Mizoram

Heading south from Assam into Mizoram, “land of the highlanders”, a winding mountain road takes you into forests and bamboo-covered hills. Mizoram is a gentle pastoral land, and the Mizos are a welcoming people who see very little tourism. Whitewashed churches dot the landscape, giving it more of the feel of a Central American country than a state squashed between Burma and Bangladesh.

The Mizos, who migrated from the Chin Hills of Burma, were regularly raiding tea plantations in the Assam Valley right into the late nineteenth century; only in 1924 did the British finally manage to bring about some semblance of control. They opened up what were then the Lushai Hills to missionaries who converted much of the state to Christianity. Aizawl, the capital, is a large sprawling city built on impossibly steep slopes. In the heart of the state, traditional Mizo communities occupy the crests of a series of ridges, each village dominated by its chief’s house and zawlbuk, or bachelors’ dormitory. An egalitarian people, without gender or class distinctions, the Mizos remain proud of their age-old custom of Tlawmgaihna, a code of ethics that governs hospitality. They enjoy a 95 percent literacy rate and are culturally more influenced by the Christian West than by mainstream India; music is an important part of Mizo life and an integral part of the Mizo Christian service. You may need a permit to enter.