561 ). Getting village at winter park into the park involves village at winter park a boat ride over the river boundary to the elephant- mounting station. From there it s a one-hour trip atop an elephant lumbering through boggy grassland and stirring up petulant rhinos.

CENTRAL village at winter park ARUNACHAL S TRIBAL GROUPS The variety of tribal peoples in central Arunachal Pradesh is astonishing, but although the Adi (Abor), Nishi, Tajin, Hill Miri and various other Tibeto-Burman tribes consider themselves different from one another most are at least distantly related. Over the last few decades Christian missionaries have been highly active throughout the Northeast and in the process have brought huge changes to the region s traditional cultures, religious beliefs and ways of life. Despite this, some aspects of the traditional lifestyle are just about holding on and many people continue to practise village at winter park the traditional village at winter park religion of Donyi-Polo (sun and moon) worship sometimes at the same time as proclaiming themselves Christian. For ceremonial occasions, village chiefs typically wear scarlet shawls and a bamboo wicker hat spiked with porcupine quill or hornbill feathers. A few old men still wear their hair long, tied around to form a topknot above their foreheads. Women favour hand-woven wraparounds like Southeast Asian sarongs. House designs village at winter park vary somewhat. Traditional Adi villages are generally the most photogenic with luxuriant palmyra-leaf thatching and boxlike village at winter park granaries stilted to deter rodents.

boat is met by a bus to Pasighat in Arunachal Pradesh. Ferries can carry just two jeeps. There s little shelter and the journey takes around eight hours (5 hours downstream), so bring an umbrella, water and sunscreen. The journey can be quite an adventure village at winter park with the boats bouncing off the ever-shifting sandbars (and sometimes not bouncing off them!) and with brief stops en route giving glimpses of isolated riverside hamlets. Exact departure points depend on the Brahmaputra s water level.