Members : Karthik, Praveen, Sathish Raja and Hornbill friends! :-)
Dates : 1 Dec 2021 - 5 Dec 2021
Trip Plan
Chennai - Guwahati (Workation) - Dimapur - Kohima - Zakhama - Hornbill festival - Dzukou valley - Kohima - Dzuluke - Khonoma - Kohima - Zakhama - Dimapur - Chennai
We enjoyed the Hornbill festival for couple of days. On our Day-3 in Nagaland, we planned for a trek for Dzukou Valley. Dzukou Valley is one of the most popular treks from Kohima. The valley has beautiful green carpet of bamboos across mounds of unending hills. The valley is by the border of Nagaland and Manipur.
Trekking route
There are 2 trekking routes for the Dzukou Valley. One through Viswema and other through Jakhama.
Viswema route - The Viswema route is a steep 45-min climb through the thick forests followed by a 2-3 hour walk by the side of the beautiful valley filled by young bamboos. The route is approachable from Kohima by a local vehicle - a good one hour drive by average roads and a 20-25 min off road drive into the forests to the trekking start spot. Viswema is 5 kms far off from Jakhama.
Jakhama route - This is a short route by distance in kms; however a very steep climb for almost 90% of the route. The route starting point is easily approachable compared to the Viswema route.
Trek Difficulty and more info
The Jakhama route is definitely more demanding compared to Viswema route. The Jakhama route is very steep; between tall and thick trees; led by stones led steps. The Jakhama route could take around 4 hours to complete the climb and a 15-min walk at the top to reach the destination. Normally, the trek is done for 2 days - covering both the routes either way; primarily the Jakhama route while reaching Dzukou valley and climbing down by Viswema route.
There are not much stay and food options up there at the top. People prefer to stay over night for star gazing on their own tents or in the open dormitory available at the top. The dormitory does not have great facilities; just 4 walls to protect you from the cold and nothing more. The place is in mid of nothing and one can expect all possible natural interventions of insects, pests and rodents. The food too is mostly option less. cooked by the locals out there. Vegetarians, beware!
The Viswema route is motorable to the starting point and is very much possible to get a hitch-ride or shared cab anyday. We booked a cab for Rs.2500 from our home stay; and the home stay owner arranged few more to join us within our home stay or from the closer by ones - making it affordable for all of us.
Our plan
We planned to complete the trek in 1 day; yes, in 1-day, as we planned to spend the next day to see more places. We planned to take the Viswema route onward and planned to take Jakhama route on return, so as we cover both the routes as an experience and feeler of the Nagaland forests. The plan was to start as early as possible and come back before dark - around 4 PM.
Trek start - Viswema route
We started the day at 5 AM along with 3 more persons - One Mr.Veermani, a retired professional, very young in heart and fitness - who can do hill running; Kubee from Pune. who keeps travelling amidst work and one other tent trekker from nearby home stay. 6 of us started exactly on time; reached the trekking point with water and light snacks with us. We also carried our breakfast - roti and aloo sabji from our home stay - a very kind gesture making fresh food ready so early in the day.
The trek start around 6:30 Am by the sunrise and the steep climb part was very interesting, listening to sounds of birds, insects and most importantly, the beautiful views of hills, forests and sunrise.
We reached the breakeven point of steep climb to the valley walk around 7:30 AM and stopped for the breakfast. The breakfast was surplus for us and we shared with another bunch of trekkers climbing down from the valley to the base. We took a 20-min break to enjoy the nature, click few photos and finish the breakfast.
The window to the valley was amazing entering the bamboo led path - the views were break-taking and kept coming on us again and again for the next couple of hours. As the sun came on, the caps and sunglasses were put to use - to protect from the sun as well as the bamboos falling on the face.
Reaching the destination
We reached the Dzukou valley destination around 10:15 AM. The mounds of the valleys were beautiful and we spent around 45 minutes taking photos and enjoying the nature. One can also see a helipad and can walk upto it, if willing. The view is quite deep on the mounds and if one plans to stay overnight; gets ample time and can even walk all the way inbetween the grass mounds and have fun.
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| The Dormitory! |
The small shop was selling biscuits and chocolates and some toiletries for people planning to stay overnight. Co-trekkers ordered maggi and understood it was quite bad, almost inedible. We filled our water bottles from the natural water table and started our trek back.
Trek down - Jakhama route
In the next 10-15 minutes we climbed up to the top of the hill and got the complete view of the valley - the best of all views we had since morning. Post that, a sudden left turn, and we were into deep woods climbing down and down and down for next 3 hours. We met our Hornbill friends enroute and promised to meet again next day!
The climb down was quite tiresome as it was steep and kept on going!
We did reach out to our home stay inbetween, when we had mobile signal intermittently, for the return cab to wait in Jakhama pick up point and continued our trek down. We saw few people making their trek up post noon too; carrying tents, cooking accessories and all set for the night and next day. We reached the parking lot around 4:15 PM - the trek down took almost 4:30+ hours; absolutely tired, but still excited for next day!
We reached back the home stay by 6 PM and had sumptuous dinner of roti, rice, dhall, aloo sabji and papad. Meanwhile, Sathish Raja went to Hornbill to have extra fun!
Next day - Visiting Nagamese Villages!
As we winded up the earlier evening, we did request our homestay to arrange a cab for us to go to Dzuleke and Khonomo villages - another set of natural beauties amidst hills to see in Nagaland. This is a day trip from Kohima and surroundings - not more that 6 hours.
Dzuleke - A Remote Gem!
Post breakfast, we started the day around 8:30 AM. Our cab was ready - Alto! We squeezed in and started to see the beauty of couple of remote villages of Nagaland. Dzuleke is around 40 kms from Kohima and takes around 1:30 hours to reach. The roads are below average, being laid at few places and uneven at few places. Dzuleke is an offbeat tourist location for ecotourism.
We reached Dzuleke by 10:30 AM. The driver turned in to our tour guide and took us down a stream and show us an amazing planet! He climbed down few slippery rocks and started seeing a river beneath the rocks flowing and becoming water fall in several places.
Our climbing down went on and on till we reached a point where we cannot further climb down! The beauty of nature lies in its silence and thick forests amidst the rocks! Wow, amazing place to be.
We spent close to 1 hour in this location and did not have heart to turn our back to it! The place is quite slippery and needs to be approached with caution.
We came up and had some local snacks and soft drinks at a small shop.
Enroute Khonomo
Our next stop was Khonomo village. We stopped inbetween for a view point and bought some local fruits and candies. We also had Hibiscus tea; we also bought few for taking back home later at the Hornbill festival.
Khonomo Village
Our driver took a steep turn from the road and went through the dried bamboos for a detour to Khonomo village. The detour itself was adventurous. We reached the Khonomo village in no time and the driver guided us upto a hill top climbing around 150 steps. Wow! We got a beautiful view of the Khonomo agricultural village - the deep valley beneath was completely cultivated and the view was just spell bounding!
With the moving clouds and at a towering height, we enjoy the wild apple juice at the spot, freshly made and spent time at the awesome views.
We then decided to start and reach Kohima. We had plans to see few places in Kohima before returning to our home stay.
It was around 3 PM when we reached Kohima and tried to locate to place for lunch as well as able parking space. We reached the heart of the capital near the market place. The Naga market is an important tourist destination to understand the Nagamese culture. We went near the market and found very different items for sale in the market as food - snails, eels, rabbits, frogs, snakes, Silk worms, squirrels and much more! We could not spend more time in the market as it became quite difficult to stand to the odour!
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