Land of the dawn-lit mountains: a journey across Arunachal Pradesh - India's forgotten frontier

Curled around the eastern ramparts of the Himalayas lies a wild land of unnamed peaks and unexplored forests. A fragile buffer against Chinese expansionism, Arunachal Pradesh was closed to foreigners between 1950 and 1998, and even today the need for permits and restrictions makes this a little-visited region. Not since pith-helmeted geographers poked around its leech-infested jungles searching for the fabled 'Falls of the Brahmaputra' have foreigners truly ventured here. In spring 2016, adventurer Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent ventured to the farthest valleys of this 'last Shangri La' to chronicle the history and legends of this mysterious and barely-known part of the world. Following in the footsteps of pioneering female explorer, Ursula Graham Bower's 1943 expedition to the region, Antonia's thrilling, gruelling and at times dangerous journey spans some 2,000 miles. From the jagged, stupa-clad peaks of Tawang in the west, to the Naga villages and snake and tiger-riddled jungles of the east, she spends time with animist tribes, shamans, former head-hunters, conservationists and Tibetan exiles. She also investigates the role this forbidding location played as a strategic line of defence against the advancing Japanese army in the closing stages of the Second World War, and how the people who live there today are bracing themselves for the encroachment of the modern world on their ancient way of life.