Return to Arunachal Pradesh

I HAD A WINDOW SEAT on the right-hand side of the airplane on my flight from Dibrugarh, in Assam, to Delhi. As we flew from east to west on a lucid autumn day, nearly the entire expanse of the glacier-clad Himalaya rose in the distance. It was a two-and-half-hour replay of the numerous trips I’ve taken into those mountains over the past twenty-five years.

Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, the western Arunachal Pradesh and Myanmar had already seen my hiking boots. In 2016 and then again in autumn of 2018,