When Nature hits Pause

We’d had a good few days in Anini. We’d braved the worst roads (in our opinion), gone on a lovely hike, had great food, and seen the most number of waterfalls within the span of a few hours than we’d seen in our entire lifetime till then. You can read all about it in this post on Anini. And we were looking forward to seeing more of Arunachal.

And so at 6 am on that fateful day, we bid goodbye to a very wet Acheso.

It had rained through the night at the Dree Afra campsite, (and across Anini as we learned later). The kind of unrelenting, mountain rain that doesn’t pause or ease, it simply falls. By morning, the skies were still heavy and sullen, it was still drizzling, the power was long gone, and no mobile networks. We left early, hoping to make it ahead of any fresh disruptions and also hit the highway before road block timings (Certain areas have certain timings to regulate traffic in the mountain areas)..

The First Block

But hardly four hours into the drive, we found ourselves facing the raw, unpredictable truth of the eastern Arunachal roads. We encountered the first landslide, or shall I say a series of them.

We sat in stunned silence staring the aftermath of what looked like an entire mountainside collapsing. The hills had given way in cascading layers, littering the road with a chaos of broken earth and stones, the road itself, now buried under sheets of loose rock. A lone JCB clawed at the debris – bit by bit. Watching it work was like watching a matchstick dig into a mudslide. This was no isolated slip but a full section of the slope that had surrendered overnight.
Once the JCB had managed to clear a rough path, they began allowing vehicles to pass, but only one at a time. I understood why only a little later. The road wasn’t safe yet. Though the larger rocks had been pushed aside, the surface remained scattered with loose stones, unsteady and unpredictable and add to that the steep slope and sharp turns. Vehicles had to pass through in one continuous motion, no stopping, no braking. It had to be done in one breath. If you hesitated midway, the tyres could lose grip and even roll back. And in just this manner, a Renault got stuck and had to be hauled out by the same JCB that had cleared the way. Right! Mountain roads are not for the inexperienced.

And so, we moved on. The worst was over or so we thought!

The Adventure Begins

Just ~85 kilometers away from our final destination for the day we got stuck due to another massive landslide. What followed was a long wait of 5+ hours with 200+ vehicles queueing in, all waiting to pass through! In the meanwhile, BRO (Border Roads Organisation) officials came in multiple times to analyse the situation. At around 6 pm, pitch dark and rains still lashing through, army personnels in dripping raincoats and wet shoes started going around asking all commuters to retreat. No one knew, to where. It was going to be a long night!

After several wrong turns and u-turns, shelter came in the form of a single, modest room, part of a caretaker’s quarters tucked beside a guest lodge.
We were in Hunli, a tiny village, couple of kilometers away from where we had gotten stuck. There was only this one guest lodge but which was apparently full, although we saw nobody, other than just the few of us in the caretaker’s quarter.
The space was barely big enough for its worn-out sofa and a few pairs of muddy shoes. But that night, it held ten of us. And was I thankful for another couple (and their parents) we met there, under that roof. We didn’t know each other well enough, but we shared the same stuck road, and that was enough. We talked, laughed, shared travel stories and had a hot meal together. And felt like we’d be alright!

It’s funny how nature’s chaos can quietly stitch strangers into a shared story.

Rain poured without pause, drumming on the tin roof like it had something urgent to say. The cold slipped in through the cracks in the walls, curling around our ankles and rising into our bones. The couple and their parents gave up and chose the warmth of their cars. My husband and I stayed back in the room, taking turns to lie down on the narrow sofa, one person curled up, the other sitting upright, half-dozing, listening to the storm breathe just beyond those four walls. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was enough.

There was something oddly reassuring in that quiet discomfort, in sharing that tiny space with strangers, in the mutual understanding that no one had control except for nature. And so, inside that little room, the night passed, slowly, wetly, warmly in spirit if not in temperature.

It was a night of stillness and elemental comfort. And in that moment, I wasn’t just a traveler but a quiet observer of a land that doesn’t need to speak loudly to be heard. Monsoon rains frequently cause landslides and cut off access. Mobile network is unreliable, electricity is intermittent, and basic supplies are often scarce.

The Morning After

The rain had finally stopped. And we were on the road again, fingers crossed. The repair work started around 8 am and soon after the road was opened for vehicles to go through with a JCB truck leading the way coz apparently there were a total of 6 landslides even further ahead.

The Experience – Humbling !

Life in the mountains has a rhythm that isn’t guided by clocks, calendars, or human urgency. It’s unpredictable, often without warning, and humbling in ways only nature can be. One moment you’re winding through a serene stretch of mist-draped road, and the next, everything stops—a landslide blocks the path, the rains cut off power, and phone networks disappear without a trace. There are no shortcuts or quick fixes here. When nature hits the pause button, there is no way to reset it until it decides it’s time. You can’t push through it or wish it away. All you can do is wait—and in that waiting, something shifts. Maybe it’s nature’s quiet way of asking us to pause too. To stop rushing toward the next destination, to let go of the illusion of control. it’s nature’s quiet way of asking us to pause too—to stop rushing from one place to the next, to let go of the itinerary, and to look around. To listen to the sound of falling rain on tin roofs. To breathe in the scent of wet pine. To notice the resilience of the people who live with this uncertainty every day, the warmth of human presence in shared discomfort. You rest, not because you planned to, but because the mountains decided you must. And often, that’s when you’re most present—because sometimes, the most unexpected stops are the ones that truly stay with you.