Nagaland - The Great Hornbill Festival

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 - Dzokou valley - Kohima - Dzuluke - Khonoma -  Kohima - Zakhama - Dimapur - Chennai 

Brief on Hornbill Festival

Hornbill festival is one of the most popular festivals in North East India, representing the culture of  Nagaland. Nagaland is on the smallest hill states of North East India, known for myriad tribes - their culture and tradition. There are 16 major tribes in Nagaland in the Hornbill festival. This is a 10-day festival happening in Winter near Kohima in Nagaland.

Kohima is the capital city of Nagaland and Hornbill festival is conducted in the Kisama village, around 10 kms in the outskirts of Kohima. People in Nagaland speak English and Hindi comfortably. Nagamese is the local language. Sundays are total closure in Nagaland.

What is Hornbill festival

Hornbill festival is the festival of Unity. This festival is celebrated by the 16 tribes of Nagaland displaying the folks, songs, games, dance, food, colours, costumes, customs and various other cultural dimensions to the rest of the world. Most of these are unique to Nagamese people and this for sure keeps the tourists inflow increasing year on year. This festival is celebrated for 10 days in the month of December, every year. The mornings and noons are dedicated to the cultural fests, where one can visit the model homes of each tribe in the Heritage festival area, tasting their food and drinks, clicking photographs with them, and of course witnessing the various events in the main arena.

The Hornbill festival also ensures to display how the current generation of Nagamese are trending with respect to the pops and rocks of the world. The evenings are dedicated for music bands to display their talents; and they are no less to miss out on entertaining the crowd!

The festival is named after the great bird - Hornbill, which is part of Nagamese folklore.

Reaching Nagaland

Nearest airport to Nagaland is Dimapur in Assam, by the borders of Assam and Nagaland. Dimapur is the nearest railway station too to reach Kohima, Nagaland. Kohima is reachable from either the Dimapur railway station or the airport by road in 2 hours. There are number of trains from Guwahati to Dimapur - travel time takes around 6 hours.

Weather, Stay and Transportation

Hornbill festival happens from 1-Dec to 10-Dec. It is winter and the weather would be cold. Day temperatures would be around 15 degree Celsius and night temperatures go up to zero degrees. As it is far East, Sunrise happens around 5 AM and Sun sets around 4 PM. Homestays are the most popular and preferred accommodation in Nagaland; Kohima has hotels too. One needs to pickup the right homestay with respect to preferences in comfort, food (veg/non-veg) and access to transportation.

Transportation is through shared cabs, cost depends on the distance one needs to cover. One can have their own rented cars at their disposal if they want to roam around places. If Hornbill is the only destination, shared cabs are more than enough to reach and move around. For any other purpose, one can hire a cab for a day or two locally.

Food

Food - primarily, Nagaland is home of tribes and food can be anything. Read the whole blog to understand what all can go into the eating plate. If you have preference for Vegetarian or specific things in non-veg, it is better to understand what shall be available in the place you stay and book accordingly. Pure veg is impossible to get in Nagaland. One can get veg food in home stays and select restaurants. For veg, do not expect more than potatoes, roti, dal and rice. Among non-veg, chicken and pork are very common foods.

All across our experience, we understood Nagaland people are very polite, generous and provide great hospitality for the tourists. Nagaland is a dry state; however, their local traditional wines and rice beers are available at the Hornbill festival and restaurants.

Stay options near Hornbill Festival

To enjoy the Hornbill festival, one would have to visit the festival at least 3-4 days. To comfortably go to Hornbill festival daily, I would recommend 3 options for stay.

One, staying in some hotel or home stay in Kohima and travel 10 kms one way daily to the festival by shared cab or taxi. This involves getting cabs daily and also at times, stuck in the long queue of traffic towards the festival; especially when VIPs visit.

Secondly, to stay in a walkable place around 1-3 kms from the festival, possible options are villages of Kisama, Kigwema and Zakhama. Lots of homestays are available in these villages.

Thirdly, there are stay options of tents within the Kisama Heritage village, where the Hornbill festival is conducted. One can book this too, provided they are used to stay in tents and/or travelling on a budget. 

Our plan for Hornbill was to spend atleast 2 full days and relish the culture of Nagamese.

Day-1

1-Dec-21, Wednesday morning, we reached Dimapur railway station - post our Workcation in Guwahati. We took the overnight train from Guwahati around 11:30 PM by GHY-LEDO express. We made some friends in the train as well as after reaching Dimapur. This enabled us to negotiate a cab for Zakhama directly to our homestay. We also built a great network of lifetime friends during this course of time for different states of India!

We reached our homestay - Dawn Homestay by Rovi - the wonder woman of the home stay! We reached the homestay by 7:30 AM and Rovi was kind enough to give our rooms by 8:30 AM, so that we could continue our workcation for few hours. We had a great time walking around in the chilly morning, and enjoying our breakfast at the home stay.

About Dawn Homestay

Rovi, the homestay caretaker is an amazing person and she really takes care of everyone so well. The food and all basic amenities are done at the best of the effort with no though about effort and cost. The morning tea to breakfast to food and snacks at any point of time is an amazing experience with the homestay. This home stay is 20 mins walk from the Hornbill festival.

As such Nagaland has issues with power and connectivity, better than what is was in the past; however, difficulties with respect to other regions of India. Hot water is made available with firewood and anyone can get very hot water from here on buckets. Charging the gadgets needs to be really on the toe, whenever power is available. Rovi is so friendly that she allows us to charge in her personal place powered with inverter.

One can get maggi and beverages like milk, lemon tea, coffee as like a home and Rovi's team is so polite and generous to take care of the needs. We opted for the bed + breakfast and paid for lunch/dinner based on actuals, if we had.

One of the memorable home stays we had stayed across India. Having experienced network and power issues, we decide to call off the day by noon, and we decided to go to Hornbill festival.

The Festival

1-Dec-21 was the inauguration of the Hornbill festival and we reached there by noon. The inauguration was slotted for 4 PM and we had enough time to go around.

We entered the main area with an entrance ticket of Rs.100 per person and roamed around. We enjoyed the first booth - for food- Few veg options and native food, drinks and desserts were available. We spent around 1 hour there for roaming around and having food. We reached the main area located across the hill and thrilled with the first sight. The main stage and ground was very vibrant and overwhelming for the grand event.

We understood that the 16 tribes have pitched their native huts with food and beverages respectively. We started moving around and understanding each tribe. Each of the tribes were getting ready for the mega event, performing their rehearsals but still accepting our lame obliges for random photographs! We almost visited all the village huts and returned on time for the inauguration to the main arena.

Opening at Hornbill festival

The main arena was getting ready with the stadium full. Almost all of them were wearing masks as per COVID guidelines. The chief guests and guest of honours from various countries arrived and the Hornbill festival was inaugurated inline with the Nagamese cultural way with prayers from the leaders of Nagamese tribe and the traditional drum beating and their tribal songs.

What we witnessed as the inaugural event was absolutely enthralling and a great experience - the Nagamese tribal songs and dance. The performances were vibrant and stunning, still pure cultural. We spent the darkness of the evening enjoying every moment of the performances followed by a great performance from various bands on best tunes of pop and rock!

We also enjoyed the native food and drinks - whoever could on whatever! Fortunately, there were couple of stalls with vegetarian options and we did have good food there; though little costly. 

Day-2

Morning, after a sumptuous breakfast, we reached the Hornbill festival around 10 AM. This time, we took a hilly route to reach the festival. This gave us an opportunity to sight a great view point - Shurho view point - the view of the Naga hills. We spent few minutes enjoying the sprawling hill view - blue like ocean! We reached the festival place from the top of the hill - enabling us to walk through from the last village hut to bottom.

We saw various cultural activities like songs, dances and games of few Naga tribes. 

We then started to move around and visit the display of huts again in daylight. This time with more time to experience every moment - especially for my friends who experienced a different world of food - Dog meat, snails and Silkworms! Yes - you read it right. My friends cherished every moment of it and just ensured dint miss anything crazy!

We spent some time at Ao Morung and most of the time at Chakesang. We spent time till evening and returning the main arena for the concert!

Hornbill festival is one amazing festival for understanding the Naga culture and appreciating their unity in diversity. Of course, fun and frolic is very much a part of the whole event and not a single moment is boring! Just ensure you make a great team and enjoy every moment!

Stalls to visit

There are various complexes to visit at the Kisama Heritage village - World War II museum, Bamboo heritage hall, Bamboo pavilion, Herbal foods of Naga and Food courts.

Shopping at Hornbill festival

Ensure to do your shopping for souvenirs at the Hornbill festival. There are numerous stalls to enjoy shopping. Certain must to do are - Naga chillies. magnet souvenirs, shawls, pickles, masks, dry fruits like wild apple, berries and much more. There a numerous affordable things to buy and one can splurge on it!

We spent couple of more days doing trekking to Dzukou valley and visiting the beautiful villages of Dzuluke and Khonoma. Look at my next post to read more on our experience! Stay tuned! 

References:

https://www.hornbillfestival.com/