Nagaland & the Hornbill Festival: Editor's Letter

Dear reader,

Every December, the hills above Kohima fill with drums, songs and woodsmoke, and the photographs begin to arrive on our screens: warriors in hornbill feathers, dancers in red and black shawls, log drums the length of a small boat. The Hornbill Festival has become one of India’s best-known cultural events, and for many travellers it is the first and only reason they ever go to Nagaland.

This issue is our attempt to make it a better reason, and perhaps not the only one.

Why Nagaland, why now

We chose Nagaland for our December issue for a simple reason: the festival deserves better coverage than a list of performances and a packing guide. It is a remarkable event, generally held from 1 to 10 December at the Naga Heritage Village in Kisama, a short drive from Kohima. It brings together the many Naga tribes in one place, each with its own morung, food, songs and stories. But it is also a staged event, created by the state government to showcase Naga culture, and the most rewarding trips treat it as a beginning rather than a destination.

Nagaland itself is a place many Indians know little about. It is a state of hills and forests, of villages perched on ridges, of a history that includes fierce independence, a world war battle, decades of conflict and a strong Christian faith. It is also a state of extraordinary hospitality, where visitors who arrive with curiosity and respect are often welcomed into homes and kitchens.

What is in this issue

We start in Kohima, before the stadium and the arena, with a walk through the War Cemetery, the old village and the market. Kohima is not just a base for the festival; it is a city with its own story, and an afternoon spent understanding it changes how you see everything else.

We then leave the main stage behind for a village night, an evening in a place like Khonoma, where the fire in the kitchen matters more than any performance. Our piece on Kisama is frank about the crowds and the hour you should leave, and our food story looks past the festival posters to the smoked meats, fermented bamboo shoot and fiery chillies that define Naga cooking.

Practicalities matter in Nagaland more than in most places. Our guide to permits explains the Inner Line Permit, who needs one and how to get it, with the caveat that rules change and you should always check the latest position. Our piece on December roads is honest about distances and travel times, which are almost always longer than maps suggest.

We have a guest post this month, a first Hornbill told by a visitor, with all its excitement and its small mistakes. And we have a piece on the quiet morning, the hour before the gates fill, when the festival feels less like a show and more like a gathering.

Finally, two pieces that I care about a great deal. The first is about one tribe, the Angami, explained as a people rather than a costume. There are many Naga tribes, and no article can do justice to all of them. Instead of a list, we try to understand one: their villages, their terraces, their gates, their festivals and their faith. The second is about photography: how to make a portrait with permission, and why it matters so much here.

A note on how we travel

At Travel Viewpoint, we try to write about places in a way that the people who live there would recognise. That is not always easy, and in Nagaland it is especially important. For a long time, outsiders described the Nagas as exotic, primitive or dangerous. Many of those descriptions were wrong, and some of them did real harm.

So in this issue, we have tried to be careful. We have avoided words like “untouched” and “tribal” used as decoration. We have tried to name things correctly and to hedge where we are not sure. Where facts may have changed, such as permit rules, festival timings or road conditions, we have said so. We would rather tell you to check than give you a confident answer that turns out to be out of date.

We also ask something of you. If you go to Nagaland, go slowly. Stay longer than the festival if you can. Spend a night in a village. Ask before you photograph. Buy from local makers. Listen more than you talk. Learn the name of the tribe whose morung you are visiting, and the name of the person who cooks your dinner.

Beyond December

The Hornbill Festival happens once a year, but Nagaland is there all year round. The tribes have their own festivals throughout the calendar, many of them more intimate than Hornbill: the Angami celebrate Sekrenyi in February, and other tribes have harvest and sowing festivals at different times of year. The hills are green after the monsoon, clear in winter and full of flowers in spring. The Dzükou Valley, on the border with Manipur, is a beautiful trek in the right season.

If this issue makes you think about Nagaland as a place to return to, rather than a festival to tick off, we will have done our job.

What we left out

No single issue can cover Nagaland. We have said little about Mon and the Konyak country in the far north, about Mokokchung and the Ao, or about Wokha and Phek. Those are journeys for another time, and perhaps for writers who know them better than we do.

Thank you

Thank you, as always, for reading. This is our last issue of 2025, and it has been a year of festivals, pilgrimages, hill towns and quieter places. We are grateful to everyone who has written to us, shared our stories and travelled with us in spirit.

If you go to Hornbill this year, or if you have been before, write to us. Tell us what surprised you, what you wish you had known and what we got wrong. We will read every message.

Wishing you a warm December and a good journey into the new year.

Khushi Anand, Editor