Arunachal Pradesh: two days with no network
I came into Arunachal Pradesh from Meghalaya at the end of June, and the thing I wrote down at the time was not about a mountain or a monastery.
No network for 2 days
That is the review. Arunachal is the part of India where the phone stops being useful, and if you have organised your life so that being unreachable is a problem, it will be a problem. If you have organised it so that being unreachable is the point, there is nowhere better.
Get the permit before you get excited
Arunachal needs an Inner Line Permit, and that applies to Indian citizens too — it is not a foreigner formality you can skip. Apply online before you travel rather than assuming you will sort it at the boundary.
Check the current process yourself. Permit rules for the North-East change more often than the guides that describe them.
Sela is not the pass it used to be
The road to Tawang used to close with the weather at Sela, which decided whether the trip happened at all. The tunnel underneath it opened in 2024 and made the route all-weather.
That is recent enough that a lot of what you will read about the drive is written for the old road. Plan against the tunnel, not against the pass.
Stay with someone
I spent two days with a family in West Kameng who were kind, humble and completely unbothered about it. That is the memory that survived the trip, and it cost less than any hotel I have stayed in since.
Arunachal is not somewhere I would go to tick off monasteries. It is somewhere to sit still in a valley with no signal, drink something hot, and let the schedule collapse. The rice terraces at Ziro are the version of that I want to go back for.
My read
Four axes, five points each — how the trip felt to me, not a measurement of the place.
- adventure
- 4/5
- risk
- 3/5
- solitude
- 5/5
- effort
- 3/5
A permit state, and roads that end rather than loop.
Mountain driving with two days of no network to call anyone from.
Two days without a signal. Nothing else on this map matches it.
Long days at the wheel at altitude, more than anything on foot.
Worth doing
- Apply for the Inner Line Permit online before you travel. It applies to Indian citizens too, and it is not something to sort out at the boundary.
- Plan the Tawang drive against the Sela tunnel, not the Sela pass. The tunnel opened in 2024 and most of what you will read predates it.
- Stay with a family rather than in a hotel. It is the whole difference between visiting Arunachal and being in it.
- Treat the lack of signal as the feature. Tell people you will be uncontactable, then be uncontactable.
Worth skipping
- Assuming your permit and your plans survive contact with the weather. Roads here close, and the schedule is a suggestion.
- Running Arunachal as a monastery checklist. The valleys are the reason to come; the monasteries are what you pass on the way.
Where I stayed
Homestay in West Kameng
Would return2 nights
Kind, humble, and entirely unbothered about having me there. Two days of no signal and somebody else’s routine — the part of the trip I still think about.