Few Indians know of Chug Valley. Even fewer have tasted Monpa food

The room hums with the warm crackle of charcoal and light-hearted cackle. Amid feathery wisps of steam, a group of Monpa women sit cross-legged on mats in a 250-year-old stone-and-mud house. One woman pats and shapes yellow orbs of dough, another folds finely chopped vegetable mince into soft millet cocoons. They are preparing a multi-course meal for guests arriving from the country’s capital.

Getting here is not easy. To reach Chug Valley, you either have to sign up for a bumpy nine-hour ride from Guwahati airport or a shorter five-hour ride from Tezpur in Assam. The indigenous Monpa community lives in the high-altitude Tawang and West Kameng districts of Arunachal Pradesh and practises farming and traditional craftsmanship. Believed to have originally migrated from Tibet into what is now Arunachal Pradesh in India, the Monpa people derive their name from the Tibetan words ‘mon’, a historical term used by Tibetans for southern frontier regions, and ‘pa’, meaning inhabitants. The region is deeply rooted in Buddhism and Tibetan traditions. Due to its remoteness, few outsiders are familiar with the Monpa community or its distinct culinary traditions.

Flavours of the forest

Located in Chug Valley is Damu’s Heritage Dine (DHD), a women-led eatery that is focused on reviving, reimagining, and serving traditional Monpa dishes using locally grown grains and ingredients sourced directly from the forest. From soupy vegetable broth made from foraged leaves to crispy lengths of pan-fried pulled meat, many of the ancestral recipes have almost been forgotten, and Damu’s Heritage Dine is working hard to bring them back on the plate.

Rinchin Jomba, DHD’s head chef, speaks of age-old and almost forgotten recipes once made by Monpa elders, which they now serve. One of them is phursing gombu, or savoury yellow corn tarts, where the dough of the maize flour is carefully hand-sculpted into small, hollow bowls that are roasted over an open charcoal flame. This is DHD’s signature dish, deeply rooted in Chug Valley cuisine. The doughy bowls are filled with dri (female yak) ghee and a rare oleoresin called phursing, which is harvested from the Chinese lacquer tree. “Phursing gombu was given to alleviate birthing pain and reduce pain in the muscle joints,” shares Jomba.

Very few people can harvest phursing, as the process is known to cause allergies and skin rashes. In fact, as of now, there is only one person in the region who specialises in harvesting the oleoresin from seeds—someone who is uniquely immune to the tree’s irritants. “The man who extracts it is quite old now,” adds Jomba, “and we’re trying to encourage his son to learn the ancient knowledge and carry his father’s skill forward. We’ve assured him that however much he produces, we’ll procure it from him.” Within the Monpa community, phursing is also offered in rituals to local gods.

Also on the menu are plump, beautifully pleated kongpu (finger millet) momos; minced chicken, scallions and kidney beans sheathed in millet tacos; loose scoops of red rice topped with generous servings of shya marku (mithun or yak meat fried in spoonfuls of ghee and ginger); buckwheat pancakes paired with orange or plum jam; and takto khazi (buckwheat noodles) served with fermented soybean. The buckwheat noodles are made using a locally crafted wooden contraption called takto shing, Jambo explains. To wash it all down, there is rice beer, which has now become a staple across many restaurants serving cuisine from the north-east. And for dessert, there is red rice fried with “jungle ka akhrot” (wild walnuts) and a hint of jaggery and ghee.

In Duhumbi, the local language, ‘damu’ means ‘daughter’, and everything on the menu is thoughtfully prepared by the women from scratch. “For a lunch gathering at 1 pm, we start preparing around eight in the morning,” shares Jomba. On special request, you could even try the tsa tsa thukpa, a steamy soup made of boiled corn, which involves a heavy-duty overnight cooking ritual and, hence, requires advance notice.

Homing in

It was in October 2023 that WWF India’s Nishant Sinha realised that the unchecked, haphazard, and rampant construction in Arunachal Pradesh was disrupting the stunning visual landscape of Tawang and West Kameng districts; he noticed much of it was beginning to creep into the villages of Chug Valley. “My role was to think of creative ways of generating revenue through community-based tourism that supports conservation,” he says. “One of the highlights of this region are these really old mud-and-stone houses of the Monpas.”

It was during a field visit that Sinha and a colleague came across the ruins of a traditional house. “We thought: what if this kind of a place could be converted into a dining place but with a difference?” he recalls. It sparked the idea of using a traditional Monpa home as a space for conservation, not only for its architectural preservation but also for celebrating Monpa culinary heritage. “If the concept worked, it would give the locals an incentive to preserve these homes instead of destroying them, where their mud-and-stone homes could become sources of revenue,” explains Sinha.

But turning that vision into reality meant effort. When Sinha first proposed the idea of launching an intimate, bespoke eatery to the Community Conserved Area Management Committee in Chug (an entity responsible for forest patrols and conservation), they struggled to see its potential. They doubted whether tourists would come this far and pay a premium price (a meal here costs ₹1,500 per person), just to taste and experience a lesser-known cuisine. “They didn’t fully understand the concept, but in the meeting where we presented this idea, of which Rinchin Jomba was a part as well, they decided to give it a shot,” he explains.

It takes a village

Jomba’s 250-year-old, once-abandoned family home, located in Chug Valley’s oldest village, Duhum, was chosen as the venue for hosting meals. Weathered but still dignified, the house, with its sloping roof, radiated charm. Jomba recalls restoring it with the help of other women in their local Self-Help group (SHG), which included her sister and daughter-in-law. Together, the seven women cleaned the basti, dusted the house, polished its floors, painted its windowpanes, and even laid slate stones over the basic cement path to create a clear, inviting walkway from the village road to the restaurant.

WWF invited Assam-based chef Farha Naaz Laskar, an ambassador of north-eastern food traditions known for her culinary prowess in MasterChef India, to train the Monpa women, which included providing guidance on plating and presentation. The seating arrangement is simple: traditional low-lying tables painted in bright colours and motifs, with warm woollen dhurries laid out for guests to sit on.

With its Ferrari-red signboard, DHD is not just for tourists—it’s an open invitation for the locals to reconnect with the flavours of Monpa cuisine too. “The food that we are offering is not just traditional; we are also trying to offer a fusion,” explains Sinha. “While we want to celebrate the old dishes, we’re also focused on creating new recipes that are based on the ingredients that are locally grown.”

Returning to roots

The initiative is closely tied to the changing dietary habits of Arunachal Pradesh’s younger generation, which is increasingly subsisting on processed foods and high-yielding crop varieties. “Earlier, we used to eat millet-based food, but now hardly anyone consumes it here,” says Jambo. “In fact, when we first wanted to make millet momos at Damu’s, we struggled to find millet flour. We had to procure millet and buckwheat flour from another village in Tawang.” Now, as DHD gains recognition through tourism, Jambo notes that locals feel encouraged to begin farming millets again, along with maize, buckwheat, and red rice. 

DHD was recently honoured by the International Centre for Responsible Tourism as a heritage diner that promotes community involvement and sustainable practices. The initiative is fulfilling a larger mission: not only is it encouraging regional tourism by celebrating indigenous food and empowering the women, it’s also fostering a sense of pride and self-reliance within the Monpa community, motivating its people to return to cultivating traditional crops and consciously conserve the natural forests, since the ancestral dishes rely on foraged ingredients.

“We want to create tourism that is linked to agro-ecology,” notes Sinha, who says that over the one and a half years since its opening, DHD has welcomed guests from Japan, Mexico, Singapore, and Spain. “There’s certainly a growing interest in people who are seeking deeper connections and experiences through food and not particularly caring about ticking check-boxes of typical touristy spots,” he adds. “Food is definitely one of the main ways you can understand and appreciate another culture—it gives you a window into other people’s lives.”

For the future, WWF is now working on helping the eatery set up its own farm, where the women can grow local produce, increase their income, and eventually introduce a breakfast menu tailored for travellers enroute to Tawang who are seeking a unique heritage experience.

Damu’s Heritage Dine, Chug Valley, Arunachal Pradesh. Meals start at ₹1,500. For more details, click here