6000 year old cave in Taneeland

Atonu Choudhuri (2008) "On the trail of a 6000 year old cave:Members of Adi tribe trek for 12 hours to find limestone and granite cavern", Telegraph, 7 April 2008.

Pasighat (East Siang), April 6: The tale of a group of explorers trekking through dense forests and rugged mountain trails in search of a 6,000-year-old cave seems the stuff that legends are made of.
A team from the Adi tribe, which believes that the cave was the source of water for the first man and woman on earth, set out on an expedition to find the elusive subterranean structure in Arunachal Pradesh’s East Siang district. The group, known as the Paator Gumin Heritage Preservation Society, comprised Taduram Darang, Tapum Taki, Tanyk Tamuk, Tanam Padung, Taling Padung, Tayam Padung, Takom Tayi, Tasi Taloh, Tagom Moyong, Tasak Moyong, Talak Padung, Beja Padung, Tangyat Kanyi and Tayang Padung.

“It was a daunting task for us. We found the 300-metre deep cave made of spectacular limestone and granite of yellow, blue and black hues and inhabited by large bats after a perilous 12-hour journey,” said 42-year-old Darang, an executive engineer with the power department.
The group began its journey to the highlands of Monggang Ponrung, nearly 80km from Pasighat, the headquarters of East Siang district, on April 1.
The members of the expedition were all from Kebang village, 1,580 metres above sea level. After a daylong arduous trek, the team stumbled on a tunnel that led them to a vertical cave made of limestone and blue granite.
The area, known as Monggng Ponrung near Kebang village, had once borne the brunt of the atrocities committed by the British army during the Anglo-Abor War in 1911.
The team spent more than five hours deep inside the humid cave.
“We were exposed to a new world. After entering the cave, we found more than 40 chambers. Many of the chambers were as big as cinema halls with high roofs. In many places, the roof was decorated with beautifully sculpted figures, rocks and limestone structures. Much of the ground was made up of limestone and silt, making our progress difficult,” Darang said.
The team spotted rock bridges, with water trickling down limestone ridges that formed stalactites and stalagmites of various shapes.
N. Tiwary, a rock scientist with the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology (WIHG), who has spent more than 14 years in the Northeast, said going by the size, shape and pattern of the kind of limestone that were found in the cave, it is clear that the cave is more than 6,000 years old.
With the Hiyit stream, a tributary of Yembung, flowing nearby, the cave is a geologist’s and tourist’s paradise.
The team has moved the state government to preserve the cave.
“We have already contacted the authorities to take steps to preserve the cave and turn it into a tourist attraction,” another member of the team said.

The war cemetery at Jairampur in Arunachal Pradesh:More graves than any other war cemetery in Northeast India

Atonu Choudhuri(2008) "Monumental neglect of war graves: Discovered in 1997, Jairampur cemetery gets entangled in red tape", Telegraph, 29 January 2008.

Jairampur, Jan. 28: A conservation law that judges the importance of a place of historical interest by its antiquity has ensured that the region’s largest World War II cemetery — undiscovered till 1997 — remains in obscurity.
The Arunachal Pradesh Monuments and Architecture Preservation Act, 1990, stipulates that any structure or place of historical importance can be “officially protected” if it is at least 100 years old. Since the seven rows of graves tucked away inside a forest along the Jairampur stretch of the Stilwell Road are only 62 years old, they must — going by the book — wait another 38 years for their place in the sun.
Nobody seems more distressed by this monumental tale of neglect than the man who led the team that discovered the graves of around 1,000 Taiwanese, American, Kachin and Indian soldiers, engineers and workers who died in the line of duty.
Tage Tada, an archaeologist and the director of the research department, combined scraps of historical data and traced the graves to a place 30km from the famous Pangsau Pass (Hell Pass) in Changlang district, bordering Myanmar. It was an area only the bravest of villagers had ventured into previously and Tada’s team was the first to officially confirm the presence of graves of World War II vintage there.
The Jairampur site has more graves than any other war cemetery in the Northeast, including Kohima War Cemetery. One of the epitaphs in Chinese and English reads: “Major Hsiao Chu Ching, Company Commander of 2nd Company of 2nd Battalion of 10th Regiment, Independent Engineers of Chinese Army stationed in India, died in December 1943.”
The inscription on Ching’s grave, still legible, states that he was born in July 1913 in “Wei Country of Hapeh Province”.
Does Ching’s family now know where he lies? Very unlikely, given the fact that the Jairampur graveyard has not even been officially accorded the status of a war memorial.
“A little effort from the government could have saved this cemetery from decay and destruction. The Centre has officially recognised the other four war memorials — two in Imphal and one each in Kohima and Guwahati. Strangely, the one with the most number of graves is wallowing in neglect,” Tada said.
In all likelihood, the Jairampur graveyard was set up when the Stilwell Road (Ledo Road) was being constructed from India to Kunming in China via Myanmar to facilitate easy transit for the Allied Forces. Fatigue, calamity, scarcity of food and diseases like malaria killed many of the soldiers and workers during that period.
Some of the graveyards are of Adi (Abor), Mishmi and Jaintia soldiers who fought for the Allied Forces, but there is very little evidence left of their antecedents. Researchers blame the Assam Rifles, which helped in the discovery of the graves, of mishandling some of the evidence that was available.
“One of the challenges was to retrieve the surface evidence but some of these were destroyed by Assam Rifles personnel during excavation,” Tada said.