Along Onsen

Along Onsen — named for Aalo, the headquarters of West Siang district in Arunachal Pradesh — serves a community on the banks of the Siang River, the upper course of the Brahmaputra as it descends from the Tibetan plateau through the deepest gorges on Earth before emerging into the Assam plain as the mighty river whose waters drain one of Asia's most geologically and ecologically dynamic watersheds. The West Siang district is home to the Adi people, one of Arunachal's most numerous indigenous communities, whose traditional animist religion (Donyi-Polo, Sun and Moon worship), intricate cane and bamboo crafts, and distinctive shawls represent a cultural tradition maintained with considerable vitality despite the rapid changes brought by road connectivity and educational access in recent decades. The bicarbonate thermal springs, rising through the intensely folded geology of the Eastern Himalayan syntaxis where the Siang River gorge creates the deepest river canyon on Earth, provide mineral bathing in a river town whose position above one of geology's most dramatic features gives the simple act of thermal bathing an extraordinary geological context.