AIMING HIGH
For most Indians—at least those of us west of the ‘Chicken neck’—the lush and remote valleys of Arunachal Pradesh are a tantalisingly exotic yet attainable idyll. Even before the pandemic, the state had been growing in prominence as a destination, thanks in part to a clutch of festivals and events that offered a heady blend of wilderness adventure, indigenous tribal culture and a cosmopolitan music scene. Meanwhile an energetic generation of tourism entrepreneurs had begun to develop imaginative new destinations, properties and experiential circuits in the mountain state. Given its location, sandwiched between the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan and the highlands of Southeast Asia, it’s tempting to see the future of tourism in the state as teetering between two very different alternatives: low impact and exclusive like Bhutan or mass-oriented like Thailand. Now, as the long spell of Covid house-arrest gradually relaxes its grip and Indians can begin to plot our pent-up dreams of escape, we took the opportunity to ask some leading tourism professionals with ambitions in the Northeast about Arunachal’s tourism journey after the pandemic.
