The Gadabas can be divided into 3 groups: Bada Gadaba, Halar Gadaba and Parenga Gadaba. In appearance, they can be distinguished by their yellow-brown complexion, dark-brown eyes, prominent cheek-bones and broad flat nose.

The gadaba tribes construct their houses in two rows, each facing one another, with some large `way` situated between them. The leader of the village lives in a separate house which is the largest and is located in the center of one of these rows. In front of the headman house a banyan or the mango tree, is planted and just at the foot of the tree a stone `platform` is built. This is the seat for the leader of the village who use to preside a court session for settling several disputable issues of the whole of the Gabada village.

Their special drink, salaps, is very sweet and highly intoxicating. Prepared from the juice of the salaps tree, it is their community drink.

Following the tradition of many of the tribal communities, the spinsters and bachelors of the Gabada community are prohibited from sleeping at their respective parental houses during night. Instead all the unmarried girls sleep together at a common place. Bachelors too do the same. In this way two distinctive households are built for both boys and girls individually.

Marriage in a Gadaba community takes place mostly by elopement, usually on the weekly market day or on days of festivals when people from different villages congregate. The boy and girl run away to a distant village stay there for some nights and then return to their village when they are declared married.

The best way to understand a Gadaba community and its societal norms is by checking out the villages, such as, Koraput, where they are concentrated.