SAVING TAPOR PULLOM

The men disappearing along Arunachal Pradesh's Chinese border

- OMKAR KHANDEKAR

IN SEPTEMBER 2015, Tapor Pullom went hunting and never came back. His family did not think much of it at first. The 46-year-old had been venturing into the mountains near his village of Monigong, in Arunachal Pradesh, since he was a child. The mountains were mostly safe. You might at most encounter a bear or a leopard, and even they prefer to keep their distance. When he did not return within a week, the Pulloms began to worry. Winter was coming. The bald peaks visible from the village were starting to pull on a blanket of snow.

Tapor had promised to be back before that happened.

Taka Yorchi, a cousin, had accompanied Tapor but returned alone after 11 days. This was unusual. In the jungle, hunters do not abandon each other. It had been Yorchi's first hunt. He told the Pulloms that he fell sick and that Tapor asked him to return. Seeing his pale face and sunken eyes, they did not ask too many questions.

Instead, the Pulloms decided to comb the forests. It was not going to be easy. Monigong lies at an elevation around two thousand metres. You hack your way through walls of trees, braving insects that can leave you itching for days, or cause dehydration and death. A GPS device is seldom of any help. Rivers are checkpoints, mountain peaks the North Star.

Thankfully, Yorchi told them, Tapor followed the same route that hunters from the village had for generations. They would sleep in caves or in the makeshift bamboo huts that dotted the jungle. Whenever they went deeper, they would carve marks on trees.