“It’s a crazy walk. At places, the trail disappears and you have to hack your way through dense, leech-infested jungles. Outsiders haven’t set foot there in twenty years,” Govind reported ominously.

“When can I go?” The slightest whiff of foolhardiness and I was on it like a Lagotto, sense and sensibility snapping like twigs under my feet.

“I’ll find out, maybe I’ll come too.” The affliction was spreading. 

Govind had just returned from north-east India, where he had met a young Arunachali woman called Tine Mena. The first female Everest summiteer from the region, Tine defied a bad weather forecast to sneak up alone to the top. Fortunately, she survived to receive the accolades. She lives with her husband, Pranav, on the outskirts of Roing, a small town in the Mishmi foothills, at the juncture of the Northeastern Himalayas and the Indo-Burmese ranges. Together they run a mom and pop adventure outfit, hosting and guiding trekkers. This intrepid couple was the one to tell Govind about the hike.

“They’re happy to accompany us,” Govind relayed later. “It’s business for them. Plus, they’re kicked that we’re interested, despite their description. The plan is to walk for six days through the Mishmi Hills along the Ithhun river or its tributaries, bunking in with the villagers, or pitching tents.”

The next few weeks passed in preparation, more mental than physical. Most people find no pleasure in travel that guarantees leech bites, large hairy spiders for tentmates, fatigue from walking 6-8 hours a day in the middle of a menstrual cycle, and, for the sake of the tag of ‘responsible traveler’, the company of used sanitary napkins until the end of the trek. I believe that these people are yet to experience the kinship of shared challenges – extreme fatigue, trauma, fear – as well as small accomplishments. Above all, I go for the oneness with nature that stirs my soul to write. Even if words can be elusive as I finish a day’s walk on legs that refuse to carry me, and feet that died hours before.

I pressed my forehead to the plane window. We were going to land at Dibrugarh, in Assam. Below us, a placid, brown tributary of the Brahmaputra meandered in playful twists and turns around bright green paddy fields. Cattle dotted large grassy patches and tin roofs of lone huts glinted in the afternoon sun.

(Please email me at bharsimran@gmail.com for the rest of the story or buy my upcoming book.)