A Trek to Mehao Lake During Reh Festival

Reading the Trail Before the Trail

The character of this climb depends heavily on which day of Reh you attempt it. Villages around Roing empty out during the festival window. Men who guide trekkers on ordinary weeks are, during Reh, tying mithuns outside their own homes for the Andropu ritual or seated inside smoke filled kitchens helping brew yeti for forty arriving relatives. A guide secured a day or two before the peak festival dates walks the route with full attention. A guide pulled away from his own household during the festival itself walks it with his mind half in Roing, and that half attention shows in missed turns through bamboo that all looks identical for the first ninety minutes.

The trail plays a trick that every trekker who has done this route eventually mentions to someone back home. It offers a ridge that looks like the top, and then the land dips again, and climbs again, sometimes three or four separate times, before Mehao actually opens in front of you. Carry water for eight hours of movement, not six, regardless of what an optimistic estimate in Roing suggests the night before.

A Mithun occasionally appears near the final stretch before the lake and disappears into the undergrowth almost as soon as it is noticed, closer to checking on the visitors passing through than grazing in the open. Local trekkers who have crossed paths with it more than once describe the same brief, deliberate eye contact before it turns and is gone. Whether it is one animal that has grown used to the human traffic along the sanctuary edge, or several individuals that behave the same way near people, is not something anyone in Roing claims to know for certain. Do not chase it or attempt to photograph it up close. Let the encounter end on its own terms, the way the forest intends it to.

The forest around Mehao does not belong to anyone. It only allows you to pass through it. A shopkeeper near the Roing bus stand, spoken during Reh week

The Climb Through Bamboo and Oak

We left Roing before the town had fully woken, when the only sound was a dog somewhere and a woman sweeping her doorstep with a bundle of dried grass. The road out gives way to a track, and the track gives way to forest so fast that within twenty minutes the town might as well not exist. Bamboo closes in from both sides, tall enough to blot out direct sun, and the light that reaches the path arrives green and filtered, the way light looks when it passes through a held glass of water.

An hour in, the incline stops being polite. Roots become stairs, uneven ones, spaced for legs longer than mine. Leeches wait in the wetter patches after rain, more nuisance than danger, and a pinch of local tobacco or a rub of salt sends them off within seconds if you carry either. Around the fourth hour, the bamboo opens into taller hardwood, oak and rhododendron mixed together, and the air changes temperature plainly enough to feel on bare forearms, a full climate shift compressed into a single stretch of trail.

The forest around the fifth and sixth hour is where the climb earns its reputation among locals as more spiritual than physical. Hoolock gibbons call from somewhere invisible in the canopy, a whooping rise and fall that echoes for close to a full minute after it starts and is answered, seconds later, from a completely different direction, as though the whole forest were relaying the same message hand to hand. A bird known locally by a name that resists translation calls back at intervals so regular it starts to feel deliberate. The Mehao Wildlife Sanctuary shelters red panda, takin, clouded leopard and elephant among its recorded species, and while an actual sighting of any of them is unlikely on a single day trek, their absence still registers as presence, the particular unease of being observed by something that has chosen not to be seen.

Streams cross the trail at three points on the standard route, each one shallow enough to cross on exposed rock in dry season and considerably harder during and immediately after rain, when the same crossing can rise ankle deep within an hour of a downpour higher up the ridge. Local guides read these streams the way sailors read tides, adjusting pace and rest stops around how full or how quiet each crossing sounds from a distance.

Seasons, Weather and Climate on the Ridge

Roing sits low enough in the valley to feel subtropical for most of the year, yet the climb to Mehao gains enough elevation to shift through several climate bands in a single day. Winter, running roughly December through February, brings the clearest skies and the coldest nights, with frost settling on the upper ridge and, in a good year, a light dusting of snow near the final approach to the lake. This is also the window that overlaps with Reh, which means a February trek can start in a town warm enough for a light jacket and end at a lake cold enough for gloves.

Spring, from March into April, softens the cold and brings rhododendron into bloom along the hardwood stretch, turning entire hillsides red and pink for a few short weeks. Locals treat this bloom the way orchard regions treat a harvest, a seasonal marker more reliable than any calendar. Summer and the monsoon months from May through September bring the heaviest rain the Lower Dibang Valley sees all year, swelling the Dibang River, softening the trail into mud that can erase footing on the steeper stretches, and occasionally cutting off road access to Roing itself for days at a stretch. Very few trekkers attempt Mehao in peak monsoon, not out of superstition but because the practical risk of landslip and flooded crossings genuinely rises.

Autumn, October into November, is when the forest feels most balanced, the humidity of monsoon gone, the cold of winter not yet arrived, and visibility from the ridge stretching far enough to pick out individual peaks of the Mishmi Hills on a clear afternoon. Locals who have walked this route across every season consistently name October as the month they would choose if only allowed one.

The Goddess Who Owns the Ridge

Every Idu Mishmi elder in Roing brings up the same name before religion is even asked about directly. Nanyi Inyitaya, the divine mother, is who Reh exists for. She is not worshipped through statues or enclosed temples the way a visitor from the plains might expect. She lives in the relationship between the community and the land itself, in the mountains, the rivers, and by extension in places like the Mehao ridge that the trail climbs through. Alongside her, villagers name Maselo Zinu, a deity bound to the mountains, and together the two receive the opening prayers of Reh on its very first ritual day, when Igus chant through the night and mithuns are tied outside homes in preparation for the sacrifice to come.

The separation between myth and daily practice is thin here, almost absent. The first Igu, a figure named Sineru, is spoken about the way a respected grandfather is spoken about, someone whose method of chanting and healing is still practiced today, generation after generation, without the history ever being fixed into a single written book. It survives instead inside the memory of each new Igu, passed by ear, by repetition, by long nights spent listening at the edge of a fire while an elder chants lines that stretch back further than anyone can date with certainty.

Illness, misfortune, a poor harvest or a death in the family are all matters an Idu household may still bring to an Igu before or instead of a hospital or a modern remedy, particularly in villages further from Roing town. The chant performed in these moments is not simple prayer. It is closer to a recitation of the community's own origin story, retold each time as both explanation and cure, binding the present misfortune back into a much older narrative of how the Idu Mishmi came to be.

Sineru did not leave us instructions. He left us a way of listening. An elder outside Roing, during Reh

The Tiger Is Family, Not a Fear

The Idu Mishmi do not regard the tiger the way lowland folklore usually frames big cats, as a threat to be avoided or a trophy worth hunting. In Idu belief the tiger is a brother, born of the same ancestral mother as humans, separated only by the paths each sibling chose to walk at the beginning of the world. One sibling chose the forest and grew claws and stripes. The other chose the village and grew hands and speech. Killing a tiger within this worldview carries the same weight as harming a blood relative, and older Idu households still recount cases of hunters who broke this understanding and suffered illness or misfortune afterward, told less as folklore for entertainment and more as a living caution passed down within families.

This belief shapes real conservation behaviour inside the Mehao Wildlife Sanctuary and the wider Dibang landscape, where Idu villages have historically avoided tiger hunting even in periods when hunting other forest animals for subsistence was common. Wildlife researchers working in the Dibang Valley have documented this cultural taboo as one reason the region still holds a viable tiger population at unusually high elevation for the species, a rare case where a community's mythology and a landscape's ecology happen to reinforce each other rather than conflict.

Walking through the sanctuary with this belief in mind changes how the forest is read. Every rustle in the undergrowth stops registering as simply wildlife and becomes, briefly, something closer to kinship, and the walk shifts from something done to a landscape into something done alongside it.

Reh Nights in Roing

Descend from Mehao into Roing during Reh and the town feels entirely rebuilt from the quiet place you left at dawn. Courtyards are turned into open kitchens. Women sit in circles plucking ahona leaves gathered fresh from the jungle to prepare a fish based dish carrying the same name, while men labour over bamboo pipes to cook shakhi puhin, a dish that takes patience most restaurants would never bother with. Rice beer, called yeti, moves from house to house in bamboo mugs that never seem to run empty, refilled by whoever happens to be nearest the pot.

The Naya dance takes place on the first ritual night, Andropu, when mithuns are tied outside homes and blessed for the sacrifice to come. It is not a performance staged for visitors. It is closer to a family gathering that outsiders are quietly permitted to witness, which is precisely why it feels more honest than any curated cultural show elsewhere in the region.

Drinking yeti at Reh calls for pacing rather than restraint. Refusing an offered mug outright can read as impolite in a household that has spent weeks preparing it, but matching the drinking pace of hosts who have been building tolerance since childhood is a genuine mistake, and one that shows itself clearly on the trek the following morning. The better approach, and the one most visiting trekkers eventually learn, is to accept every offer, sip slowly, and let the mug be refilled rather than emptied quickly.

The Lake Without Fish

After roughly six to eight hours, depending on how many times the climb is paused to catch breath under the excuse of admiring the view, the forest thins and Mehao appears almost without warning. It does not announce itself with grandeur. It simply arrives, flat and glassy, holding the entire sky and every surrounding ridge inside its surface like a second, quieter version of the world above it.

Because the lake is oligotrophic, low in the nutrients that usually support fish life, its water carries a clarity that feels almost unnatural after hours spent walking through green shadow. Locals describe the stillness as something close to sacred, a place approached less to be conquered with a summit photo and more to be sat beside quietly while the climb settles out of tired legs.

We do not come to Mehao to take from it. We come to sit and be reminded how small a person actually is. A trekking companion from Roing, on reaching the lake shore

Weather at this altitude shifts fast. Clear mornings can turn to drifting mist by early afternoon, especially between November and February when cold air pools in the valley overnight and burns off slowly through the following hours. Local guides read these mist patterns closely, adjusting departure times around how thick and how late the previous day's mist lingered, since a slow burn off in the morning often signals a wetter, greyer afternoon at the lake itself.

Camping, Firelight and the Stars Above Mehao

A day trip to Mehao is possible for a fit walker who starts early, but camping overnight near the lake changes the experience entirely. Guides from Roing who arrange overnight stays generally set up a basic camp a short distance from the water itself, both out of respect for the lake and out of practicality, since the ground closest to the shore stays damp long after rain has passed. Firewood is gathered on the way in rather than cut fresh at the site, a habit that reflects the same conservation instinct that runs through most Idu Mishmi relationships with this forest.

Night at this altitude drops several degrees below what the daytime climb suggests, and even in the milder months a proper sleeping layer is not optional. What makes the overnight worthwhile is the sky. With no town lights for kilometres in any direction and the lake acting as a still, reflective surface below, the stars above Mehao arrive in a density rarely seen from anywhere near a road. On a clear winter night the band of the Milky Way is visible without any equipment beyond patience and a few minutes for eyes to adjust, and the lake's surface holds a faint, doubled version of the same sky, so that looking down feels almost the same as looking up.

Local guides who have spent many nights at this camp describe the very early hours, well before dawn, as the stillest part of the entire trek, colder than any other stretch but also quieter, with even the gibbon calls of daytime replaced by nothing but the occasional creak of cold branches and the sound of the lake settling against its own bank.

What Lands on the Plate

Food on this trek moves in two very different registers, the trail itself and Roing during Reh, and both deserve attention. On the climb, packed food tends to be simple and dense, rice pressed into portable portions, boiled eggs, and dried meat carried by guides who know exactly how far a small amount needs to stretch across eight hours of walking. Streams along the way provide drinking water, though most experienced trekkers still carry a filter or purification tablets rather than relying on assumption about water quality upstream.

Back in Roing during Reh, the table becomes considerably richer. Ahona ashumri, a fish dish built around leaves gathered fresh from the surrounding jungle, carries a slightly bitter, mineral note that pairs unexpectedly well with the richness of mithun meat served alongside it. Anunu, a rice preparation cooked inside a cane basket and finished with a scatter of bamboo shoot, has a smoky, faintly sour edge that comes directly from the cooking vessel itself rather than any added spice. Eka ri, another rice based dish prepared in the same large vessels called sifu, tends to be softer and used almost like a base that the sharper, smokier dishes are eaten alongside. Shakhi puhin, cooked inside bamboo pipes over open flame, is the dish most visitors remember longest, both for the technique involved and for the way the bamboo itself lends a faint sweetness to the meat cooked inside it.

Rice beer, called yeti, runs through every part of the festival, brewed fresh by the women of each household in the days leading up to Reh and served continuously from bamboo mugs that are refilled as soon as they run low. Its strength and flavour vary noticeably from household to household, a difference locals discuss with the same seriousness that other communities might apply to comparing homemade wine.

What the Climb Leaves Behind

There is a particular kind of clarity that only shows up after several hours of sustained physical effort in a place with no phone signal and no easy way to shorten the day. Somewhere past the fourth false ridge, most of what felt urgent before the trek began stops mattering, not because it was unimportant but because the body and the trail leave no spare attention for it. What replaces that urgency is a narrower, sharper kind of focus, on footing, on breath, on the next stretch of visible path, and that narrowing has a way of resetting whatever noise a person carried in from ordinary life.

Spending time with the Idu Mishmi during Reh adds a second layer to this. A community that still organizes its calendar around mithun sacrifice, ancestral chant and household brewing offers a working example of how much of modern urgency is invented rather than necessary. Nobody in Roing during Reh is checking a phone during the Naya dance. Nobody hurries the Igu through a chant to save time. The festival runs on its own rhythm, and spending several days inside that rhythm tends to loosen the grip of whatever schedule a visitor arrived with.

The tiger as brother belief, in particular, tends to stay with people longer than almost anything else from this trip. It reframes an entire relationship with the wild, from one built on control and fear into one built on kinship and restraint, and that reframing is difficult to fully leave behind once the trek is over, even back in a city with no forest anywhere nearby.

Trail Notes for Those Who Actually Want to Go

Gathered at the Edges

A few last things, small enough to miss, worth carrying home anyway.

What I keep returning to, weeks after leaving, is not the lake itself but the hours before it. The false summits that taught patience. The story of a tiger who is a brother, not a threat. A goddess who does not need a temple because the mountain already is one. Mehao is not a destination in the way an itinerary usually means it. It is closer to a long, quiet conversation with a valley that has been telling the same stories, in the same unhurried way, long before anyone thought to write them down.