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Published: August 13th 2007
Mon
Sunset over Mon in Nagaland
Nagaland is known for it's tribes and I must say that it was very interesting... Here tribal heritage is still strong and you can still see lots of people dressed in traditional clothing... At least in the north of Nagaland where we started our journey...
We first went to Mon, up in the north and it was a very pleasant hill station... From there we made our way to Longwa on the border with Burma, our jeep got stuck 20 km's before we got there so we had to walk the last part.. We opted to stay in a village half way in the house of the local pastor... There was a beautiful sunset and a good sleep and then it was time to catch a truck up to Longwa... Longwa straddles the border with Burma and the house of the king, called Angh in Naga is half in India and half in Burma...
Longwa wasn't our final destination though because we wanted to really get of the road and stay in a small village.. So we asked Longsha a local guide about any village a few hours walk from Longwa and he provided us with somebody to show
Sanga Chang Nyu
House of the Angh
us the way... We walked through the jungle on the border with Burma, crossing over at times, for 3 hours and arrived in another border village... They accommodated us in one of their houses and we settled in... Unfortunately the monsoon finally dropped in on us and it rained all the time we were there, so we couldn't really look around the place much and spend most of our time in the house...
The houses are very big, with very few and small windows and because of that very smoky as they have a fire in the centre... The people of the village were mostly opium addicts as are many of the people in this region on Nagaland... It seems with the American Christian missionaries also came the opium... It gives another meaning to the saying: religion is the opium of the masses... and the effects are seen today with according to Longsha about 70 percent of the population addicted along the border... So the men sit inside their houses smoking opium all day, selling their heritage to get money to smoke more... It is quite sad to see... On the other hand you still see lots of people
Sanga Chang Nyu
Konyak Naga house
with tattoos on their faces or their body and a lot still wearing traditional clothing... By the way, if they have tattoos on their face, it means they have chopped of a few heads in their time (they used to be head hunters)... Only the older men still have the tattooed faces as nobody hunts for heads anymore... Lucky for us! In one of the villages we went to they proudly showed us the human skulls of their victims, which they keep under a special stone...
Anyway after a few days in the jungle we got back to Mon (this time the jeep made it) and then Noa and I went to Kohima.. Lenny and Mikki decided to leave us and went to Sibsigar... So the fellowship became smaller again... And now I am here in Kohima where the British and Indians stopped the advance of the Japanese in the Second World War... It reminds me a bit of Darjeeling or Gangtok... A pleasant town to rest for a while...
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