I was told to report at the Sumo ticket office at 5.30am and that meant setting the alarm at 4.30am. The sole reason for this early alarm call was the fact that it took 30 mins for the hot water to reach my room. However on that morning after 45 minutes there was no sign of anything remotely warm, so I parked up my gear and left.


At the taxi stand, my sumo was no where to be seen . At 6.45 another Sumo arrived (Sumo’s are 4x4’s made by Tata Motors) and offered to take me if I paid the fair again - I refused. This appeared to be another scam, because after 20 mins, the driver changed his mind and allowed me to travel on my own ticket. During this time, a man from Tirap translated for me and told me I was being ripped off. Thanks to Prodip I left on my original ticket without being charged double. He invited me to Tirap, but when I said this was not possible he was amazed. “The Arunachal Pradesh government will not allow foreigners to enter Tirap - Indians can” I added. He was as perplexed as I was by this information. Surely if its good enough for Indian tourists, then it must be OK for foreign tourists. These instances make travel in Arunachal Pradesh difficult for tourists.


The Sumo was as full as humanely possible with a variety of different people. People from Arunachal, Nepal, Assam, Bihar, Tibet and Mishmi . I sat next to a man from Ziro who was tiny (a god send in a squeezed Sumo) plus a girl from Tezu. The man from Ziro (where I am planning to visit in two weeks or so) was very interesting and kind. The girl from Tezu was quite quiet. The Tibetan girl was very talkative and when we stopped for breakfast, I ate with her. She immediately invited me to the Tibetan village outside Tezu for tea.


We crossed into Arunachal Pradesh and the driver had to put the Sumo on a raft to transverse the Lohit River. Soon the Mountains bordering Lohit and Burma came into view. The views became spectacular as we crossed these rivers with the snow capped mountains becoming more visible in the distance. The rivers became glacial coloured and the quantity of water was, I guess about one twentieth of capacity or less. Getting to a raft involved crossing the boulder strewn river beds on makeshift rock and sand roads. The 4x4 Sumos coped well, but it was slow progress. The tropical nature of the area was also apparent. Sometimes we passed huge trees in forests with vines drooping down from the highest branches. Banana and Papaya plantations dominated.


The border crossing was as expected. I was confronted by confused and somewhat belligerent soldiers. “Why are you travelling alone?”  “Where is your guide?” Was always the question . I wanted to answer flippantly but ignored temptation. The rest of the Sumo was kept waiting as I had my documents photocopied, examined, recorded and photocopied again. Back in the Sumo everyone was bonding, but not one of the English speakers could tell me much about Tezu. They all seemed pleased when at last I was allowed to rejoin the vehicle and we could all resume the journey. Outside people’s faces were changing and it did appear that Tezu and the area around the town was more cosmopolitan that I had expected. Certainly there was a predominance of more Asian looking faces and several shorter people.


The driver then took a detour through a large army base, with its pleasant tree lined surroundings, nice cottages and personal dressed in linen beige trousers, white polo tops and bright white sneakers, before heading straight into a Tibetan camp. It was initially (from what I understand a refugee centre) but over the course of the years had developed into a full scale village. Here we dropped off the Tibetan girl in a nice wooden house in the suburbs and continued on into Tezu.


Tezu rather abruptly came into view and it started promisingly with a large community park and school. However after that surprise, it descended into the usual shanty town appearance with piles of rubbish and make shift shops . The driver dropped the rest off us off at the Sumo area,and it was then that the quiet girl sitting next to me invited me for lunch. I thought why not. She was immediately joined by another woman who was waiting for her with a bicycle. “She is my sister, “ she added in broken English - even though they could not have looked more different. The quiet girl turned out to be called Kumari and her sister was called something very complicated.


I actually thought we were going to her home, but instead we wound our way through the narrow deserted roads covered in rubbish and animal waste to a small hotel. Hotels in India are usually just restaurants. Momo (a personal favourite) was the speciality of the day and we busily tucked into these Tibetan dumplings - excellent.


With the sun now getting warm I was interested to find some accommodation and get rid of my increasingly heavy bags, but Kumari was now interested to show me her and her sister’s house. “Is it close?” I asked her and she pointed down the street. “Well,” I thought, this will be interesting and off we went with her sister walking next to the bike which was piled high with Kumari’s bags and me carrying my backpack.


Well the house was not even in Tezu but was actually located in the neighbouring village some four kilometres away . By the time I arrived in my warm jacket (bought for the mountain snow) I was melting in the 30C. The astonishment on Kumari’s parents faces was priceless as we walked onto their property. They had three small huts made from bamboo and reeds and these walls were covered in mud and animal dung. The furthest was the kitchen, with a simple fire on the ground, some squat wooden stools and a couple of large buckets for water. Several cooking pots were hung above the fire. The smallest hut at the furthest end of the plot was for the parents and the largest middle hut was divided inside into three rooms. The middle section had a tv and a bed and some plastic chairs. To the left was the room where the children slept and to the right was where Kumari’s sister slept with her husband, her young three year old daughter and four month old son. I never met her husband.


Kumari, as it turned out was 18 years old and her mother was 49 and her father was 52. He was originally from Nepali and she was from Assam. Kumari had several elder brothers whom I never met apart from one who came by on a motorcycle to see what all the fuss was about. Her two elder sisters had married and moved away. Here in the house she had one younger brother, about 10, I guessed who just sat and watched TV all day and looked like he had been mortally wounded when a power cut struck ( I decided to call him TV Mike). He also kept hold of the remote like it was his only possession. He had a sister who was eight or nine and was inquisitive and friendly.  


Dad was a real character always joking and smiling. He was tall with a slightly greying beard and was very thin. “He always wears my tee shirts” mentioned Kumari. The more I got to know him the more I liked him. I would guess he had twenty words of English and he was the only English speaker after Kumari. Her mother seemed quite suspicious of me at the beginning but soon warmed up and would sit next to me and chatter away in Assamese or Hindi apparently firmly in the belief that I could understood everything.


They were basically farmers and Dad owned six cows, his pride and joy. Every morning he would take them to the fields and then in afternoon, he would return to the fields and collect them to bring them back to the area next to the kitchen where they would stay the night. They had two female Assamese dogs, like beige coloured small Huskies. Both were both bitches and both seemed to be called Tommie!


It turned out the Kumari had been to Rajasthan and worked in a shopping mall for several months and this was her return. The luggage she brought was all her new clothes, which she now showed everyone, whilst Mum looked on with a knowing smile. Meanwhile her sister disappeared into the kitchen and prepared an enormous meal. Kumasi asked “what do you eat?” to which I replied I was a vegetarian - I was given pork and rice. It was very good and afterwards her Dad asked me to stay the night. “Of course” I replied suggesting I should walk back into Tezu to get some food.


Meanwhile, news of my arrival must have circulated around the village and suddenly we were inundated by many neighbours all suitable inquisitive. Kumar introduced all of them as “my sister”, or “my brother, father, grandmother, aunt” etc. I soon realised that either she had the world’s biggest family or these were not biological relatives. With her four fathers and three mothers, my mind was confused. Nevertheless all the neighbours were in great spirits and very inquisitive. Women arrived with children in arms, dogs, goats in tow and some older men arrived. I never saw many younger men during my entire visit. “They are all in Tezu!” Kumari would explain. Mostly all these guests would sit down in a circle around me or gave me their babies to hold and then laughed when the infants all screamed at me or urinated on me. For the first time in my life I felt a bit like a politician. This continuous procession of visitors went on during the duration of my stay. Sometimes i would walk out of the kitchen and find a queue of sari clad neighbours with babies waiting to greet me. The father just ignored this charade, whilst the other looked genuinely perplexed by this circus and continued to gabble on in Hindi at me. In the late afternoon I went shopping with Kumari and bought a huge quantity of vegetables and a chicken from a local butcher who appeared to be in his early teens. Tezu offered little respite from the starring obsession, but maybe that was because I was walking with Kumari and her sister. It also appeared that there were many Nepalese living here, as Kumari got on with all of them.


The long walks back to the village at least afforded the opportunity of seeing several of the back streets and suburbs of Tezu, which in some cases were quite respectable and affluent. However there seemed little chances of employment for the young except in agriculture or in one of the small retailers. Alcohol consumption here seemed prolific judging by the piles of bottles on the streets and next to the houses (no collection in India).


As it got dark the temperature plummeted alarmingly and it was very cold, so we all piled into the kitchen by the fire. TV Mike remained glued to the Power Rangers in the main hut. Kumari’s sister then produced a sumptuous meal in between dealing with her kids. This she produced off this one small fire with limited pots and pans. It was excellent. After that Dad wanted to watch the cricket but TV Mike had hidden the remote so after a frantic hunt and yelling match with TV Mike he retreated back into the kitchen to drink the bottle of beer I had bought him. TV Mike continued to stare at the Power Rangers.


In the end I decided on an early night as the temperature was dropping and I had been up since 4.30am. TV Mike was manhandled out of what was now my bedroom and I was given two blankets and the bunk by the TV and off I went to sleep. I actually slept well, getting up twice for the call of nature at which time (one) Tommy growled at me both times. When I awoke it was already light at about 6.00am and already the sun was streaming into the hut through the bamboo walls. When I turned over in bed there were four women and three children silently watching me from the other side of the room. When my eyes adjusted to their reality, I sat bolt upright in bed and they all burst out laughing and got up and left.


The morning also seemed to involve more and more neighbours arriving to meet me, staying for a tea and then leaving. In between this I managed some breakfast. Several neighbours were keen to show me their houses, but I was a little worried that it was all getting out of hand, and then suddenly everyone vanished. “Church” said Kumari, and we decided to take this opportunity to go and wash, which of course meant the local river. Thankful for some peace and quiet, I took the plunge. Back at the house, Kumari explained during this quiet period that her father had committed suicide when she was just eight and in the Indian tradition his brother had come to look after the family. She also said that her Step father’s mother in Nepal was ill and that her step father, mother and the two youngest would go back to live in Nepal next month, she had decided to stay in Tezu with her sister. It must have been a difficult childhood.


With the sun out and the church goers returning, normal service seemed to be resumed with TV Mike back in front of the box, and more relatives and friends lining up to meet me. When Kumari suggested we went into town this sounded like a great idea, so off we went to buy some food for dinner. I took all my gear as I was catching an early morning Sumo to Roing the following day and was therefore going to stay the night in Tezu.


I checked in to the Sheva Hotel on the fringes of the market, and then bought the food and had some photos of the family printed as a thank you. This all took time, being Sunday etc and we arrived back in the village after nightfall.


Everyone was pleased to see me despite my absence of only a few hours. “They did not think you would come back and with the photos,” Kumari said. Her mother and father were over joyed at receiving the photos which I had laminated. Her sister produced another huge meal in between feeding and putting her children to bed. I still was not sure what her husband was up too - as I had not met him. We all had a good giggle and then it was time for me to leave. The whole family even TV Mike walked with me to the outskirts of Tezu and then just Kumari and her father walked me to the hotel.


At the hotel I was straight to bed but this happened to be a Hindu festival day and my room backed on to their version of the X Factor, I got little sleep that night. The next morning I was up early and at 7.00am when there was a knock at the door and there was Kumari, who had come to take me too the Sumo and say goodbye. Well I can honestly say that this was an extraordinary experience.