chalet roslyn ny 571 HORNBILL FESTIVAL Nagaland s biggest annual festival, the Hornbill Festival (1-7 December) is ce

FACIAL TATTOOING Historically chalet roslyn ny famous for their beauty, Apatani women were all too often kidnapped by warriors of the neighbouring Nishi tribes. As a defence , Apatani girls were deliberately defaced. They were given facial tattoos, like graffitied beards scribbled onto living Mona Lisa paintings, and extraordinary nose plugs known as dat fitted into holes cut in their upper nostrils. Some men also have tattoos. Peace with the Nishis in the 1960s meant an end to that brutal practice, but many older women still wear dat. Photography is an understandably sensitive issue, so ask first. Some Apatani women have had cosmetic surgery to remove their tattoos. chalet roslyn ny

571 HORNBILL FESTIVAL Nagaland chalet roslyn ny s biggest annual festival, the Hornbill Festival (1-7 December) is celebrated at Kisama Heritage Village (see below) chalet roslyn ny with various Naga tribes converging for a weeklong cultural, dance and sporting bash, much of it in full warrior costume. Of all the festivals in the northeast this is the most spectacular and photogenic. Simultaneously, Kohima also hosts a rock festival chalet roslyn ny (www.hornbillmusic.com).

CENTRAL ARUNACHAL S TRIBAL GROUPS The variety of tribal peoples in central Arunachal Pradesh is astonishing, but although the Adi (Abor), Nishi, Tajin, chalet roslyn ny 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 chalet roslyn ny this, some aspects of the traditional lifestyle are just about holding on and many people continue to practise the traditional 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 chalet roslyn ny like Southeast Asian sarongs. House designs chalet roslyn ny vary somewhat. Traditional Adi villages are generally the most photogenic with luxuriant palmyra-leaf thatching and boxlike granaries stilted to deter rodents.

Once you leave the outskirts of Shillong the road to Cherrapunjee passes through pretty scenery that becomes chalet roslyn ny dramatic at Dympep viewpoint, where a photogenic V-shape valley chalet roslyn ny slits deeply into the plateau.