Wake up and feed the Mithun

This time at Bomdo village started off on a different note. Firstly, I was glad to meet the Inspection Bungalow caretaker Dungé Yalik, who is also a Forest Department staff in the village, the only person I knew well before I visited the village. Met his beautiful kids, and Dungé himself will figure later in the blogpost.

Well, for starters I slept well and the day started with feeding salt to the home-mithun who was visiting after long.

 

Later in the day, I visited old fallows (shifting cultivation patches that are presently not being cultivated but were cultivated in the past and most likely will be in the future) close to the village. The good thing with shifting cultivation sites in an Adi landscape is that every place has a name. I was pleasantly surprised to visit a fallow named Lori about 50 years old, which I needed for my study; such a site was unavailable in other sites I visited in central Arunachal Pradesh. In Kanyong, we met more mithun and I recorded a sequence of photographs that follow.

When we reached the place, the mithuns came closer, one by one; they all thought we had salt. Finally we were surrounded by five of them! We also saw a a beautiful kukri before reaching Kanyong.

The evening was full of interesting conversations with the village leader (head-gaam), second-in-command (gaam-buda) and others, flavoured with local rice beer.

The next day I planned a long trip with one of the Bomdians, Migon, who ensured at least ten times if my legs can make the trip he has in plan for me and the timing we leave. As far as I could tell, he was convinced I could not wake up at 4 in the morning and walk the rest of the day.

The day started at 425 and we left to visit the fallows and forests adjoining the villages at about 5. Heavy clouds pitched in by 6 and it started pouring. We decided to take a break for some time considering that I was carrying a camera that I could not afford getting wet. We reached a temporary hut called 'Poyup' in the jhum field of Bamut Medo, the gaambuda, and he welcomed us. Here, while I stayed for a an hour I realised how hard people work for the rice they eat all year. In comparison with people like me walking to the nearest grocery store and bringing home a bag, these guys literally work many months for a years suppy of rice. I made a video of the people planting rice seeds after the more laborious task of clearing the secondary forest. Whats impressive is that theres a tune accompanying the planting of rice too—“ho ohh ho ohh ho ohh”—which helps in keeping the energy levels high.

We then walked to some more fallows and got to a 50-m waterfall, called 'Diné Dicheng' by the Bomdians, which was even more beautiful than the stream I visited the earlier day and I took a dip again; the chill and the force of the water took away any tiredness I had in me.

Further ahead we saw a red-headed trogon (locally called 'Poxo') and a small chick in a nest, possibly a bulbul, could not be sure.

On the walk back to Bomdo village, I met a Telugu person, Pokir, in Bomdo village, only removed 2000 km from his original place! When I figured he is Telugu, like me, I could not control my excitement and yelled, "telugaa meeroo!" (are you Telugu, in Telugu). He just nodded and coolly said that he would meet me later in the day; perhaps I spooked him. He gave me as much reaction as somebody would if a leaf fell on them from a tree they were sitting under; I admit it was a bit funny and I felt embarassed! He got back to his work which was helping in building a canal from the stream to the paddy fields below near the village, and I moved on.

The next day I packed up from Bomdo to head back to Ramsing village and then in the evening after couple of rice wine glasses, wrote thi. This short trip was eventful to decide where my PhD study site should be.