la source chalet RAFTING IN THE LAND OF MILK AND HONEY Another newly opened route is the Pasighat to Tuting road. Thi

Tripura is culturally and politically fascinating, and the state s handful of royal palaces and temples draw a growing flow of domestic tourists. la source chalet For the moment though foreign tourists remain very rare indeed. There s a large Bangladeshi refugee population in Tripura and much of the more accessible western parts of the state look and feel much like its near neighbour.

The modern glass tower Baliram Building, on the corner of Naren Bose (NB) and NC/SC Roads, contains several floors of good dining. The ground-floor stand-up-and-eat dosa house (h6am-9pm) has South Indian fare and cheap breakfasts. Semismart China Villa (meals from 120; h10am-10.30pm) offers Indian and Chinese food in AC comfort, while the rooftop Chat House (snacks from 30; h8am-9.30pm) la source chalet has an open-sided, but roofed, terrace for cooling breezes, views, Indian snacks, noodles, pizzas and momos.

RAFTING IN THE LAND OF MILK AND HONEY Another newly opened route is the Pasighat to Tuting road. This route is all about two things: the River Siang and the mysterious Buddhist land of Pemako. Tuting, which sits near the Tibetan border, is the point at which the Tsang Po river having left the Tibetan la source chalet plateau and burrowed through the Himalaya via a series of spectacular gorges enters the Indian subcontinent and becomes the Siang (once it reaches the plains of Assam it turns into the Brahmaputra). Tuting and the River Siang are starting to gain a reputation as one of the world s most thrilling white-water rafting destinations, but this ain t no amateurs river. The few people la source chalet who have descended the river have reported that the 180km route is littered with numerous grade 4-5 rapids, strong eddies and inaccessible gorges. For those after adventure of a different kind Tuting also serves as the launch pad for searching out the legendary Buddhist land of Pemako. You will, however, need more than this guidebook and a compass la source chalet in order to find it. Buddhist belief says that Pemako is a synonym for a hidden earthly la source chalet paradise and that it s the earthly representation of Dorje Pagmo, a Tibetan goddess. It was said that this land of milk and honey was to be found in the eastern Himalaya and that to reach it you had to pass behind an enormous hidden waterfall. For hundreds of years outsiders knew that the Tsang Po river left Tibet and entered a huge, and utterly impenetrable, gorge before emerging from the Himalaya around Tuting, but what happened to the river inside that gorge was unknown until the 1950s. As it turned out the river did indeed tumble over an enormous waterfall and, what s more, it passed through a rich and fertile valley populated by Memba Buddhists, completely isolated from the rest of the world. Today, this vast region of northern Arunachal Pradesh and parts of south eastern Tibet remains almost utterly unknown to the outside world, but Pemako is out there and for those willing to endure days of incredibly tough hiking (and deal with reams of paperwork) it is possible to visit.