Up in the Clouds: Mizoram’s Phawngpui National Park

As I stand at the edge of the spectacular precipice watching the mountain drop away at my feet in a sheer fall, I wonder if riding the clouds might be the simplest way to navigate Mizoram. Perhaps it’s the season — April is a month of frequent rains. Or perhaps Mizoram’s clouds, unlike those of Meghalaya, are one of the lesser-known closely held secrets of the Eastern Highlands.

I am at Thlazuang Kham in Phawngpui National Park. The cliffs rise around me in a semicircle, and I watch the clouds caress the rocky outcrops on the far side of the yawning gorge, all tawny gold and emerald green. Far across the flowing carpet of white, Phawngpui Peak, the state’s highest point at about 2,157 metres, seems like a hop away, beckoning tantalisingly. But the moment of whimsy passes, and I return to the reality of winding mountain roads.

It has taken us three days by road to reach Phawngpui National Park. We spend the first two days circumambulating hill after hill to reach Sangau, our last pitstop before the national park. Sangau, in the southeastern corner of Mizoram and close to the India-Myanmar border, is 229 kilometres from Aizawl.

 

I am with wildlife photographer Dhritiman Mukherjee, naturalist Omkar Dharwadkar, and filmmaker Tukai Biswas on a two-week field trip to explore Mizoram and the life that this enigmatic state sustains. This far to the east, daybreak is around 0330. As we set off for the national park, the clouds play hide and seek with the towering blue mountains in front of me, deceptively close. Far below, the Chhimtuipui River, also known as the Kaladan River, glistens a pale blue as it snakes across the valley to the Burmese village on the hill across. The American writer Rebecca Solnit’s observation on the blues of horizons and distant mountain ranges touches a chord. “The color of that distance is the color of an emotion… the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go. For the blue is not in the place those miles away at the horizon, but in the atmospheric distance between you and the mountains….”

We stop en route to hike up a ridge and watch Blyth’s swifts and Nepal house-martins perform aerial acrobatics, then wind our way across patches of thick montane subtropical forest. A while later, we turn a corner to be greeted by a vast expanse of sprawling grassland. We’ve arrived at Far Pak, the secluded forest lodge at Phawngpui National Park, and our base for the next few days.

As we settle in and drink in our surroundings, the merry calls of mountain bamboo partridges in the thicket welcome us. They are difficult to spot, hidden in dense undergrowth. But their calls are unmistakable, a hopeful sign of sightings to come. 

The Arakan Mountain range and the Burmese connection

Phawngpui National Park is one of Mizoram’s two national parks, and it is cut off and remote. Visitors to the park must be prepared for mud roads that might become difficult to navigate in the rains, basic accommodation, and no electricity. The name Phawngpui is derived from the local Lai language — phong means “meadow”, and pui means “great”. As I observe the grassy glades that stretch out on all sides and cover the ridges around us, I realise it’s a fitting name. The peak is also referred to in English as Blue Mountain. The park, named after the Phawngpui Peak, covers around 50 sq km. The grasslands are interspersed with thickly forested patches of Himalayan oak and Indian pine, clutches of bamboo, white orchids, rogue lilies, and the occasional blushing, late blooming rhododendron, all adding their myriad hues to the palette of this unique landscape.

The sunlight begins to get harsh as early as 10 am, but the pathway towards the forested patches seems lively, surprisingly, even in this heat. Omkar and I venture out on foot to explore. The trilling song of mountain tailorbirds leads us, almost like the fabled pied piper, to a clump of thick bamboo. Further along, we come upon the seasonal water source that feeds the forest lodge. Here, a pair of yellow-bellied fairy fantails dance a complicated hopscotch on the bamboo fronds.

Beyond the bamboo, we encounter denser forests. In the cool shade, my attention is drawn to a cluster of insects huddled on the bark of a tree trunk. Drawing closer, I realise they are treehoppers, with distinctive long tails that are etched in my memory. Belonging to the Darthula genus (occurring in the Himalayas), these treehoppers (Darthula hardwikii) aggregate on tree bark, almost as if they are having a party, feeding on tree sap and producing honeydew. Later in the day, we explore further along the ridge. Here, we spot green-tailed sunbirds feeding on rhododendron flowers, a pair of lesser shortwings in dense shrub undergrowth, and the familiar silhouettes of crested finchbills perched on tips of bamboo.

By 4 pm, the sun starts waning, and the vivid sunset is swift and dramatic. Temperatures dip drastically. Along with the howl of the wind in surround sound, we hear the calls of a grey nightjar from the grassland in front of the lodge, and the booming call of a brown wood-owl from the wooded patch behind. Later in the night, around 8 pm, we get unexpectedly lucky with a plum sighting. Following the deep, loud “hoo-hoo” call of a Himalayan owl, we come upon a rather serious-looking owl, black eyes outlined by rims of bright white. This individual has a particularly wise countenance and watches us for a long while. I am held by its gaze, almost as if the owl could search my soul with that penetrating gaze.

There are no lights for miles around, and the night sky is dazzling. The rustic lodge at Far Pak has no electricity or connectivity. Days later, I discover that my cell phone has been trying desperately to connect, routinely pinging a tower in Hakha, Myanmar. I switch it off.

In Search of the Mount Victoria Babax

Sharing a 722-kilometre-long border to the south with Bangladesh and Myanmar, Mizoram rubs shoulders with Tripura, Assam, and Manipur to the north. Phawngpui Peak is the highest point of the Mizo or Lushai Hills, a part of the much larger Arakan Mountain range along the Indo-Myanmar border. In the south, the mountains and rivers connect Mizoram to Myanmar’s Chin State, forming a unique frontier zone for both biodiversity and culture.

One of the main reasons we’ve traversed to this remote corner of Mizoram is in search of a rather nondescript-looking brown bird, the mysterious Mount Victoria babax (Pterorhinus woodi). Belonging to the laughingthrush family and named after the highest mountain in Chin State, this species is known to be restricted almost exclusively to the Arakan Mountains in western Myanmar. On this side of the border, however, the presence of the babax in Phawngpui is known from a specimen collected in 1953. The bird was sighted in the same region in 1997, and then for the first time in 25 years, in January 2022. 

Bird Count India ranks the Mount Victoria babax as the eighth rarest bird species in India, among the 20 on their list. The sheer cliffs featuring rocky outcrops with some vegetation are the preferred habitats of these birds, and we kept a sharp ear out for their calls from the moment we enter the national park. The bubbling whistle-like “puh-pooo-yih” seemed quite distinct in theory, but we are ambushed by other laughingthrush calls on more than one occasion. We routinely scour the cliffs early in the mornings and evenings, hoping to hear them, but they are elusive. 

On one of these walks, we see another bird that is only found in the Lushai Hills in Mizoram and the Chin Hills of Myanmar, the Chin Hills wren-babbler (Spelaeornis oatesi). At first, all that registers is a tiny bundle of brown feathers. But a closer look reveals the most charming features; a white chest flecked with dark spots, a head and upper body with lighter details that complement and contrast the bird’s chest, and a distinctively long tail. We’ve just seen a “skulker”, which is how avid birders describe difficult-to-see birds, as they skulk in the undergrowth. The Chin Hills wren-babbler species prefers the understorey of evergreen forests and scrub habitats, and we are lucky to observe another individual flitting in a bamboo patch. Going by its behaviour and preference for perches, it appears to be the same bird we’ve seen on several occasions.

In this remote landscape devoid of man-made sounds, it is easy to tune in to the soundscape. As I listen, distinct acoustic signatures become apparent. The brown wood-owl and the cicadas keep me company through the night. A pro ventriloquist, the brown wood-owl’s location in the woods behind the lodge is impossible to pinpoint. In another direction, two Himalayan owls appear to be having a conversation in the trees near the cliff. At daybreak, I hear what seems like the familiar urban sound of a generator coming on. My brain registers the sound even as I drowsily realise that we have no generator or electricity. It’s the whirring call of brown bush warblers (Locustella luteoventris) in the tall grass.

On our last day in Phawngpui, we make our way to the cliffs in a final attempt to sight the Mount Victoria babax, the bird that had been lost to us in India for years. I think of Solnit again and her haunting thoughts on loss “Falling out of sight held the terror of being forever lost.” The babax had fallen out of sight for 70 years and was thought to be lost in India forever. Would we be among the lucky handful to see the bird on this side of the border? We walk to the now-familiar ridge, listening carefully for the call. We scan the habitat fanning out in front of us, but there’s no sign of the bird we came all this way to see. We turn back reluctantly. Unwilling to give up, however, we decide to try one last time in a slightly more hidden outcrop. Omkar scouts ahead and calls excitedly on the walkie-talkie within minutes – “it’s the babax, it’s the babax”. We hurtle down the slope to where Omkar is waiting. A pair has just flown across and settled on a tree but is now hidden from sight. We wait impatiently. After what seems an interminable period, actually only a few minutes, the pair hop onto a fallen tree and make their way up the slope, in plain sight, one after the other. The entire team has seen the babax. The blue mountain has bestowed on us the most memorable parting gift. 

Things to note before you travel

Mizoram’s infrastructure for tourism is at a nascent stage, but as the tourist footprint in the state grows, especially in sensitive habitats, the growing need is to be mindful of how this impacts life in these habitats.

• Recommended season for travel to Phawngpui Peak and Phawngpui National Park is October to April.

• There is a tourist lodge in Sangau, about 35 km from the national park. There is also a forest rest house in Sangau. Tourist lodges and forest rest houses, wherever available, are usually the best accommodation options as you venture further away from larger villages.

• Carry your own supplies, sleeping bags, groceries etc., from Sangau if staying at Far Pak.