I met a granny in the village Bomdo this time who has walked to Tibet! She along with another fifteen people walked for 12 days to reach what they call ‘Mimet’ around the year 1950. The walk was mainly for bringing back salt although various other barters would take place, I have listed here few…rice and rice beer were exchanged for wheat powder or salt. The exchange rate was pretty simple; 1 cup rice beer fetches one fist amount of wheat powder or a cup of salt. Various other things that were exchanged were bamboo combs and other artefacts and ginger for Dao (a knife), wool and certain fruits. Granny very enthusiastically brought this spin that’s at least 60 years old and posed for the picture to depict how they extract thread to make clothes.
Other interesting facts were that people with heavy bags were invited to rich homes whereas people with light bags were invited to poor homes. Naturally people carried a lot of weight and granny told me people would carry about 50 – 60 kilos! The other strange thing about the trip is that people who die on the way are not brought back. And whatever happens on the way the group is all the time happily singing and walking.
So, basically people from Bomdo village were walking at least a distance of 150 km and more through tough terrain full of forests and snow near the Indo-Tibet border to bring back salt and knives. I already knew that Adi people are physically tough but now I just think they are from the planet Kryptos!
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