John Keats wrote achingly of a place bountiful with nature’s “glories infinite”. It’s easy to imagine that he was writing about Arunachal Pradesh. With sweeping mountains descending into breathtaking valleys, gushing waterfalls, and meandering rivers, it’s a rich canvas of colours, shifting from hues of bright and mellow blues and greens to dense blankets of mist.
The northeastern state is the biggest of the “seven sisters” – yes, it’s not Assam! – and is of immense strategic importance too. In India, it has the third longest international border after Jammu and Kashmir and West Bengal, but touches the maximum countries – Myanmar, China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, China and Bhutan, on which military presence has only increased over the past years. And not just for sharper surveillance, aggressive and defensive posturing, and military standoffs, but also for infrastructure development, which has been dramatic over the past few years. The roads across the state are extraordinarily smooth and well-maintained, with remarkably prompt response from the Borders Roads Organisations (BRO) to landslide obstructions that may occur.
