The Akka Village

November 1986

I have long been interested on the tribal people in the North Thailand and while in Chang Mai I took the opportunity to joint a guided 2Days 1Night hill track to an Akka Village.

The journey :

By mini bus from Chieng Mai to a small village;
From the small village by elephant up to a hill station;
From the hill station walk up to a Akka Village for the night

A panoramic view of the Akka village where our tour group spend the night. The tourist hut (hotel) is at the right hand side.

The children (in the middle of above photo) don't go to school and it didn't look as though they were doing any agricultural works. But it good they do not ask for “Money” like children in other tourists corrupted area I been to.

This Akka village seemed untainted by tourists. They keep their traditional natural feel without any false acts.

The Aka generally prefer to live along mountain ridges at high altitudes of approximately 1,000 meters and they rarely moved south. The Aka houses are on low stilts, with a large porch leading into a square living area with a stove. The roof is steeply pitched.

Our group consists only 6 tourist on 3 elephants. Each elephant has a care taker.

With an Akka rice farmer (photo above) beside her rice farm.

The Akka are shifting cultivators. They cultivate dry rice for consumption and grow corn, millet, peppers, beans, garlic, sesame and other varieties of vegetables as additional subsistence crops.

Crop production is often inadequate to meet their needs.

The Akka are well known to tourists for their extraordinary costumes and exotic appearance. They originate from Tibetan Highlands.

Over the years they left their homeland and migrated south to Yunnan, North Burma and Laos, and have only recently entered North Thailand, 150 years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akha_people

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