Camping at Senge Dzong

Day 11 to 13.

We climbed around 3000 ft from Dirang to a place on the road to Sela Pass at 8100 ft. There was heavy rain forecast so we stopped climbing to Senge and chose to camp next to some food shops. The owner, Kuppa, told us to camp in the middle of the grassy patch on the U turn under the Buddhist prayer poles. It was the only spot that could work for us so we did just that. The road from Dirang loops and winds up the mountain and we turned many hairpins. The son of the owner, Tenzin was really playful and took to our bikes with absolute glee. The weather turned rainy and cold in the night. The Sea to Summit tent held up well even with six hours of continuous rain. By the morning a thick fog had enveloped the beautiful densely forested mountains around us and we were quite cold. The night had been frequently interrupted by convoys of trucks streaming down till about eleven. One truck chose to park right in front of our tent. I was actually thankful because that shielded us from the possibility of a driver losing his brakes and crashing into us. The morning was a long process of drying the tent and somehow stuffing it all in even when wet as we had to move along and climb to reach Senge.

Senge Dzong is a fortified village and monastery at 3008 metres. The serenity and fascinating nature of the swirling clouds and towering fortress like mountains, dense forests and sea of dark green is a view that in my mind was reserved only for the rainforest of the Amazon.

I am slowly beginning to realise that Arunachal Pradesh is still truly India’s ‘ Last Frontier’ – it’s last pristine wilderness, raw beauty, unexplored and untamed- screaming desperately to be preserved for eternity.

We cycled just 12 kms on day 12 but gained altitude from 8000 to 10,100 ft riding through some rain and dense fog in sections, to the sound of birds like the Laughingthrush, and the Green Magpie, continuously stopped in our tracks by persevering army convoys due to poor visibility, as they moved to various positions along the Trans Himalayan road to the Indo China border. We stopped on the way at Nyukmadung War Memorial to pay homage to those who laid down their lives fighting the Chinese Army in one of the fiercest battles at the location.

It was also a day in which Ashim claimed her first ever ascent to the altitude of 3100 m / 10,000 ft. on a bicycle, that too on a loaded touring bike.

Senge Village itself is quite small but has a beautiful and historical monastery. In 1959 , when the Dalai Lama escaped from occupied Tibet, he took shelter in this monastery for a night.

We entrenched in a homestay at Senge due to bad weather waiting for the weather to ease up a bit on Sela Pass at 4200 m / 14700 ft. It’s getting colder as we climb to higher elevations and we can see the villages stocked up with wood for the winter- their only means to stay warm, cook and heat water as electrical grids snap during the severe winter months. The room was tiny but cold and a heater proved to be insufficient. We pulled out our sleeping bags and kept warm as the night temperature dropped to single digits.

The homestay was right on the highway and army convoys streamed past many times in the day. It was raining lightly most of the time and we hoped that there would be some respite before we started cycling towards Sela Pass.