In Islands of the Clouds, Isabella Tree journeys to the heart of the remote and beautiful Highlands of Papua New Guinea. In this extract she visits the famous Mt Hagen Cultural Show, but loses her guide, Highlander Akunai, along the way.

There were only a few groups actually competing from the Eastern Highlands - most clans were saving their energy and money for next year's show, which would be held in Goroka - but there were plenty of Eastern Highlanders who had come to watch and take notes in order to out-do the Western Highlands spectacle next year. With an apologetic wave, Akunai was sucked up into the throng and I was left to wander at leisure with my camera from one cultural group to the next.

Back in the hotel, the atmosphere seemed cotton-wool safe. Most of the guests had missed all the excitement and carried on writing postcards blithely. The receptionist was secretly triumphant..

"Not one person killed this year," she whispered. "That's very good for Mt Hagen's record. Very good for PNG's image in the Pacific Games. The riot will stop as soon as it rains," she added. "Round about five o'clock. Everyone will go home when they start to get wet."

Another Highland day was taking a curtain call when Akunai returned; he had had adventures of his own and only just made it back by hitching a lift in a dumper truck from Porgera. The sky was purple with storm clouds and the mountains were lit with familiar flickers of lightning. A fresh wind rustled the thatch over the walkways and it began to rain. It was exactly five o'clock.

There were men from the Wahgi Valley in head-dresses of black plumes several feet long that shook and trembled; they danced and wheeled about like courting birds. They had taken feathers from all the different kinds of birds of paradise - Princess Stephanie, King of Saxony, Sicklebill, Superbs and Magnificents - and combined them with red and green parrot feathers and bands of green scarab beetles.

There were columns of men from Mendi, like the tribe we had tangled with on the Porgera road, marching with military precision, as ferocious as their compatriots had seemed several weeks before. Their feet shook the ground like a passing earthquake.

There was the `Dead Body Carrying Party' from Simbu - some of them painted with yellow clay like the flaking skin of a corpse; they held switches of leaves to flick away the flies from their rotting flesh. Others of their party were covered in black paint picked out by a gleaming white skeleton, and their hands were splayed with splints of bamboo like outstretched claws. They moved on tiptoe - in slow motion - like ghosts.

In another group from Simbu, some of the warriors had covered half their body in talcum powder, while the other half was jet black with charcoal and burnt-tyre grease; like human eclipses, they appeared and disappeared as they whirled about.

But the dancers were tired. This was the third day of the performance, and they looked weary as they fought their way around the parade ground for the hundredth time. At intervals, when the drum-beating and the chanting and the marching let up, wantoks would come forward with slices of cucumber or a cigarette, or to remove the heavy head-dresses for a moment's relief.

Elsewhere on the parade ground, there were groups wearing non-traditional costumes. One, calling themselves the Beex Police or Minj Dustboys, had painted their bodies in a bizarre parody of the old kiap uniform. They had epaulettes on their bare shoulders and the leader had painted a sash across his chest, with a cluster of medals above his left nipple. They wore short black skirts, big belts and berets, false moustaches and painted-on boots and socks. But they carried real home-guns of the sort I had seen at Goroka police station.

There was freelance decoration among the spectators too: an old man with a biro though his nose; children in head-dresses of tinsel and Christmas decorations; a warrior in all his finery and a striped tie as well; a woman in a reed skirt and Playtex bra; and a man wearing women's earrings and Y-fronts. Elsewhere, a police badge or a cigarette packet took pride of place in a head-dress and traditional tribal gear was enhanced by the addition of shades or trainers.

This was not what most foreign spectators liked to see.

"I think it's terrible they've started to use all these western things," said one disgruntled tourist.
"They've become so . . . so corrupt."

She was having trouble selecting subjects for her camera. "I can see Coke cans and cigarette packets in the States," she complained. "It's not why I've come to PNG."

She seemed to sum up the attitude of many of the tourists. They expected to find a primitive Garden of Eden untouched by aspects of their own world. For a couple of weeks they wanted to immerse themselves in the fantasy of another life, something that they could record and neatly categorise once they were back home. Naked warriors who drank Coke or were au fait with a camera were not part of the deal.

But Papua New Guinea was a country on the move. There was energy and imagination in this adapting of new ideas, and a seasonable spirit of exploitation to match the challenges of the outside world.

Someone dressed in an orange bear suit was giving away paper hats from a Pepsi Cola float beneath a sign: `Pepsi - the choice of a New Generation'. In order to drink from the bottle, a man in the queue removed the feather he had threaded through his upper lip.

"Em i gutpela sing-sing," he remarked happily.

It was about three o'clock and the contestants were due to be judged. The crowd was cordoned off and several groups entered the arena to strut their stuff for the last time. All at once, there was an air of mounting tension, and scuffles broke out amongst the spectators. Tour groups were herded back to their buses and an administrator appealed for calm over the loudspeakers. No one seemed to know how or when the results would be announced: some people thought they might be delayed until the following day to avoid confrontation; others thought the judges had decided to call a draw. As time drew on, with no announcement from the judges in the stand, the crowd grew restive and boisterous.

"There'll be a riot any second now," said a befeathered warrior standing beside me.

I wondered how he could be so sure.

"I'm undercover policeman. People have been talking all day. It won't be good show if there isn't a fight. Perhaps you should get to your hotel before it starts."

I took his advice and began to make my way through the dancers towards the road. The smell of cooking oil on hot bodies was overpowering. A sense of aimlessness pervaded the crowd and began to assert itself like a rascal on the loose. Akunai could have been anywhere.

Suddenly, a shout went up and people began to stampede. Puffs of dust trailed above our heads in the wind and I realised it was tear gas. People were screaming and running in all directions, looking back over their shoulders as if pursued by some fearful monster. Children were snatched up into their fathers' arms or gripped fiercely by the hand and hurried off into the trees; most of them, though, were laughing with the thrill of it all.

We ran through a cloud of smoke that had vaporised like a genie on the road before us. Immediately, my eyes began to prickle and my lips felt swollen and numb; there was a dry, acidic smell in my nostrils and a sharp pain in my sinuses.

"This way, this way," said someone by my right shoulder, and I veered off blindly towards a convoy of waiting cars. I was bundled into a car with some other bewildered tourists and driven off at full speed towards our hotel.

The crowds had slowed to their usual amble and people were walking about as if nothing had happened. Then suddenly they started running again - this time in another direction. Ahead of us, by a traffic junction, was a gang of truculent young men. They were dancing and chanting, and thrusting their spears at an invisible foe. When he saw them, our driver accelerated.

"Hold tight," he said, as we screeched over the crossroads. There was the metallic thud of missiles hitting the bodywork and one well-aimed stone cracked the back window.

"Rascals," shouted our driver, "they can see damn well I'm an official."