Ziro Valley at 1,525 Metres Grows Rice and Carp in the Same Terraced Fields, and UNESCO Has Held the Apatani Landscape on India's Tentative List Since 15 April 2014

Ziro Valley sits at about 1,525 metres in the lower ranges of the eastern Himalayas in Arunachal Pradesh, and the Apatani people who live there farm it with a system that puts wet rice, carp and millet on the same plots. India submitted the Apatani Cultural Landscape to UNESCO’s Tentative List on 15 April 2014, citing criteria (iii) and (v), and the entry is still on the World Heritage Centre’s India page as of 6 November 2026.

What the Apatani grow, and where

UNESCO’s tentative list entry describes a plateau of 1,058 square kilometres, of which about 32 square kilometres is cultivable, with mountain tracts around it that range from 1,830 to 2,900 metres. The district administration’s website gives the district headquarters at Ziro an altitude of 1,500 metres. A survey paper from the ICAR Directorate of Coldwater Fisheries Research puts the plateau at 1,572 metres, so the height is best read as a range of 1,500 to 1,572 metres depending on where it is taken.

The valley’s flat land is under wet rice. It lies in Lower Subansiri district, one of the districts profiled in our Arunachal Pradesh overview. The entry says the Apatani rear fish in those fields, and grow millet (Eleusine coracana) on the raised bunds between the plots. The India Water Portal adds that a single small river feeds the whole valley through a network of channels and that the water goes back to the river to irrigate fields downstream. Neighbouring tribes practise shifting cultivation, and the entry calls the Apatani the only tribe in the area practising settled agriculture amid the shifting cultivation all around.

The ICAR paper, which records a field survey in seven Ziro villages in 2015 and 2016, puts the water area at 715.7 hectares, of which about 592 hectares carries rice and fish together. It takes that figure from a 2002 study by D. N. Das, and Down To Earth repeats the same numbers in 2023. They give the scale of the system, though they are not a fresh count.

How a rice field becomes a fish farm

The ICAR paper describes the plots in detail. After the November rice harvest the straw stays on the field to rot. In December and January the farmers prepare the plots with daos (chopping blades) and spades, using neither plough animals nor machines. Each plot has a trench 30 to 45 centimetres deep dug inside it, where fish shelter in hot hours or when water runs low, and two outlets guarded by bamboo screens, one at the surface for excess water and one at the bottom for draining the field at harvest. Water is held at 25 to 35 centimetres.

Fish go in after the rice. The paper says fingerlings of 5 to 8 centimetres are stocked 10 to 15 days after transplanting, in April and May, and Down To Earth gives ten days. The preferred fish are strains of common carp, and the paper names 16 local rice landraces grown in the system. It says the fish feed on plankton and on organisms that grow on the rice, with no bought feed, and that Azolla and Lemna, two floating water plants that fix nitrogen, are added to the plots.

The yield figures are not identical across sources, and the units differ. The ICAR paper reports 3 to 5 tonnes of rice and 200 to 500 kilograms of fish per hectare per year. It also quotes an earlier study for 500 kilograms of fish per hectare per season. Down To Earth gives 300 to 500 kilograms of fish and 3,000 to 4,000 kilograms of rice per hectare per season, and says fish raise rice yields by 10 to 15 percent by controlling weeds and insects. The ICAR paper says fish sales add more than 50 percent to a farmer’s earnings from the rice crop, at a local price it records as Rs 150 per kilogram.

Down To Earth says the Apatani have practised integrated rice-fish farming since the 1960s. UNESCO’s entry describes the wet-rice landscape as centuries old and the ICAR paper calls rice-fish farming a heritage practice, so how long fish have shared the fields is not settled by these pages.

The groves, the council and the rules

The entry lists separate zones for settlement, wet rice, dry cultivation, burial grounds, pine and bamboo gardens, private plantations and community forest. It ties the water supply to the forest around the valley: customary law on cutting trees and hunting protects the watershed that feeds the channels. The bulyan, the village council, oversees individual actions that affect the whole community, and the entry says it works by appeal to conscience and prevention rather than punishment.

VillageSquare’s March 2026 report on Myoko gives an example of the forest rules in practice. Cutting a tree usually needs the consent of the clan that holds the land, and it says community rules around Ziro can carry penalties such as a fine of Rs 50,000 or a full-grown mithun, a semi-domesticated Himalayan ox. The same report says the facial tattoos older Apatani women once wore have not continued among younger generations.

What the tentative list entry does and does not mean

A Tentative List is, in UNESCO’s wording, an inventory of properties a country intends to consider for nomination. It is not an inscription, and Ziro is not a World Heritage Site. UNESCO’s page carries a disclaimer that the content of each entry is the responsibility of the country that submitted it.

India’s submission argues the landscape is a living one. It says the Apatani have kept the valley in much the same state for centuries, that canopy cover on the surrounding ridges has increased, and that the sacred groves are intact. It also says the system is under pressure from globalisation and changing values, and that subtle changes could disrupt it unless action is taken in time. Satellite villages have appeared as the population has grown.

Sources give two dates for the listing. UNESCO’s page records the submission on 15 April 2014, and Millennium Post reported in 2018 that 22 Indian sites went onto the tentative list in April 2014. Incredible India, the Ministry of Tourism’s site, says Ziro was shortlisted in 2012, and the page does not say by whom.

One secondary article describes Ziro as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System of the Food and Agriculture Organization. The Press Information Bureau lists India’s three such sites as Koraput in Odisha, Kuttanad in Kerala and the saffron heritage of Kashmir, so this article does not use that claim.

Three more entries were added to the list in September 2026, and our report on them explains what a tentative entry involves.

Myoko in spring, Dree in July

The Apatani year is marked by festivals that UNESCO’s entry names as Murung, Myoko, Yapung and Dree. VillageSquare describes Myoko as a month-long spring celebration of friendship and obligation between clans, opened by raising the babo, a tall pole made from evergreen trees. Hosting rotates among the villages, and in 2026 it was the turn of Hari. The report gives no fixed dates, and travel operators’ schedules vary, so the timing in March should be confirmed with the district office before travelling.

Dree is the agricultural festival. Arun Khabar, reporting a district information office release, says the 2026 Dree was held on 5 July at three venues in the valley: Biri Dree Ground in central Ziro, Hija and Hong. It reports the 59th Central Dree football tournament under way and the first Apatani Fashion Week at Hija, which showed traditional Apatani textiles worked into modern clothing.

The Ziro Festival of Music is newer. Outlook Traveller says it began in 2012 and that the 2026 edition was announced for 24 to 27 September at the Ziro Festival Ground in Biiri. The same page says the festival follows a zero-plastic policy and builds its stages from bamboo and local wood with Apatani artisans.

Seeing the fields and the fish farm

The High Altitude Fish Seed Farm at Tarin is about 3.5 kilometres from Hapoli town, according to the district’s tourist page. Arunachal Pradesh Tourism says it was set up under the North Eastern Council in 1985 and 1986, covers 7.4 hectares and has 74 ponds, 46 of them nursery ponds, and that two rice crops and one fish crop are raised together there. Incredible India names the rice crops Mipya and Emoh and the fish Ngihi.

Talley Valley Wildlife Sanctuary lies north-east of the plateau. Arunachal Pradesh Tourism puts it 32 kilometres from Ziro, and Incredible India gives its area as 337 square kilometres and says it shelters the clouded leopard and a bamboo, Pleioblastus simonii, found nowhere else in the world. Incredible India lists the Kile Pakho viewpoint and the Pine Grove near Old Ziro among the valley’s other stops.

Permits, routes and season, as checked on 6 November 2026

Indian citizens need an electronic Inner Line Permit to enter Arunachal Pradesh. The state’s tourism page and the eILP application page say the tourist eILP covers stays of up to 14 days, with a provisional permit for longer stays, and that children under 14 need no permit of their own but must travel with an adult. The application page lists the fee as Rs 300 for up to three days and Rs 500 beyond three days up to 14. Foreign nationals apply for a Protected Area or Restricted Area Permit through the Indian Foreigners Regional Registration Office e-services site that the portal links. The state page lists tourist permit facilitation centres at Naharlagun and Gumto railway stations, in Guwahati, and at Donyi Polo Airport in Itanagar. Permit rules change, so check the portal before booking. The permit is a state-level requirement, and Tawang, further west in the same state, has its own guide.

The district website names Naharlagun as the nearest station, with buses from the Guwahati ISBT to Naharlagun and direct buses from Guwahati to Ziro run by APST (the state transport service) and Network Bus Service, plus daily shared Sumo taxis to Ziro from Naharlagun and North Lakhimpur. Incredible India lists Lilabari Airport near North Lakhimpur and Hollongi Airport near Itanagar as the nearest, and gives the road distance from Guwahati as 445 to 470 kilometres. The same page gives two different distances from Itanagar, 165 and 100 kilometres, so allow the longer figure when planning.

Incredible India recommends March to May and September to November. The ICAR paper records a mean rainfall of about 1,500 millimetres, concentrated between May and August, with little or none from November to February. Arunachal Pradesh Tourism says that in the monsoon months of July to September many attractions across the state can close because of heavy rain, and advises keeping spare days in hand for landslides.

The ICAR authors recommend more private and departmental fish hatcheries and brood banks in the valley, so that farmers can buy seed locally.