It lies to the north of the Tawang Chu river valley, roughly 10 miles (16 km) south of the Line of Actual Control with China.

During the 1914 Simla Conference, Tibet and British India signed an agreement delineating their common boundary in the Assam Himalaya region, which came to be known as the McMahon Line.

By this agreement, Tibet relinquished several hundred square miles of its territory, including Tawang, to the British.

[7] According to Tsering Shakya, the British records show that the Tibetans regarded the border agreed in 1914 as being conditional upon China accepting the Simla Convention.

[7][neutrality is disputed] The British did not implement the McMahon Line for over two decades, during which Tawang continued to be administered by Tibet.

When the British botanist Frank Kingdon-Ward crossed the Sela Pass and entered Tawang in 1935 without permission from Tibet, he was briefly arrested.

This met with resistance from the Tibetan government which implied that China's acceptance of the Simla Convention was a prerequisite to all such concerns.

[citation needed] In 1938 the British made a move to assert sovereignty over Tawang by sending a small military column under Capt.

[citation needed] After the outbreak of the war between China and Japan in 1941, the government of Assam undertook a number of 'forward policy' measures to tighten their hold on the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) area, which later became Arunachal Pradesh.

In 1944 administrative control was extended over the area of the Tawang tract lying south of the Sela Pass when J.P. Mills set up an Assam Rifles post at Dirang Dzong and sent the Tibetan tax-collectors packing.

[11] The situation continued after India's independence from Britain but underwent a decisive change in 1950 when Tibet lost its autonomy and was annexed into the newly established People's Republic of China.

[19] When the 14th Dalai Lama fled from Tibet to escape from the Chinese army, he crossed into India on 30 March 1959 and spent some days at the Tawang Monastery before reaching Tezpur in Assam on 18 April.

The Indian Airforce (IAF) has offered the upgraded ALG in Tawang for the operation of civil helicopter and flights for the tourism and UDAN scheme.

The proposed 166 km long Bhalukpong–Tawang railway link from the existing Bhalukpong railway station to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh being undertaken as the national project will boost tourism and enhance the national security with faster movement of troops, it will pass through elevations of over 10,000 feet, 80% of the tracks will be through tunnels and the longest tunnel will be 29.48 km long.

Located on the northernmost end of NH 13 of Trans-Arunachal Highway network, Tawang is 447.5 kilometres (278.1 mi) from state capital Itanagar and is connected with buses run by APSRTC and private services.

[30][31] The tunnel which is being constructed by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) will cut the travel time from the Indian Army's IV Corps headquarter at Tezpur to Tawang by at least 10 km or 1 hour, and it will also help make the NH13 an all-weather road to access Tawang which usually gets disconnected during winter.

Visitors to Tawang, as is the case with the entire Arunachal Pradesh, require special Inner Line Permit (ILP) issued by the concerned government body and can be obtained from offices based in Kolkata, Guwahati, Tezpur, and New Delhi.

Most of the travel from the plains is on a steep hill road journey, crossing Sela Pass at 4,176 metres (13,701 ft).