The Vertical City of Northeast India — Mizoram's capital climbs impossibly steep ridges above jungle valleys, its Mizo people have the highest literacy rate in India and an extraordinary choral music tradition, and the city's position near the Myanmar border gives it a distinctly un-Indian character
Aizawl (pronounced eye-zole) is the capital of Mizoram — one of India's least-visited states, a narrow strip of bamboo jungle bordering Bangladesh and Myanmar in the far northeast. The city of 400,000 is built almost vertically on steep ridge systems rising from 900–1600 metres, with houses clinging to near-vertical slopes connected by staircases and narrow roads that switchback up hillsides — earning the informal description 'the city that defies gravity.' Mizoram has the second-highest literacy rate in India (91.3%, behind Kerala), near-universal Christianity (predominantly Presbyterian and…
The Mizo people migrated to the present area from Chin Hills (now Myanmar) over several centuries, establishing village communities (zawlbuk system) led by chiefs (lal). British contact came through colonial expansion into Burma — the Lushai Hills (now Mizoram) were annexed in 1891 after a series of punitive expeditions against Mizo raids on tea gardens in the Cachar Plains. Welsh Presbyterian missionaries arrived from 1894 and converted the Mizo people to Christianity within two generations with extraordinary completeness; the Mizo script (Roman alphabet, adapted from Welsh missionary transl…