Six nights around the first week of December, the Hornbill Festival at Kisama, the villages above Kohima, and Khonoma, Asia's first green village, with the permits, beds and logistics that make or break this trip handled before you land.
The Hornbill Festival is the easiest great trip in India to ruin. Every bed within an hour of Kohima sells out months ahead, the festival ground is a scrum by noon, and travellers who arrive on hope spend the week commuting and queuing. The entire value of doing Hornbill with us is that the unglamorous work, Inner Line Permits, rooms held from the previous season, a driver who knows the back way to Kisama, is finished before your flight is booked.
Then the trip can be what it should be. Mornings at the festival when the morungs are cooking and the dance troupes are rehearsing rather than performing; that is when conversations happen, and our escort has been introducing guests to the same families for years. Afternoons we leave the ground as the crowds peak, up to the Kohima War Cemetery, whose epitaph everyone quotes and few have stood in front of, or out to Khonoma, terraced, self-governing, and the best half-day walk in the Naga hills. Evenings alternate between the festival's night market and dinners of smoked pork, axone and galho that you will attempt to recreate at home and fail.
This is a friends-trip and a culture trip before anything else. It rewards curiosity and forgives nothing done in a rush, which is why we do not rush it.
Seven days, start to finish. The route, then the rhythm of it.
Fly to Dimapur, drive up to Kohima (3 hrs, hill road). Evening briefing over dinner, festival plan, etiquette, and what to eat first.
Hornbill Festival, morning session at Kisama, morung by morung with our escort. Out before the crush; afternoon at Kohima War Cemetery. Night market evening.
Second festival morning, dance arenas, craft rows, indigenous games finals. Afternoon free in Kohima's markets; king chilli spotting encouraged, eating optional.
Day trip to Khonoma (1.5 hrs): terraced fields walk, village tour with a local host, lunch in a family home. Return by evening.
Third festival visit for those who want it, or the Dzükou valley viewpoint drive for those festival-saturated. Farewell Naga feast.
Slow morning in Kohima, the Cathedral, the State Museum. Afternoon at leisure.
Drive down to Dimapur for departure.
The facts most itineraries leave out. We print them because they are what decides whether this trip suits you.
Kohima in the first week of December is a seller's market and we are honest about it: rooms are clean, warm and well-located rather than luxurious, in guesthouses and homestays we have used year after year. The hosts are half the experience, expect rice wine offered and stories told.
Friends travelling together, culture-first travellers, photographers, and anyone who wants the most distinctive week the Indian calendar offers. Not for comfort-first travellers, December nights in Kohima are cold and the hot water is solar-tempered, and not for anyone allergic to crowds, because the festival is one, managed as cleverly as we can manage it.
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