On the 16th I headed from Dibrugarh to the state of Nagaland along the border with Burma. Under a cloudy sky, though considerably brighter than the day before, I left on a small bus a little after 8:30 that headed east and then northeast to Sonari, about 30 miles away. We passed tea estates and areas flooded by the rains. Many houses were connected by bamboo bridges over water channels to the road running in front of them. The rains had overflowed the channels, flooding the yards of the houses. Fishing nets were strung in the channels.
The bus reached Sonari about 10 and I had a three hour wait for a sumo heading to Mon in Nagaland, 40 miles southeast. Sonari was sunny and humid. The restaurant at the sumo stand looked particularly unappetizing, so I just bought some potato chips and spent the time reading and talking to some of the Naga guys around. The sumo left about 1 and soon reached the state border at about 420 feet elevation, only about 50 feet more than at Sonari. The terrain in Nagaland was flat at first, with views of hills in the distance. The sky clouded up again.
Before we reached the hills we had to stop at an army checkpoint. About 25 soldiers were strung out along the road, most with automatic rifles. One soldier had a mortar and another a shoulder fired weapon. While my passport was being checked and the details written down, I talked with a soldier from the far away state of Haryana, north of Delhi. He said a fifteen year old ceasefire had been broken a month earlier by one of thirty insurgent groups "to gain attention" and that 12 soldiers had been killed, though "we killed some of them."
The Nagas, fearsome warriors and headhunters in the past, had never been ruled by Indians and only grudgingly accepted, after inflicting several defeats on the British, a light-handed British rule, aided by missionaries who converted them to Christianity. After India's independence, they resisted Indian authority, often violently, and the Indian army acted with its usual lack of restraint. There have been ceasefires over the years and it seems most, but certainly not all, Nagas accept being part of India. The state was only open to tourism in 2000. There are 20 different Naga tribes.
We climbed into the hills going very slowly on a terrible potholed road. We climbed as high as 3200 feet under heavy clouds, and even fog in places, but no rain. We passed houses with bamboo walls and thatched roofs, and some with metal roofs. I saw Nagas along the road with baskets on their backs and carrying daos (a sort of machete).
The sumo reached Mon, spread out over several hills at about 2300 feet in the town center and looking out over a valley below the town and to the south, at 4:30. I had a hard time finding a hotel, searching along the hilly streets for about an hour. Finally, a guy on a motorcycle gave me a ride to the very nice Helsa Cottage, where I got a room for 1000 rupees, about $16, a night. The balcony in front of my room had a good view of part of the town and the valley beyond and below. I think I was the only guest. The family that ran the hotel was very friendly and fixed me a delicious chicken dinner in their little restaurant. I dined alone, first by candlelight until the electricity came on after 7.
The next day was cloudy and gray all day, often with low clouds. The hotel prepared a very good breakfast and I sat and stood on the hotel balcony in front of my room until about 10 watching clouds swirl around the town and the valley below and talking to an interesting guy from the village of Longwa on the border with Burma. He works as a tourist guide when there are tourists in need of a guide and, though I didn't want to hire a guide, he was very helpful with suggestions on where to go and about Nagaland in general. He told me "long" means "stone" and "wa" means "axe." His name, he told me, is Long Hee, with "hee" meaning "precious."
About 10 I set off for a walk around town. While the center has concrete buildings, most of the town is more like a large village, with bamboo walled houses with thatched roofs spread out over hills. The people were very friendly as I wandered around. One little girl liked posing for photos and her grandfather came out, having decided he wanted to be photographed, too. He donned a traditional Naga vest over his shirt, a bead necklace, and a hat with fur and boar tusks on it. Carrying an old rifle, he posed standing and sitting on a little stool. His daughter-in-law spoke good English and told me she was 20 and that her three children were 6, 4, and 1. Two other kids were in the earthen yard of their house. After I had taken several photos of the grandfather and shown them to him, he took off his vest and shirt to show me his tattoos. The family was very friendly.
I walked out into the countryside beyond the town a short way and spotted a few slash and burn fields on the green hillsides. Everything was very green. I walked back through town, with a little rain as I reached my hotel about 1:30. I headed off on another walk about 3:30, walking to hilltops in town for the views, but low clouds hung everywhere. It was a Sunday afternoon and I saw people leaving churches. Some girls were wearing high heels. I got back to the hotel about 5 and had another good chicken dinner after dark.
I was up at 5:20 the next morning for an early breakfast before walking down to the sumo stand about 6:30, passing uniformed school children on the way. At 7:45 I left on an old, cramped sumo headed southeast to the village of Longwa, about 25 miles away and right on the India-Burma border. Lots of school kids and soldiers were on the town streets as we left. I enjoyed the pretty drive up and down through the hills to Longwa, passing forest, cleared fields, and even some grasslands. Twice we crossed rivers, one about three miles from Mon and the other about fifteen miles from Mon. We rose to about 3000 feet elevation as we passed near the village of Tangnya about ten miles from Mon. The village of Phumching, with about 4000 people, was at about 2500 feet and about 18 miles from Mon.
Long before we arrived I could see Longwa on the crest of the ridge that is the border with Burma. The sumo wound its way up the ridge, stopping at an army checkpost before the village. We arrived about 10 and I was shown to Jeilei's Homestay in the concrete house of Jeilei and his wife and family. Most of the houses in the village are made of wood and bamboo with thatched roofs. I was shown my small, dark, but comfortable room and then sat by the fire in the kitchen, the biggest room in the house, with a concrete floor and a fire right on the floor.
The village is strung out along the ridge that is the border between India and Burma, with almost all the houses on the Indian side. There are great views in both directions, east to Burma and west to India. From Longwa you can see six villages on hilltops to the west in India. There is no border post, but there is a frequently used path that leads down into Burma. The green hills to the east, in Burma, are covered with agricultural fields, and some houses, the fields tended by the people of Longwa. I walked through the village along the paved road to its end just beyond the village. Most of the houses in the village are large rectangles made of wood and bamboo with thatched roofs, all very picturesque. A big, ugly concrete church stands in a big flat clearing on the ridge. A sign said it was built in 2004, but it hasn't been kept in good shape, with many broken windows. Wooden pews, more like benches, are scattered inside.
I reached the end of the paved road (marked as Kilometer 42 (from Mon), ,just beyond the north end of the village, with a great view of Burma below. I ate some peanuts and cookies. A small army base, with a tower, clings to the ridge further north. Many Nagas live in Burma and many of the Indian Naga insurgents retreat to Burma. The Burmese Nagas, too, resent Burmese rule, but Burma has too many problems with many other of its minority people and pretty much leaves the Nagas alone.
Rain fell starting at about 12:30 and lasting for about an hour, and I sheltered under the eaves of an empty building near the end of the road. When the rain stopped, I headed back, first in fog and then under clouds. I stopped to look at the church and then walked on to the king's house, on a flat clearing further south on the ridge. His house is supposed to be half in India and half in Burma. It is large and made of wood and bamboo, with a thatched roof. Some of the thick log posts inside are carved, covered with figures. The front room has a dirt floor and must take up about half the house. In front of the wall that separates the front room from the rest of the house burned a fire, with the king and three other men sitting on small stools around it. They invited me in to look around and showed me some necklaces of animal teeth and beads, wooden masks, carved boxes, and other items that they undoubtedly hoped I might buy.
Over the fire hung, from the ceiling, an enormous dead vulture, recently killed, I was told, and now blackened by the fire's smoke. It was quite gruesome. On the walls hung a multitude of deer, buffalo, and mithun skulls. I looked around and then sat by the fire until about 5. One man was tying fur to a bamboo strip to make a hat. Another man showed me a completed hat with fur and a white feather. An old man came in with a blanket and slept in a corner near the fire. The king, a young guy, left. I sat watching the man working on the hat. One of the men had an infant tied to his back. They were quiet but very friendly, and I was served black tea.
I started back about 5 in a dense fog, which cleared about the time I reached the area near the homestay. I could make out the disk of the setting sun through the clouds, and then the clouds cleared and the wind came up, revealing great views. I watched the sun set over the hills in India. Dusk was cold. I can't remember but I think the elevation was around 4000 feet. A lot of little kids around had bare feet.
Soon men and women were arriving in droves up the path on the Burmese side, returning from a day's work in the fields. Many women had baskets on their backs full of firewood. Some of the women were barefoot. At least a couple of men had old rifles, while at least three had spears. Many carried daos. They came up the path to the paved road, with my homestay just down from the side of the road, and then trudged off to their houses. I saw one old man with long, blackened teeth from some animal wedged through his pierced earlobes.
At the homestay I had a chicken dinner in the kitchen, prepared over the fire. Before dinner, I watched a guy (not Jeilei) helping prepare the dinner. He used a mortar to grind onions, ginger, chilis, and chicken intestines together. A one legged dog wandered around, occasionally biting his fleas. Several young men ate along with Jeelei, his wife, and me. The electricity was out and I went to bed before 9.
I was up the next morning about 5:30, a sunny morning with few clouds. I watched scores of villagers headed to the fields in Burma, walking down the muddy path with baskets on their backs, the straps over their foreheads. I saw some uniformed kids heading to school, but it seemed more kids were heading down to the fields than to school. I got a lot of strange looks from the folks heading down to the fields, some friendly. Little kids seemed particularly intrigued by my hairy legs. I had a less than thrilling chapatti and dhal breakfast and waited around the homestay and road overlooking it, with great views in both directions, for Jeilei to take me to a hill with a 1970 concrete boundary marker. We left about 9:30, climbing about 400 feet to get to the top of the hill, a little south of the village. The hill did have great views of Longwa and the green countryside. The sky was clouding up.
I walked down and through the quiet village. The king's house was deserted. Near it, down the slope just a bit on the Burmese side was a gravesite under a roof. One grave was that of the previous king, born in 1959 and died in February 2015. He had become king as a child in 1972. On display around the grave were some personal items of his, including some beaded items and a hat. The grave next to his was of a man, perhaps his brother, born in 1960 and died in 2014.
A rainstorm hit about 12:30, lasting for about an hour, and I waited it out inside a deserted morung, a traditional men's house, with carved pillars and a long slit drum inside. During headhunting days the Nagas displayed their trophy heads in morungs. After the rain stopped, I continued walking around the village and saw a man with a heavily tattooed face, the tattoos resembling a buffalo head, with horns. After the sun reappeared I found a shady path along the Burmese side of the ridge, with great views over the green hills in Burma. The sun stayed out for the rest of the afternoon. Late in the afternoon I watched as well over a hundred men and women, maybe a couple of hundred of them, trudged up the path from the fields in Burma, some just before dark. The sun set into a cloud about ten minutes to 6, and I stayed out on the road watching the villagers returning from the fields for another half hour.
After dinner in the kitchen I took a welcome hot water bucket bath (the water heated over the fire in the kitchen) and then sat around the fire in the kitchen with Jeilei and seven others (perhaps relatives or workers in his fields, or both) until almost 10. They drank black tea. Jeilei and another guy worked on making drinking cups out of sections of bamboo about a foot high.
The next morning was sunny, with some clouds. I was up about 6:30 and watched uniformed school children heading to school and many more villagers heading down to the fields in Burma. After eating another chapatti and dhal breakfast I saw an old, wiry, bare chested man with a fur hat, a basket on his back, and a dao.
About 9 I took a walk, seeking the house of Wangchet the gunmaker. I found it, with an old woman with a beaded necklace and a child in front. I was invited in. Wangchet was working on a gun next to the fire. An old man with very only a very few black teeth sat nearby. A rifle stock was held in a vise and Wangchet was using a saw and chisels to fit a metal trigger mechanism to it. Another guy was boiling a strip of cloth permeated with opium in a big metal spoon. I watched them both for a while, but never saw the opium preparer smoke it. Someone led me up to the king's house.
Three or four old men sat inside by the fire preparing opium. One of them, a skinny old guy with a tattooed face, was fantastically attired, with a fur hat, long black animal teeth lodged in holes in his pierced earlobes, a beaded necklace, and gaiters covering his shins and calves. I sat down with them and watched them prepare and smoke the opium. The opium was impregnated in strips of cloth, and small sections of the strips were cut off and then placed in a large metal spoon. The spoon was heated over the fire to leach the opium from the cloth. When sufficient had leached out, a little plate with a bit of grass was placed on the fire, and when the grass was heated it was placed in the spoon to soak up the liquid opium. The opium-soaked grass was then placed in a bamboo pipe, that is, a section of bamboo probably a little less than a foot long and two or three inches in diameter. Wedged into the side of the bamboo is a bowl made of wood, I think, where the opium-soaked grass is placed and lit with embers from the fire. They were also drinking tea from bamboo cups. They sat quietly, but were friendly, and let me take photos. A large selection of handicrafts had been laid out on the dirt floor of the big room. I sat and watched for about an hour and a half, and then walked back to Jeilei's.
I was back at Jeilei's at 11, the time he told me to be there for a walk he was going to take me on. He arrived at 12:30. We ate lunch, of sticky rice and tea, and then walked south of the village into hills, climbing about 500 feet to his jhum fields (fields prepared by slash and burn). Corn, yams, and cardamom grew among tree stumps. To reach the cardamom and to climb over the rail fences of other fields, we had to climb over log stairways, with notches in the logs for footing. A deserted hut sat in the middle of one jhum field, and we checked it out. We passed woodcutters on the way, and in one of his fields two guys were pulling weeds. At least one of them, I think, had been at dinner the night before. A little above one of his jhum fields sat a big stack of stones. He told me skulls were placed underneath, the trophy skulls that used to hang in morungs in the village.
On the way back I stopped at another morung with interesting carvings and friendly little kids. I walked back to the king's house, where three opium sodden men, including the king, sat around the fire inside. I bought some necklaces and then walked to rocky view point, with great views over Burma, and then down to the head of the path coming from the Burmese agricultural fields. The sky was cloudy now, but there was no rain. I watched the villagers returning from the fields until about 6:15.
I had a bony fish dinner. After dinner a mechanic who had arrived from Mon prepared opium over the fire in the same manner as I had watched in the afternoon. He and Jeilei smoked it. The mechanic told me the cloth permeated with opium comes from Burma and sells in Mon for 800 rupees (less than $13) for a long strip, or 50 rupees (about 80 cents) for a small piece of the strip sufficient for one smoke. He told me he smoked it for health. I sat by the fire until after 10 and then went to bed.
A heavy rain, very loud on the metal roof of the homestay, woke me about 4 the next morning. It rained off and on until about 7. I watched school children heading for school and villagers heading to the fields in Burma in drippy weather, then had a dhal breakfast. I bought a couple of necklaces from Jeilei and checked out his flintlock rifle hanging on the kitchen wall.
About 10 I left on the sumo that had earlier arrived from Mon. I think I might have stayed a day or two longer if the food had been better. I had the window seat in front for the scenic trip back to Mon. The sun was out when we left, but the sky clouded over on the way back. Still, it was a beautiful trip. I could still see Longwa on its ridge an hour after we had left.
The sumo reached Mon at 12:15. I had a long, steep walk up to the hotel where I had stayed before. I met Long Hee there and we talked about Longwa. He also explained to me a little about the confusing array of insurgent groups in Nagaland. There is the NSCN(MI) and the NSCN(K) and the NSCN(U). He wasn't sure what the acronym NSCN stood for (I later found out it stands for National Socialist Council of Nagaland), but he said the letters in parentheses stand for the names of the leaders, except for U which stands for "Unified. He said the K faction is the one that had recently broken the ceasefire, but that it is now divided as it contains a pro-ceasefire faction. I think there are other insurgent groups, but he said these are the three main ones in the Konyak area of Nagaland. (Konyaks are one of the 20 Naga tribes, living in the north of Nagaland.)
I asked the hotel manager if he could fix me one of his delicious breakfasts, though it was now early afternoon, and he did so. I rested on the balcony in front of my room until after 4 and then took a walk around town under cloudy skies. I noticed a derelict monument, though with some plastic flowers on it, commemorating victims (two men, I think) assassinated in 2005 by some NSCN faction. On the monument are inscribed the words Herodotus recorded on the cenotaph at Thermopylae: Go tell the Spartan, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
I passed school children and a street side wooden booth with whole chickens hanging from its ceiling on my way to the small open air market in the town center. In the market three old women with colorful beaded necklaces were selling dried, long-legged black frogs tied together in bunches. They laughed at my photographing their frogs, but happily posed for photographs themselves and enjoyed seeing the photos. I walked back to the balcony of my hotel where I listened in the dark to the town noise from below until the electricity came on at 7. After another good dinner at that hotel I went to bed at 9.
