About camp

So, which place in India is first touched by the elegant, orangey-red rays of the rising sun? Our quest to find the answer to this question led us to the montane, remote lands of Arunachal Pradesh. Arunachal-also famously known as the land of the rising sun-didn’t appeal to us. But we were out on a pursuit to locate the geographically easternmost corner of India.

Dong is a small picturesque village inhabited by the Meyors just 7 km away from Walong, and is situated on the left bank of the Lohit River. Snow-capped mountains and beautiful pine forests make the place immensely inviting. This village is also one of the villages from where the earliest sunrise can be witnessed. The millennium sunrise was witnessed by people from all across the world at Dong on 1st Jan 2000. The village is now connected by an iron-floored foot suspension bridge over the river Lohit. The Dong valley is extremely beautiful radiating divine peace.

Given the remoteness of the place, reaching Dong or its adjacent areas can be an arduous task. The nearest town is that of Tezu-the headquarters of the Lohit district. From Tezu to Walong, it’s a ten-hour ride in a shared Sumo through some pretty bad roads. On top of, there are barely any hotels beyond Walong; the government-run Inspection Bungalow (IB), the only place that offers accommodation to tourists. You’re also least likely to get any shared jeeps from Walong, so what you need to do is personally hire a Sumo for INR 2000 to cover the day-trip to Kibithu. 10 Best Places To Visit In Puducherry In July Kibithu boasts of the end-point of the easternmost road in India. On your way, you’ll come across a signboard that proclaims Dichu as the easternmost motorable road in India, but it no longer stands true since the suspension bridge to Dichu has been destroyed a few years ago. That’s why the easternmost motorable road in India presently ends at a military barrack in Kibithu. All this being said, the road to Kibithu is highly prone to landslides and in such times it’s only accessible twice a week. So you need to plan your trips accordingly as monsoon is probably the worst time to visit Walong and beyond. From Walong, after a 20-minute drive, the trek to Dong begins. The trek is quite steep and takes about one and a half hours from where your car is going to drop you. Dong is very strategically located at the confluence of the rivers Lohit, an unrecognized tributary of the Brahmaputra, and Sati. Best Places To Visit In Uttar Pradesh In July Despite this, you’ll be shocked to know that the village that used to exist at Dong has been abandoned primarily due to the scarcity of water. Today, what stands still are the terraced fields of Dong village that have become overgrown with shrubs. But from the top, you can overlook Burma and China across a beautiful, panoramic view of the rivers and meadows underneath. In Dong, the sun, on average, rises at 5.50 am and sets at 4.30 pm during the winter season, which is almost an hour prior to other places in the country. To catch the first rays of the sun, you can either start in the wee hours of the morning, i.e., 3 am or, alternatively, you can camp at the plateau overnight and wait for the sunrise. It’s highly recommended to take a guide along or get in touch with a local, without which it might get impossible to find your way to Dong plateau.

Amenities

• Charging Points
• Common Toilet
• Private Toilet