Getty Images/Robert Harding World Imagery

Northeast States

Sometimes the Seven Sisters of the Northeast (the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura) hardly seem like India at all. The region's hundreds of tribes and subtribes are slowly ceding to modernity, but remain extremely diverse. Nagaland's former headhunters now go to church on Sundays. Many Arunachalis also attend church-like buildings on Sundays – to worship the sun and moon. Cloudy Himalayan valleys near the border of Tibet are dotted with colorful monasteries, echoing with Buddhist chants and clashing cymbals.

The geography is as varied as the culture. While waterfalls thunder down Cherrapunjee's jungle escarpments, blizzards may be blocking the passes to Tawang, and one-horned rhinos go on grazing peacefully in Kaziranga's grasslands beside the mighty Brahmaputra.

Northeast travel can be tough, but the destinations are always worth the effort. You are indeed far from the beaten track: only the adventurous need apply.

Top attractions

These are our favorite local haunts, touristy spots, and hidden gems throughout Northeast States.

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Tawang Gompa
The magical Tawang Gompa, founded in 1681 in what was then a Monpa royal palace, overlooks the town from its ridgetop site. Reputedly the world’s second-largest Buddhist monastery complex after Drepung Monastery (in Lhasa, Tibet), Tawang has over 400 lamas, whose yellow-roofed living quarters surround the central buildings. It's famed in Buddhist circles for its priceless library, standing next to a magnificently decorated prayer hall that contains an 8m-high Buddha statue. Come at dawn to witness monks performing early-morning prayers.
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Kangla Fort
The vast, low-walled fort at the heart of Imphal was, with a few interruptions, the political and religious heart of Manipur for many centuries until taken over by the British after the 1891 Anglo-Manipuri War. Today it's a tranquil, beautifully maintained, parklike space of lawns, moats, ponds and big trees, containing, among many interesting features, several temples, two large white Kangla Sha (protective dragons), a pavilion with spectacular royal longboats, the world's oldest polo field, a historical museum and a pleasant cafe.
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Nongriat Root Bridges
The most fascinating sights around Cherrapunjee are the incredible living bridges – formed from rubber-fig roots that ingenious Khasi villagers have, over decades, trained across streams as natural pathways. Over 40 of these are said to be scattered around the Meghalaya hills and several of them (including an amazing ‘double-decker’) are near the jungle valley hamlet of Nongriat – a steep hike down 2600 steps (and up 500) from Tyrna village, 12km southwest of Cherrapunjee.
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Kaziranga National Park
The park’s 2400 one-horned rhinos represent about two-thirds of the world’s total population (in 1904, there were only 200). Kaziranga offers popular 4WD safaris that allow you to get close to the rhinos and other large mammals; you may want to avoid the elephant-back safaris on animal welfare concerns. Safaris are available in four of the park's five ranges, of which the central Kohora Range and western Bagori Range offer the best overall wildlife sightings and also have most safari traffic.
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Samten Yongcha Gompa
Thought to be about 400 years old, the charming wooden Samten Yongcha Gompa stands on a breezy hilltop 6km (as the crow flies) west of Mechuka, fronted by a forest of prayer flags and with wonderful panoramas over the valley, river and surrounding mountains. The caretaker will probably appear to show you round the two-storey temple with its colourful imagery, including some genuinely scary guardian deities.
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Talatal Ghar
The Talatal Ghar palace was the heart of an Ahom capital complex founded by King Rudra Singha. Built in the 1750s over an earlier wooden palace, it originally had seven storeys, three of which were underground (including secret escape tunnels). You can visit the two surviving above-ground levels, which have labyrinthine galleries and a large flat roof holding several pavilions. The remains of Talatal Ghar are about 4km south of central Sivasagar along AT Rd, easily visited in conjunction with nearby Rang Ghar.
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Kohima War Cemetery
The immaculately maintained war cemetery contains the graves of over 1400 British, Indian and other Allied soldiers, killed in or around Kohima in 1944 as they resisted a Japanese invasion of India from Burma in one of the fiercest battles of WWII. The cemetery is laid out on what were the terraced lawns of the British Deputy Commissioner's bungalow. Some of the most savage fighting took place across the tennis court near the top, where the white marker lines are still in place.
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Ujjayanta Palace
Agartala’s centrepiece is this striking, dome-capped palace, fronted by two reflecting lakes and housing the large, outstanding Tripura State Museum. The museum's colourful, well-displayed galleries exhibit the arts, crafts, cultures, history and monuments of Tripura and the rest of the Northeast, with some interesting historical features such as a room on the Bangladesh War of Independence in 1971.
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Ima Keithel
Housed in three big colonnaded buildings with pagoda-style roofs, this huge bazaar with over 4000 all-women vendors is reckoned to be the largest of its kind in the world. Only married women are allowed to be stallholders. Two buildings focus mainly on clothes and fabrics (look for traditional tribal shawls at good prices), the third deals chiefly in vegetables, fruit, fish and other foods. It's a fascinating place, with some great photo ops (ask first).