Kohima / Khonoma / Kigwema / Hornbill Festival

See also my Dimapur post, which contains my introduction to Nagaland, and also my music and book posts, the latter has a small film section as well.

We stayed in Kohima for around a month. Way too long, but we got talked into staying for the Hornbill Festival in early December (recommended) and there were no good options for us to leave and come back. While there we also visited the nearby village of Khonoma (my favorite place we went in Nagaland) and a few other villages near Kigwema. We were interested in doing the highly renowned Dzukou Valley trek, but people say you should stay overnight in the valley which sounded miserable in the cold winter weather. On one hand I recommend timing your trip to coincide with the Hornbill Festival, but on the other hand it’s so cold that I found this trip to be a challenge. Note that if you want to come to the Hornbill Festival, you should try to book your accommodations as soon as possible. Many places book up over six months in advance.

On the way to Kohima from Dimapur (how most people will come), definitely stop at any place selling pineapples. They are amazing. Most of my Dimapur recommendations aren’t far from the airport either and some are pretty much on the road to Kohima, so check out that post even if you aren’t staying in Dimapur (though I say it’s worth spending one or two days there).

We also went to a village called Tuophema that we visited on a hike organized by India Trail. It was a nice hike and the tourist village has some hotels with cool Naga architecture, a small but very good museum with all sorts of Naga crafts, and beautiful scenery. It was a very fun day and we met cool people, but I wouldn't recommend going on your own unless you're heading in that direction anyway. It's about an hour east of Kohima.

If you don't like to read you can see my wife's Instagram reels about Khonoma, Kigwema, and the Hornbill Festival.

Table of Contents:

Kohima

Khonoma & Dzuleke

Kigwema 

Hornbill Festival

Kohima

Kohima has little to do and see, and as a vegetarian little to eat, so this is probably the worst long stay I’ve ever done. Still, it’s a charming and pretty (if overdeveloped) hill town with an exotic culture, unique feel, great markets, nice cafes, and friendly people. Worth spending a day or two here before going to some villages. 

Kohima is Nagaland’s capital. It was once an Angami village that the British conquered and made their base in the Naga Hills. It was also the site of a major WW2 battle. That’s… all I have to say about it?  I could write more about each of those first three sentences, but I don’t really feel like it. The information doesn’t feel relevant to my stay there, and Kohima is more interesting to visit than to read or write about. And unlike Dimapur where going outside is mostly terrible, I enjoyed walking around in Kohima. The city area is pretty congested with cars, but people don’t honk so it’s not too bad. 

Our Kohima trip didn’t start off so well as the fancy looking homestay we booked a short walk from the city center had some major issues (a severe cockroach infestation and fungus in the drinking water!) that required us to vacate and find a new place after a few days, not an easy task on a Sunday in Nagaland. Thankfully we were saved by Liza, the host of the very nice, pest and fungus free Sasukini Homestay. We found it last minute on google maps and really just chose it in desperation, but it was a fortuitous pick as we not only had a great stay there (on and off for 2-3 weeks in total) but also got to know Liza and her family who were incredibly kind and hospitable and are part of our good memories of Nagaland. The rooms are nice, and we also had a great place to work in the dining room, a very pretty space with a Naga kitchen setup as decoration. There are a few different room options, the one we got was around 2k a night, and we got an additional discount for staying longer. 

We were very cold in November/December but Liza gave us an electric room heater, which we used on full blast for days on end. I guess that’s not allowed in Nagaland and we apparently caused a power outage in the whole neighborhood for several hours by using up like a month’s worth of typical electricity usage in half a week. Oops. (Surely there are more energy efficient heaters?) So we lost electric heater privileges, but Liza then gave us a coal heater thing which she frequently topped up for us, and she also lit the fireplace.  

Also, Liza is a great cook and provides dinner for the guests (she works during the day so she gave us an electric stove to make our own lunch, and breakfast is included and is usually muesli, eggs, and sometimes surprisingly great aloo parathas from a neighbor). I believe meals were 300 per person. Most nights it was North Indian food (dal, rice, sabzi), but a few times a week she made us Naga meals that were always excellent, and she would start cooking these in the morning and let them slow cook in the wood fireplace for the entire day. She is from the Sumi tribe, known for cooking with the fermented soybean paste axone. We got beans with axone, boiled eggs with axone, eggplant with axone. I loved all of these, plus there were good chutneys and boiled veggies on the side. Liza told us that the axone you buy in the market doesn’t compare to the homemade ones, and I believe she said that she uses one made by her sister. For one meal she made Bhutanese shamu datshi, that was great too. Since we stayed a long time we probably got some special treatment, which included eating on the traditional Naga tables with built in plates. She also gave us some fruit from the family’s farm in Dimapur, which included delicious papayas and a tangy and fibrous fruit I’ve never encountered before that I wasn't able to find online but a fruit expert friend tells me is likely Spondias dulcis (various names include vi apple, April plum, and ambarella).

For our purposes the location wasn’t ideal, as it was a 20 minute walk to get to the main road (only a few minutes drive, but that drive usually costs 200 rupees), then another five minutes walking to get to the bus stand which could then take us to the city center (or we could pay 500 rupees for that 10-15 minute drive). Not horrible, but we went out less as a result. For most people on shorter trips the location is totally fine.  

Because Sasukini was booked up during the first few days of the Hornbill Festival (people booked it nine months in advance!), we moved to another homestay which is only open for the Hornbill fest. I think they don’t have a name but we found it on Airbnb. It is run by the same people who run Ohriz bakery (really good baked stuff!), so if you’re looking for a Hornbill stay you can message them. The family here was also super sweet, and it’s a really nice house in a pretty area and was the only place in the Naga Hills I went to that was well insulated for the winter. Plus really delicious food, a mix of Indian, Naga (I forgot what tribe), and western baked goodies.

Stuff To Do (or not)

There’s nothing so great to do in Kohima. It’s the sort of city where the supposed must-see attraction is a cemetery. I like cemeteries as much as the average person (okay, much more than the average person), and I had a great time at Kohima’s famous WW2 cemetery. But let’s be honest, it’s no Cimetière du Père-Lachaise and you shouldn’t cry if you miss it. There’s also the state museum, which I’m pretty bummed I missed, but I deemed that not worth crying over either. I wonder, though, if there are some great things I didn’t know about in Kohima. Two of my favorite places in Dimapur were places I discovered by chance that were poorly advertised and had nothing written about them, so maybe there’s something of the sort in Kohima.

The cemetery is well kept and quite lovely, and it’s a good opportunity to learn a little about the very famous WW2 battle (there are also WW2 history tours you can take, though I’m not enough of a war buff to care, and there’s a WW2 museum in Kisama, though it had too much text and I’d rather just read a book, which I did as well). Wikipedia says 1420 people are buried in the cemetery, and over 10,000 people in total were killed in the Battle of Kohima which took place between April 4th and June 22nd, 1944. Here’s a good article for more info. 

Even if you don’t want to get into specifics of the battle (I didn’t either), it’s interesting to walk around. Graves are divided by regiment, and there are separate sections for Indian troops that were buried (mostly Muslim) plus memorials to Sikhs and Hindus who were cremated. It’s touching to read the poems on some of the graves, and to do the math and see how young many of the soldiers were when they died. Amongst the British troops buried here, I saw a handful of Jewish stars on the tombs. And even if none of that sounds interesting to you, it’s probably the city’s prettiest park area. 

As for the museum, we went on a Saturday and they were closed. Their google maps listing only shows Sunday as closed. Apparently they close every second Saturday, which is not indicated anywhere online, and they don’t have any functioning contact number, nor do they even have a signboard with hours. This kind of stuff is normal for Nagaland and really annoys me. Anyway, based on pictures I don’t think I missed anything I didn’t see anywhere else, whether at the museums in Dimapur or the stuff I saw at the Hornbill festival or the museum I saw in a village called Tuophema that I somehow ended up in at some point. I bet it’s worthwhile if you don’t go to any of those other places though. There is one special item I wanted to see – the Kohima Stone with the inscription commemorating the conquest of Kohima by the Meiteis in 1832 – but I doubt any of you care.

But really I just recommend walking around and taking it all in. Walk from Razhu Point to BOC. Take some detours on side streets. Stop for coffee at Ete (I’ll list some more nice cafes further down). Stop at the Common Room bookstore/cafe, and maybe The Morung Kitchen for lunch (more food recommendations further down) and more coffee across the street at Niri Cafe. Go to the cemetery, then up to the pretty heritage hotel called The Heritage, which was once the British deputy commissioner’s bungalow and now has a boba cafe popular with young locals. Stop at Kohima’s one and only Central Plaza mall, which has lots of small clothing stores, an art gallery, a Christian book store, and some restaurants and cafes. Best of all, check out the wonderful food markets (The Bamboo Market and Mao Market are notably recommended, but there’s also plenty of interesting stuff just sold on the side of the road. I wrote about the exciting markets in the Dimapur post, everything I said there applies here too, note that some of it is pretty sad as an animal lover.) 

There’s also the big church on the hill (Mary Help of Christians Cathedral). Lots of locals told us we should go, because it’s the big church on the hill, and was built with Japanese money, but those didn’t sound like good reasons to go and I wasn’t really interested. But then we moved to a homestay that was a ten minute walk from there, and there happened to be a flower market going on at the church, so we decided to go. I really liked the flower market, and the church ended up being worthwhile for its Naga depictions of The Last Supper and other Christian iconography. That was very cool!

In general, walking around in residential areas was nice, especially when there are stairs built into the hills, so long as dogs don’t attack you. Do that too. Or don’t, whatever. I didn’t visit the original old Kohima village area (here, I believe), I’m not sure how interesting it is, but I did have a nice walk not far from there. Razhu Pru is a nice old building. But Kohima is no Shillong in the cute old bungalow department. If you’re out and about on a Sunday you’ll hear music coming out of the churches.

As for food, I’m not the best resource here as I’m vegetarian. By the time I got to Kohima, I was already tired of very basic veg Naga thalis with just dal, rice, boiled veggies, and chutney, plus the basic noodle dishes cafes offered. We ate most of our meals at our homestays. 

We did try a handful of Naga restaurants, and we asked about vegetarian options at some others, but eventually we stopped bothering since it was all the same. Some Naga places we ate at that meat eaters might like are The Morung Kitchen (a nicer space than most, and we came back here for a pop-up dinner by traveling vegan chefs, that was great, but again the regular veg thali was very basic, very nice owner though, same as the nearby Morung Lodge which I heard is nice), the Lotha cuisine The Bamboo Shoot (in addition to the basic yellow dal you get everywhere was a delicious local dal), and the Angami special rice porridge place Nomi’s Galho (they have a few locations but the one at BOC isn’t on google maps, the veg galho was dull but the meat ones would surely be better). It’s too bad there is no Naga restaurant in Kohima that is at the level of Dimapur’s Ethnic Table, at least that I know of. I’m sure there are plenty of hidden gems for those without dietary restrictions. There’s a new place called The Local Harvest that looks promising, quite outside of the main drag though.

Thankfully we had some great non-Naga food. While most cafes and restaurants had fairly generic and fast-foodish menus, there were two places, Glutton and Lagom, that were more chef driven and served good quality global comfort food with fun uses of local, seasonal ingredients and everything made in house. At both places they looked frightened when we told them we were vegetarian, but they breathed a sigh of relief when we said we eat eggs (if you don’t eat eggs either you’re screwed in Kohima). We met the chef owners of both cafes and they were very sweet and told us to let them know in advance and they’d make us some special vegetarian dishes, though unfortunately we never got a chance to go back.

Glutton is a cute and cozy little place about a five minute (but not especially nice) walk north of Razhu Point. There’s a small blackboard menu that I think is always evolving. When we were there the two options for us were bibimbap and kimbap. Both were really delicious and were made with local black sticky rice, and the bibimbap had great local greens, mushrooms, and pumpkin. There was also a pretty good fruit custard danish and iced matcha latte. I saw on the menu ramen made with Anishi (an Ao Naga fermented taro leaf paste). Plus, I like these Nagaland cafes with their cute shelves of locally made arts and crafts for sale.

Lagom is on the other side of town, about a five minute walk west of BOC. Here the menu changes completely every season. When we were there, the one eggetarian dish was homemade egg noodles with stir fried veggies and a Mexican coriander sauce. It was very good! In the meat/fish dishes I saw some dishes with tamarillo (tree tomato) sauce which was cool to see because that’s an ingredient I love but was never served in Nagaland despite seeing it at all of the markets (we did have tree tomato chutney a few times in Meghalaya, though it’s a rarity there at restaurants). We also got a great fresh lemonade.

I won’t say either place is a must visit and usually I encourage people to stick to the local food, but if you’re vegetarian (who eats egg) you will hardly have other options so give these a go! It was nice in a conservative dining market like this to see some places make comfort food with more craft, thought, and heart than usual.

We also had a really good meal at Shizo, which is probably Nagaland’s prettiest restaurant, right at Razhu Point. It’s a mixed Asian menu, mostly Chinese with some Japanese touches, from what I recall. We got a delicious egg sando, great oyster mushrooms, and good but slightly oversalted eggplant. I loved the fresh tamarind juice and enjoyed the coconut ice cream, very coconutty which made up for it not being luscious and creamy. Perhaps not what you should optimize for in Nagaland, but again, not a lot of options for us veg people.

As for cafes, there are plenty of nice ones, though they aren’t as big and fancy as the Dimapur cafes. They feel at one with urban Kohima, cozy homey spaces with open windows (AC is unnecessary here) that fit the East Asian hill town feel, while the cafes in Dimapur are hermetically-sealed, alternate-universe oases where you escape from the dust apocalypse. I like both, though Dimapur cafes were generally nicer to work from, and had nicer bathrooms. As I said in the Dimapur post, I wish the cafes utilized local ingredients more. There are such amazing fruits in Nagaland that could be juiced or baked with but we never saw that stuff.

The leader of the pack in Kohima is Été, a coffee roaster with two cafes in town, one in the city center and a slightly larger roastery/cafe on the outskirts. They specialize in coffee grown in Nagaland and they supply beans to many other cafes in the city. You can buy coffee beans, grounds, and drip bags from them as well. Both cafes were nice and I thought the iced lattes (the only coffee I like) were delicious. They also have pretty good baked goods including good sourdough bread which we bought a few times (one of the few sourdough bakers in town, preorders are recommended). Like pretty much everywhere in Nagaland, everyone in the staff was very nice. I also enjoyed chatting with the owner who studied biochemistry (if I recall correctly) in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, of all places. It was through that experience that he got interested in fermentation which led to coffee and baking.

There are several other nice cafes scattered around town. Our favorites were the cute hole in the way Niri and the pretty Sorshia. D/Cafe didn’t use the local coffee, alas, but it’s a nice happening place and they had a cool selection of local books to read, I loved the illustrated version of one of the folk stories, and they sold great local honey.

We ordered excellent Korean cranberry rosemary cream cheese scones (or something like that) from some home baker called Sa.food we found on Instagram.

By the way, I should add that pretty much everything is shut on Sunday.

One thing I have to add… Kohima doesn’t have a movie theater? I found this pretty upsetting. I believe it is the only state capital in all of India without a cinema. I sadly couldn’t find any photos of the Ruby Cinema Hall, which doubled (quadrupled?) as a dance hall, town hall, and concert venue, and was bombed in 1973. That was the last one? If anyone has photos of it, please send them to me!

If you want to get a sense of Kohima’s cultural life in the mid to late 20th century, this is a fun read.

If you want a place to shop for local crafts, art, soap, books, food items, and other souvenirs, there’s a very nice store called Made in Nagaland, though it’s a bit far from the main town. There are some nice grocery stores in Kohima, too. As I mentioned in my Dimapur post, I liked local products like puffed rice and millet snacks, dried wild apples, local honey (we got the brand Galho), local tea (we got from Cold Mountain), and local sauces (Saucey Joe's is a great brand).

Khonoma

We did a two day trip to Khonoma and Dzuleke. Khonoma, less than an hour drive from Kohima (cabs cost around 1000 to go there), is a historically important Angami village, having fought against the British (I read about this in the rather dull book Sky is My Father), though I wouldn’t say it’s an interesting place to visit because of any history. It’s just a beautiful, charming village, set on a hilltop (it looks awesome from the highway when driving to it), with good homestays and lovely paddy fields to walk through. There was a museum but it was closed when we were there. You have to hire guides (available at the office in the entrance of town) to show you around, thankfully the prices are fair. We got mobile network here and there but overall it was poor and I don’t think any places have wifi, as of writing this.

There’s nothing to really do or see here, you just walk around the village and paddy fields. It makes for a great short trip. You could go on a day trip from Kohima but I’m glad I stayed overnight. I like the village life, the area is gorgeous, and the village is a good mix of traditional while still being comfortable for tourists. There are some nice shops/cafes in the town center, with good homemade juices to drink there (wild apple, ginger, amla) and good local snacks to take home (dried fruits, puffed sticky rice). I’d gone to some less touristy villages, but the lack of such places made them less fun, and we didn’t see that many other tourists here anyway.

We stayed at Vantage Pier Homestay, which I recommend as long as you’re fine with a simple setup. It was basic but clean and comfortable enough for my needs. I believe it cost 1500 a night, and meals were around 300 per person. I didn’t do much research, I just saw that the chef from the great restaurant Ekaa in Mumbai came here and said the food was great, that was enough for me. The woman who runs it doesn’t speak much English, but she is super sweet, and she made us great local food, with homegrown organic produce. 

When we called to make our booking we told her we are vegetarian and wanted to eat Naga food, but she just made us Indian style food for lunch. We asked if we could get Naga food for dinner, but she was concerned that we wouldn’t like the fermented soybean flavor. We told her we’ve had axone many times and we love it, and we insisted that we’ll like whatever she makes, though she seemed a bit hesitant. Then for the rest of our meals (breakfast included) we got a delicious mixed vegetable stew with axone in it, with boiled or lightly stir fried veggies on the side. I loved the food and was very happy (though it was repetitive and I wouldn’t want the same thing three meals a day…), and she seemed genuinely happy and surprised that we liked her food. She said that she eats this food every day, for pretty much all of her meals, and she eats mostly vegetarian, with meat reserved for special occasions because of the cost. This differed from our other stays where every meal was meat heavy and they’d have to make special vegetarian dishes for us. She also gave us really delicious homegrown hibiscus tea and wild apple juice.

We stayed there two nights and did a day trip to Dzuleke one day. There’s nothing much to do or see, but the area is very pretty, we did a nice walk through a village and along a river, and my favorite part was seeing the mithun, which they said is like a buffalo/bison mix. I saw around five mithun while driving. I wanted to pet them but it was not recommended. Apparently if you bring them salt they will eat it out of your hand. That sounds amazing.

We also had an excellent local lunch in a great setting at Valley View hotel, which is pretty much the only place to stop for food around here. We specifically requested Naga food, if you don’t do that they’ll just make you Indian style food by default. This of course involves a bit of insisting, “yes yes we love axone, yes don’t worry we’ll like it.” It ended up being one of the best meals we had in Nagaland, and quite similar to our homestay meals, with a vegetable stew with axone, boiled veggies, and a dal mixed with greens. They also have a great book shelf, courtesy of a local publisher called Penthrill, and some local snacks to take home. My wife tried the local wines, which she didn’t like, but she did like the wild apple juice, which I didn’t like as it seemed alcoholic to me. Down the street from the restaurant is a self-payment produce stall that had nobody manning it. We got a giant bag of kiwis for 100 rupees. I love these “trust shops.”

Overall it was a very fun little day trip and I’m glad I did it, definitely worth the time, though between the driver and guide we paid 4500 rupees, which is pretty expensive to me for not really doing much. I think guides are required? I’m not totally sure. We got ours from the tourist office in Khonoma and that’s the impression I got. Maybe I should have researched more. I liked our guide, he was very nice and pointed out a number of interesting things, but I feel like we could have consolidated the guide and driver services and paid half the amount. 

I would have felt it was a better value if we had more experiences in Dzuleke. I saw this tour which offered more culture stuff, in addition to the nature walk we did: “Explore the village on foot with your local guide. Visit the other residents and get an insight into the Angami house and kitchen. On this walk, we will visit multiple houses and interact with various members and families of the village. Use this time to learn more about the daily ways of life, the agricultural practices, the local crafts and festivals, and other things that would give you a better insight into the lives of the local community.” Something of that sort would have been fun. We reached out to that tour company but the prices were pretty high.

Nonetheless, Khonoma and Dzuleke were among our Nagaland highlights, highly recommended!

Kigwema (and other villages south of Kohima) 

Kigwema is a village area a short drive from Kohima (20-30 minutes) with many homestays. There are some nice villages to visit nearby, and it is also close to the Hornbill festival (the area where the homestays are clustered is a 15-20 minute walk from the venue) and to the Dzukou Valley trek start point (a 20 or so minute drive from the homestay area). As mentioned earlier, we didn’t do the trek as we were there in winter and it was very cold so we didn’t want to stay overnight in the valley, which is what most people recommend doing.

I liked Khonoma more, as it was more beautiful, remote, and charming, so I say if you aren’t doing the trek and you aren’t there during the Hornbill fest you can probably skip this area. For our purposes, we wanted to get out of Kohima and get a taste of the village life while still having some internet connectivity, so it was a good option. We had pretty good cell connectivity so we chilled out here and worked for a week, while doing a bit of exploring each day. 

We stayed at Dawn Homestay. It’s a charming homestay with a super nice host, Rovi. The rooms are simple but fine for backpacker types. It was pretty busy when we were there, one week before the hornbill fest, and we became good friends with a family that was staying there. My only complaint is that in winter we were very cold, and because it’s right off the main road there’s a lot of truck noise at night. We survived though. There are fancier places in the area, some a bit further off the main road, but if we ever return in another season to do the Dzukou trek, we’d stay here again because Rovi and her family were so nice. Ask them to see the garden and show you what they grow. I loved the ground apples, which I’ve never had before. They were like jicama but sweeter and yummier.

There’s nothing so amazing to do in the area, but you get nice views and I enjoyed checking out the villages. We went to two, Kigwema (a five minute drive from the part of Kigwema where the homestays are) and Jakhama. We got around by hitchhiking, which I’ve hardly ever done in my life, but everyone told us that’s the way to go in Nagaland. It was easy and people were nice.

Kigwema notably had a community library and the wartime residence of the Japanese General Sato. I don’t remember anything specific like that in Jakhama, but both villages were nice ways to experience normal village life. People working in fields, kids going to school, pigs in their pens (sad), chayote growing everywhere, nice views of mountains, morungs decorated with animal skulls and cool wood carvings, big modern churches. I wouldn’t say you absolutely must see the villages but it’s a nice time. I just wish there were a bit more to do, houses to visit, places to eat, etc.

Other than the villages, you can also visit Kisama, where the Hornbill festival happens. I don’t know how exciting it will be, but a few parts of it should be open year round. I believe these include an okay WW2 museum, a nice cafe serving local coffee, and the morungs of different tribes, a sort of open air museum of recreated tribal buildings. I loved that area during the festival, it will be less fun outside of the festival but still maybe worthwhile.

Also, one time Rovi told us about a hiking trail behind the homestay, but we got lost after a while and it was very sunny so we turned back. She said it was a nice trail though!

Hornbill Festival

The hornbill festival (in the first ten days of December) was one of our Nagaland highlights and I would recommend going for it. I liked it much more than I expected to. I didn’t really know what it was and had no interest in going thinking it’d be too touristy and crowded and tacky. I generally don’t like festivals and I’m the kind of person that when hearing “Are you coming for Hornbill?” over and over again gets turned off rather than excited. 

But the hornbill festival was very cool. I had a great time in Nagaland but in many ways I found it less interesting and stimulating than much of India partly because there’s little to do or see and also because the old ways of the Naga have mostly disappeared and been replaced with Christianity and modernity. Good for them. But I want exoticism! I want ancient rituals! Church, K-pop, separatist movements, and other preoccupations of modern Nagaland don’t interest me. 

But the hornbill festival gave me a lot of what I felt was lacking in the rest of my stay here. Nagaland has many traditional festivals, specific to different tribes and regions. I’d love to go for them, but they’re a) poorly advertised and b) in places that are hard to get to, for the most part. Hornbill is a relatively new festival (we went in the 25th year) that is much more accessible, being just outside of Kohima, and it is different from other fests because it brings all of the tribes together. What you get is a full throated celebration of Naga culture with countless performances, crafts, food, experiences, and more. 

I initially thought it’d be too touristy, but Nagas easily outnumber out of state tourists (I hope that doesn’t change in the coming years). I also feared it would be too Disneylandish, but it didn’t feel like that (for the most part) because the people representing different tribes seemed genuinely into what they were doing, excited to share their culture, and happy to meet people from around the world. I found it to be a special experience.

The festival evolves every year, so I don’t want to give a guide of how I recommend approaching it because I don’t know if it will be relevant. But I’ll give a sense of what I found most valuable and what I didn’t think was so worth my time.

First off, the festival lasts ten days, or at least it did when I was there. We attended for three of those days. I thought three days was perfect. The first day is in some ways the most spirited and festive, but it’s also the most crowded. After that it becomes more chill.

The biggest challenge with the hornbill festival is that it’s really cold in the winter, at least at night. The second biggest challenge is accommodation, especially in the first few days of the festival. Places book up many months in advance and the prices go up considerably. We managed to find some semi-last minute accommodation, though it was more than we had hoped to pay and we had to move places a few times. If you’re less picky it will be easier, and there are many more options if you’re okay with dorms or tents, but we didn’t want either. There are many stays you can get in Kigwema that are a short walk from the festival venue (I mentioned Dawn Homestay above, and there are many others), but we stayed in Kohima which is only a 20 or so minute drive from the venue (I mentioned Sasukini and another place above), though with traffic that can double or triple. There’s a shuttle bus to and from Kohima which was convenient, but last mile connectivity was an issue, especially at night. Despite those challenges, I’m glad we stayed in Kohima rather than Kigwema because Kigwema stays seemed very crowded and in our walks through the area there were tons of tents and loud, bad music.

There are two main areas to the Hornbill fest, the morungs (traditional Naga boys dorms that have been recreated here) and the auditorium. For most of the fest the performance troupes from different tribes are performing at the auditorium, but on the first day of the fest they are at the morungs, singing, dancing, chanting, eating, drinking, firing weapons, and wait should they be doing that? But anyway it was a lot of fun. The atmosphere was wilder and perhaps more authentic than I was expecting, more of a genuine celebration than a performance, and I would apply that statement to the Hornbill Festival overall.

After the first day the troupes move to the auditorium, doing various cultural performances. This includes, songs, dances, games, sports (I was bummed I missed the wrestling!), and more. There is a schedule so you can plan to see something specific that interests you, but I say just go whenever you feel like sitting and watching for a while. There are various special traditions you can watch, but we didn’t feel it was worth the time waiting around one morning for the much hyped stone pulling ceremony, which got delayed significantly probably because some minister had to give a speech. If you encounter any speeches, run away. If I were in charge of the festival I would ban all speeches. 

The morungs are a bit more chill after the first day, but they still offer crafts, food, and drinks from different tribes of Nagaland (mostly not vegetarian but there were some exceptions, I loved the millet and corn porridge that I got, don’t ask me what tribe, we also got amazing bean dishes, mushroom dishes, and a chestnut salad, but this involved a lot of walking around and asking if things were vegetarian), and you can appreciate the architecture and the interiors of the morungs more without the crowds (many had traditional kitchen and crafts displays, and the awesome long drums).

On the first day, the auditorium was reserved for the opening ceremony, and people insisted we must see it. I say meh. It began as a ridiculously long series of people reading dull platitude filled LLM-written speeches. Then there was a large-scale, heavily choreographed stage performance that was impressive but didn’t appeal to me (Disneylandish would be appropriate here). Don’t feel compelled to watch this, unless that sounds good to you.

Food was one of the best parts of the festival for me, and what we ate here ranked with the very best food we ate in Nagaland. There is a vast array of dishes you can try here that would be nearly impossible to try outside of the fest without spending a long time traveling through Nagaland. If you’re not vegetarian you can stay for all ten days and eat all of your meals here and probably try something new every meal. As a vegetarian there are fewer options but we still ate incredibly well. 

There are many places to get great food, including the morungs where you get various regional foods (as mentioned above) and other stalls spread across the fest (there was an excellent Naga “slow food” stall, not sure if it’s there every year but keep an eye out for it, and I witnessed funny things like an Indian tourist going up to it and trying to order: “Chicken lollipop!” “Sorry, actually we are a stall specializing in Naga slow food, this is a traditional Naga meal with seasonal ingredients and…” “You don’t have chicken lollipop?” “No, sir.”). 

My favorite food, though, was at the Naga Chef competition stalls (I’m not sure if these are necessarily better places to eat than the other stalls or if they just have better vegetarian options). The location may change year to year, but this was sort of hidden at the top of the staircase that runs through the morungs, and the signage was poor. While the food stalls at the morungs were frequently packed, the Naga Chef area was surprisingly quiet given how exceptional the food was. 

Naga Chef is a competition where a handful of chefs who worked their way up to the finalist round are given stalls at the Hornbill Fest where they sell food to the general public. Secret judges come and taste everything and award the winner at the end of the fest. The first winner has an amazing restaurant in Dimapur (Ethnic Table, some of the best food I had in Nagaland), and I hope to see more of these chefs start restaurants because it would be great for this food to be more widely available outside of festivals and villages. I tried two of the stalls here (I believe there were two others, though they were less veg friendly) and the food ranked with the best I had in Nagaland. The mushroom dishes were standouts but all of the local greens and vegetables were amazing too, with delicious local rice varieties and chutneys. There were good local herbal drinks and juices too, and you can buy various ingredients to take home. Everything was very reasonably priced. Also, since this area was fairly quiet, we were able to chat with the chefs which was fun. They were, as we’d come to expect in Nagaland at this point, incredibly nice. 

That’s the main stuff at the fest but it really is massive and there’s much else to explore. Since the offerings and layout may change from year to year I won’t go into too much detail, but some of my favorite areas included sections showcasing local produce, a flower show, an entire honey area, an area where local crafts are made, and large areas where local crafts and food items are sold. I loved the small art gallery too, with a few artists that had an interesting modern take on Naga aesthetics. So there’s plenty to explore here. At night there are concerts as well, with a mix of local artists and some Indian and international stuff. I don’t really like live music but they had some pretty cool artists performing, like a Japanese drumming troupe, and we stuck around for our favorite Naga group Trance Effect.

During the fest there’s a lot going on in and around Kohima and Dimapur as well. I saw in the pamphlet that there are village tours you can take which sounded interesting and went beyond what you can do and see on your own visiting the villages. They sounded cool but there wasn’t a lot of information, and we inquired at the help desk and they had no information and told us to enquire somewhere else but we never found any info anywhere. But Kohima has a night market during this time which is fun, even though there was hardly anything I wanted to eat as a vegetarian. My wife got mulled wine. There are numerous other events happening, just ask around and check the schedule. Since there’s a lack of things to do in both Dimapur and Kohima, the festivities are a nice addition to both places.