Nagaland - Tribal Culture and Nature

Nestled amongst lush green mountains and valleys, Nagaland balances its tribal heritage with modern popular music & fashion culture. Its main 16 tribal groups have their own unique dialect, traditions, and ways of life and have now created a local language called "Nagamese" to communicate across.

Touphema

Our first destination was Touphema, a tourist village about 50km from Kohima, it is connected by a small road from Botsa. We stayed a couple of nights here in this scenic tourist village with a resort having traditional Naga style cottages. Each cottage room was built & maintained by one of the communities of the village. We cooked Naga style pork - which has no onion, tomatoes or oil but just local spices and bamboo shoots boiled in water. A guided walk through the village laid with colourful flowers, helped us understand the traditions of the community, its church and the simple farming way of life.

Kohima & Kisama

On a Sunday afternoon we reached the city which bore a deserted and haunted look with no one on the streets and all shops closed (except the Coffin ones). Our homestay was atop a hill overlooking the city and the hosts were some of the most genuine ones that we met in all our travels. We spent time talking about the local culture, politics, history of Naga people while having Zhuto (rice beer) and pork.

Kohima city has few places to visit like the War memorial, Cathedral (open only on Sunday) and the bazars for street shopping. 

Kisama, where the annual Hornbill festival is held in December, is generally empty other time of the year. It has a huge arena with16 Morungs (tribal huts), one for each Naga tribe, adorned with skulls, tigers, monkeys & elephants demonstrate the Naga culture.

Khonoma & Dzuleke

One of the first green villages of the country, Khonoma is surrounded by foggy hills, rice paddies and a small village. A local guide took us for a 3 hour tour explaining the war history, culture, Morungs of the village. Spending some quality peace time observing the nature, Rhododendron flowers, butterflies was extremely refreshing.

Some 15 km away from Khonoma, lies a designated picnic and camping spot in Dzuleke. The road winds through some grassy rounded hills on one side and a deep forest on the other. We parked our car near the stream, pulled out our picnic basket and just spent time surrounded by nature.

Dimapur

The most populous city of the state, just acts as a connection for the airport. There is absolutely nothing to do or see here and it takes about 2-3 hours to reach Kohima.