- Dec 2, 2019
- 2 min read

Day 12: Dimapur to Kisama

Hornbill festival has long been in our list...super thrilled to be ticking it at last.

I have been to Kohima 3 years ago with the IMT drive from Bangkok and I know how "good" the roads are. We left at 820am and after 2 stops for coffee and fruit shopping it took us about 4.5 hours to cross 76kms...go figure.

A quick break and off we went to the hornbill festival.

The Hornbill Festival is the most lavish and exuberant showcasing of the Naga culture and heritage, and one of the most thronged festivals of the country by people from all around the world. The festival is named after the large exotic bird because it forms the centre of many a local folklore.

Naga, I learnt, is an umbrella term for several indigenous communities in North East India & Upper Myanmar. The word Naga itself originated as an exonym!! Before the arrival of the British, the term "Naga" was used in Assam to refer to certain isolated tribes. The British adopted this term for a number of tribes in the surrounding area, based on loose linguistic and cultural associations. So how many tribes are in Nagaland....some have cited 66 Naga tribes, while the 1991 census lists 17 tribes in Nagaland.

Nagaland also is known as the ‘Land of festivals’, with these 17 tribes performing in the festival. It is one of the ‘Seven Sisters’ of the North East. This state has one common festival which calls in all the tribes’ participation as one to bring out the beauty of Nagaland as a whole. It’s known as the “Hornbill Festival”....and this is where we are today!! This festival goes for 10 days from December 1 each year.