Music And Mayhem

Ever thought a little known place, cut off from the mainlands for six months of the year could host one of the best adventure and music festivals? Welcome to Dambuk!

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 DAMBUK. A PLACE SO isolated getting there is an adventure in itself. Situated in the Lower Dibang Valley, the distance from Guwahati airport is 650 odd kilometres but can easily take more than 19 hours owing to the gruelling terrain, river crossings and non-existent tarmac in many places. But luckily for us, we could skip all this as easily as skipping an advertisement on YouTube, what with a helicopter waiting to fly us over the spectacular (from the air!) landscape in to Dambuk.

Dambuk lies dormant for the most part of the year but when the JK Tyre Orange 4x4 Fury, running simultaneously with the Orange Festival of Adventure & Music (OFAM) rocks into town, it makes sure all wavelengths of the sound spectrum are exercised. From the grunting of offroad vehicles stuck halfway between the lengths of the river to the sweet rock music ringing in your ears from the artist stage, the event made sure that boredom was contained miles away. The dense rain forest that rings Dambuk and the many tributaries of the iconic Brahmaputra river make the region almost inaccessible during the monsoon. So much so, the locals use elephants for transport during that time. “For six months, the area becomes almost inaccessible. But we decided to turn that into a good thing and host such an event,” said Lhakpa Tsering, president of Motor Sports Club of Arunachal.