PANGTI, India — Driving the last 20 miles of road to this tiny village takes at least two hours and a fondness for heights, so it seems unlikely that this area of jungle near the Myanmar border will ever become a popular destination for birders.

But those who do brave the road — ignoring State Department travel advisories about “sporadic incidents of violence by ethnic insurgent groups” that recently resulted in at least 75 deaths in neighboring Assam State — will get to witness one of the most extraordinary migrations of a raptor species in the world.

Just two years ago, residents slaughtered hundreds of thousands of the birds — Amur falcons — and sold them to local markets here in Nagaland and in Assam, states in the crooked finger of Indian land that loops over Bangladesh beside China and Myanmar. But this October and November, millions of the falcons passed largely unmolested through India on their way from Russia to their wintering grounds in southern Africa.

The reversal was the result of a concerted campaign by a few conservationists whose video of the killings produced worldwide revulsion and embarrassed state and local officials into action. But villagers here have since become surprisingly enthusiastic stewards of the birds they once slaughtered for food.