chalet pizza hopkins FACIAL TATTOOING Historically famous for their beauty, Apatani women were all too often kidnapped by

FACIAL TATTOOING Historically famous chalet pizza hopkins for their beauty, Apatani women were all too often kidnapped chalet pizza hopkins by warriors of the neighbouring Nishi tribes. As a defence , Apatani girls were deliberately defaced. They were given facial tattoos, like graffitied beards scribbled onto living Mona Lisa paintings, and extraordinary nose plugs known as dat fitted into holes cut in their upper nostrils. Some men also have tattoos. Peace with the Nishis in the 1960s meant an end to that brutal practice, but many older women still wear dat. Photography is an understandably sensitive issue, so ask first. Some Apatani women have had cosmetic surgery to remove their tattoos.

oHotel Gakyi Khang Zhang (%224 647; r from 1320), a couple of kilometres out of town on the road to the monastery, offers far and away the best rooms in town colourful sky-blue affairs with polished wooden floors. There s a decent restaurant (mains 80-120) and the staff are great fun. It also has good monastery chalet pizza hopkins views, a generator and, most bizarrely, chalet pizza hopkins a lounge bar/nightclub complete with throbbing strobe lights!