Baliem Valley
The Baliem Valley (Indonesian: Lembah Baliem; also spelled Balim and sometimes known as the Grand Valley) is a valley of the highlands in Western New Guinea, Indonesia occupied by the Dani people. The main town in the valley is Wamena, which lies on the Baliem River. The valley is about 80 km in length by 20 km in width and lies at an altitude of about 1,600–1,700 metres (5,200–5,600 ft), with a population of over 200,000.
As far as the outside world was concerned, the discovery of the Baliem Valley and the unexpected presence of its large agricultural population was made by Richard Archbold’s third zoological expedition to New Guinea in 1938. On 21 June an aerial reconnaissance flight southwards from Hollandia (now Jayapura) found what the expedition called the "Grand Valley". Since then the valley has gradually been opened up to a limited amount of tourism, with Baliem Valley Festival (Festival Lembah Baliem) as a main tourist event.
The following is copied from the back cover of Peter Matthiessen’s book Under the Mountain Wall:
In the Baliem Valley in Central New Guinea live the Kurelu, a Stone Age tribe that survived into the twentieth century. Peter Matthiessen visited the Kurelu with the Harvard-Peabody Expedition in 1961 and wrote Under the Mountain Wall as an account not of the expedition, but of the great warrior Weaklekek, the swineherd Tukum, U-mue and his family, and the boy Weake, killed in a surprise raid. Matthiessen observes these people in their timeless rhythm of work and play and war, of gardening and wood gathering, feasts and funerals, pig stealing and ambush.
Airplane crash
The valley was the site of the Gremlin Special airplane crash in 1945, which received a great deal of publicity at the time. In 2011, a book about the crash and rescue entitled Lost in Shangri-La was published.
