Situated in the North -East of India, Nagaland was one of the places I had always wanted to visit ever since I took out the map and pointed to the part of Burma that borders with India and asked, where is that and can I visit it?
The Naga people are quite a fragmented lot, their land divided and what was left of Nagaland got formed in the late 1960s. With Burma , the other Indian states like Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam laying claim to the rest of the area. The Naga people are spread out throughout the various state and country with had led to quite a insurgent problem back in the 1990s.
There are about 14 tribes in Nagaland, not including the other tribes in the other regions. The Nagas did not come from one region, they came to Nagaland from various parts of Burma, China, Tibet, Mongolia.
To complicate things, each tribe, sub-tribes and even within the same tribe, they communicate in different languages and dialects. For example in the Mon district where the Konyak tribe resides, a village might speak in a mother tongue that differs from another village which is only 2 hours walk away.
A unifying language was invented, Nagamese which has no written form and is actually a derivation of Assamese. However English is spoken and taught widely as Nagaland since it was proclaimed the official language of Nagaland. This was probably much influenced by the American Baptist missionaries who nearly destroyed most of the Nagaland culture, its tradition and its tribal works like wood cravings, art and jewellery by converting most of the Naga people into Christians and making some of them quite fanatical religious zealots just a couple of years back destroying their traditional arts and wares and even their traditional Morung houses. But that’s another story, and it gets a little sensitive to talk about it, I get quite incensed about it as well.
Here’s my trip summary
I visited Nagaland in December 2008 with the exotic notions that people were still in tribal gear, dressed in loinclothes and spears, sitting around or hunting wild life for their meals. Surprise surprise, everyone was modernly dressed especially in the capital, Kohima and business city Dimapur. No one not even in the remote parts of Mon unless there were some festivities were dressed in the old loinclothes and head gear. How disappointed was I?
I had decided to visit Kohima for the hornbill festival held on the 1-7 December annually. Organised by the Nagaland tourism commission, it gathers and hope to preserve the Naga tribal culture by getting cultural clubs from all over the various towns and cities to perform at the festival. Dressed in their traditional gear of course. This was as touristy as it gets, when you only get around 300 foreign tourist invading this little capital. The other tourists of course were mainly Europeans who paid an average of 8000-15,000 Euros for their great North East Tribal experience. A tour guide told me how he paid a few villages to get the villagers to dress in tribal gear just for their privileged tourists and maybe perform some festival dances.
And I? got by spending 25days in Nagaland for much less than that.. think us$12-us$15 a day . Nagaland and NorthEast is not cheap compared to the rest of India where you can easily get by with us$10/day luxuriously. Transportation and accommodation is pricey and the quality is pretty bad but you can’t complain as there are still far less budget accommodations available in the various Towns. A horrible pest infested hotel or lodge would normally charge at least Rp1000 a day. Jeeps that takes you from town to town are few and often booked up by the locals especially during the festival periods. An average journey would take you at least 4-6 hours from town to town. Jeeps would vary and cost rp300-600 depending on the places.
Most of the Naga towns are disappointing, terribly modern with its concrete buildings and its not so traditional villages. Most village houses are zinc roof thatches. Head up to the Mon district, Konyak people are often look down by the rest of the Nagas for being a little more backward and still retaining their bamboo houses with some villages still having their traditional palm leave thatched roofs. However modern life is creeping in, most villages are converting their houses to nice concrete buildings.
I shall not bore you with more inform and descriptions about the places.
So How I go into Nagaland?
After much difficulty, I got my Restricted Access Permit (RAP) from the Indian Government. They being quite the paranoid people decided that the NorthEast of India was still not safe and permission is needed to visit this remote area. The British which took charge of the place back in the early 1900s imposed such a system to prevent the Indians and other foreigners to visit the area, the Indian government just didn’t bother to change it despite the Tourism Commission actually encouraging more tourist to visit.
Where you shouldn’t get your permit
Calcutta and its Foreign Registration Office
Calcutta Foreign Registration office is an awful place and they basically ask a lot of silly paranoid questions and wanted all 4 of the applicants to come down to the office to get the permit application form (no they won’t give it to me unless I have my 4 applicants present and waving at the registration officer) , then to arrange for an interview on another day, then make another trip down with all four of us for the interview, then they will decide if they will take their sweet time to decide if we are getting the permit done 14days or more later.
Your ever so friendly Local Overseas Indian Embassy
Here’s the reply I got from my Overseas Indian Mission which was suppose to be helping me to get my permit done according to the Northeast India Official Website. (It said, you should get your RAP done through your country’s Indian Embassy- yea rite!)
My silly Indian Mission officer being as paranoid as most other government officers back in the motherland asked me quite a few stupid questions too, Why do I want to visit Nagaland? (erm Hornbill festival… that is organised just for the foreign tourists? )
Oh no you have to be invited for that apparently (which is a total flib that the silly guy working for the Indian mission just made up because he absolutely have no clue where NorthEast was and probably still thinks that its filled with terrorists). The hornbill festival needs no invitation, its suppose to be drawing tourists to the State to improve its economy….
For a RAP to Nagaland, you need 4 foreign tourist to the permit. It has to be only foreign tourists, Indian tourists are not allowed on the RAP, they have another system call the Inner line permit (ILP). These 4 tourists have to travel together which doesn’t really make sense why we needed to travel together. Oh well I am in India, I should ask why to stupid regulations and stuff like that. Because it just is, usually comes up as an answer.
I found 2 foreigners who were coming to Nagaland on their own, and one “bogus” name, one chap was kind enough to head to the New Delhi Nagaland House to apply for the permit and gets it approved in only a few hours.
New Delhi Nagaland house is apparently the best place to get your permits done. A Calcutta travel agent told me he usually get his paperwork done in New Delhi Nagaland house than in Calcutta’s foreign registration office which takes 2 weeks to approve if you are lucky more than a month if you are not.
My second trip to Nagaland during the Aoling Harvest festival in April 2009 , I found 2 “bogus” names (valid indian visa and passport but still they were in India so they were not really tat bogus) and another traveller, took the same New Delhi Permit route with almost no problem at all. Plus it is absolutely free.
You can get your permits done through a travel agent, but they will normally charge you Rp1000 per person. If you are travelling alone, it will take a little bit of time because the agent would often gather a few names up and do the same as what I did. Combined 4 travellers to the permit and charge you money for it.
So it is really possible for you to get into Nagaland cheaply and on your own without those ripoff travel agents who often warn you that Nagaland is not safe and its filled with insurgents and terrorists thats why you need their expensive rip off services such as a crappy guide service. And by the way, the rest of NorthEast India is safe too, so is Arunachal Pradesh which I had spent 1 month there.
In the NorthEast India, I had visited Nagaland (twice), Arunachal Pradesh (once), Assam (many times), Meghalaya with exception of Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur. I am suppose to add Sikkim as the other NorthEast state but I am adamant about it, the NorthEast should only consist of 7 States and not 8.
Spent almost combined 4 months just visiting this area so I guess I can consider myself a little expert on the NorthEast India especially on how to travel alone or cheaply without a rip off travel agent or a travel guide.
