Rahung, Arunachal Pradesh

Note: photos by Dave.
When we were in a town called Dirang some guy stopped us and invited us in for tea. As a freelance historian of the area, he videotapes festivals, ceremonies, and monastery activities. He also showed us a video on his cellphone of a human body being chopped into pieces. The pieces were scattered in the river so the fish could eat them.

The night before, he had videotaped priests performing a bon-pu ceremony. Bon-pu is a religion based on nature spirits. It was the traditional religion of the area before lamas from Tibet colonized it. As closet hippies, Dave and I were both very interested.



So we hiked to Rahung to find nature-worshippers. No one in the main village spoke any English, but we did see some horns.

Someone invited us in one of these houses and we had tea. There was no nature worship going on that we could discern, but there was an old man feeding a baby by with chewed rice from his own mouth like mommy birds feed baby birds.
Child scribbles? Religious Hieroglyphs?



Spot the phallic symbol, you perverts!