In Mon on the 22nd I was up at 4:30 for an early breakfast before walking to the sumo stand at 5:30. At 6:10 I left on a sumo bound for Mokokchung, to the southeast, via Sonari in Assam. I had hoped to take a more direct route through the hills of Nagaland, but apparently it is faster to make the circuitous route through Assam rather than take the poor roads through Nagaland. The ride was comfortable in an uncrowded sumo under skies alternately sunny and cloudy.
Heading back northwest to Sonari, we passed the border about 8:30 and reached Sonari about 9. After a meal break we started again at 9:30, heading southwest through Assam past lots of tea estates. After the small town of Nazira we headed south, then west on narrow, very poor roads, past more tea estates, until we reached a good paved road just north of the state border. A sign at the border gave the distance to Mokokchung as 90 kilometers (55 miles) and the distance to Kohima, the Nagaland state capital, as 240 kilometers (150 miles).
From the border at about 500 feet elevation the sumo headed southeast into the hills of Nagaland. The very good road eventually veered more to the southwest before reaching Mokokchung. The road went up and down, rising as high as 4500 feet, passing many hilltop villages in the distance. We had good views, though they were hazy, especially to the west.
About 3:30 we reached Mokokchung, a hilly town set along several ridges and the shallow valleys in between, at about 4000 feet elevation at the town center. I had a steep climb, about 300 feet, to a very nice hotel where I got a big room for 1000 rupees, about $16, a night. I walked back to the town center and walked around. A huge modern church dominates the main intersection. People were quite modernly, and fashionably, attired compared to Mon.
Walking back to my hotel about 5, I met a man named Nakshi who told me he was a government "block officer" stationed in Mokokchung, but originally from Dimapur in southwest Nagaland in the lowlands right next to the Assam border. He invited me into his house for tea and bananas. I had a good dinner back at the hotel and afterwards a hot water bucket bath. A hotel generator kept the electricity on.
I had breakfast the next morning only after I'd watched the Cleveland vs. Atlanta NBA semifinal game on the television in my room. About 8:30 I walked up a nearby hill higher than the hill my hotel was on. On its peak I climbed an observation tower 50 feet high, with good views over the town and countryside. Below the tower lay a very long and thick log drum, with a slit in the middle.
About 9:30 a guy from the hotel who was getting off work took me to his village of Ungma on a hill three miles north of Mokochung. I spent about four hours wandering around the pretty little village, much more modern than Longwa or the other villages I'd seen in the north of Nagaland. The houses are of more modern style, with metal, not thatched, roofs. I visited a modern style morung with interesting carvings on its exterior and a big slit log drum next to it. In front of the morang stands a metal statue of three Naga warriors.
From the village center I walked generally down through the village under sunny skies. I passed a cemetery with pig sties next to it. I watched some kids playing soccer, and playing it very well. Many houses had flowers in their yards and flowers grew along the road. I eventually made my way down to an open market at the base of the hill, next to an archway over the road welcoming visitors to Ungma, and took a bus back from there about 2. I spent most of the rest of the afternoon at my hotel. There really wasn't much to see in Mokokchung.
The next day was a Sunday, with no buses or sumos. I spent most of the day at the hotel. In the morning I watched the first half of the Warriors' game before the electricity went off. It seems the hotel turns on its generator only at night. Later in the day when the electricity was back on I watched news and bits of movies. About 3:30 I took a walk to another hill in town with an observation tower, this one looking over the downtown and beyond. The day had been alternately sunny and cloudy, but it was cloudy now. I stayed up there a while enjoying the views. I could see the village of Ungma atop its hill which I had visited the day before. I got back to the hotel about 5:30.
That night I watched the big cricket final of the IPL, the Indian Professional League, with the Mumbai Indians playing the Chennai Super Kings, starting at 8. The night was rainy, with the electricity going off at times. I turned the game off at 11, with Mumbai way ahead. I read the next day they won by 41. I've grown to enjoy cricket in India. And I enjoyed the commercials. Indians have an obsession with light skin, with beauty products for women such as a skin cream called Fair and Lovely. During the cricket match there were commercials for skin creams for men: one called Fair and Lovely Men Fairness Cream and another called Fair and Handsome.
I was up at 5 the next morning and at the bus station at 5:30. Rain began to fall as I got there. My bus for Kohima, about 95 miles south, left at 6 and was uncrowded. The road at first was in good condition, perhaps as far as the town of Wokha, just after we passed a river at about 1100 feet elevation. We made a half hour meal stop in Wokha about 9, with rain falling. The road became much worse, full of potholes. We traveled up and down through the hills, only getting as high as 4500 feet. We had some sun, some clouds, some rain, and some fog. We reached Kohima at 1:30, but the last mile, through heavy traffic in town, took more than half an hour. I noticed a a sign for Billy Graham Road. I got off the bus about 2 and, after some difficulty found a good, though expensive (for India), hotel, with a room, after a discount, for 1350 rupees (more than $21) a night.
Kohima is a very hilly city, with an elevation of about 5000 feet, though, of course, with great variations around the city. It has about 100,000 people spread out over its hills. The busy center is on a saddle between two large hills. This saddle is a pass through which the highway from Imphal in the state of Manipur, to the south, passes on its way to Dimapur on the plains to the west. In 1944 during World War II the Japanese invaded India via Manipur and got as far as Kohima on their way to the plains of India. For almost three months, starting in early April, a terrific battle raged, with something like 10,000 dead. The British and Indians were besieged on Garrison Hill in Kohima for a couple of weeks before they were relieved by troops advancing from Dimapur. It took weeks more to clear the Japanese from Kohima and the hills around Kohima, and then push them back into Manipur. Troops advancing from Kohima and from Imphal, which had also been surrounded by the Japanese, finally met up in late June.
About 3:30 I walked to Kohima's beautifully landscaped War Cemetery, laid out on terraces on Garrison Hill, its foot at a busy traffic intersection on the Imphal-Dimapur road. I had time for only a brief look at it, as it closed at 4. I wandered around nearby until about 5 under cloudy skies.
The next morning I was up at 6:30 for the Warriors' game. I ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant during halftime. After the game ended, after 9, I walked back to the cemetery and spent more than two hours there. The sun was out at first, but then the sky clouded up. The cemetery must have twenty or so terraces, up the sides of the hill, with rows of identically sized white tombstones on green lawns. Bright flowers grow next to the tombstones and terrace walls. The cemetery is impeccably maintained. A large white cross stands at the low end of the cemetery, just above an intersection with a traffic cop in a small gazebo. Nearby one plaque describes the course of the battle while another, a memorial plaque, is inscribed, "When you go home, tell them of us and say, For your tomorrow, we gave our today."
The terraces hold the graves of more than 1420 soldiers, most of them British, but also a few Australians and Canadians and more than 330 Indians. At the top end is another white cross and the outline of a tennis court. Some of the heaviest fighting during the siege took place here, at the site of the Deputy Commissioner's bungalow and tennis court, and the fighting here is sometimes called the Battle of the Tennis Court. A small cherry tree grows nearby, commemorating a cherry tree that held a British sniper. Just beyond the tennis court are a few more headstones and at the far end of the cemetery a large stone cenotaph inscribed with the names of 1900 Indian soldiers whose bodies were cremated.
I ate a momo lunch about noon and then walked to the excellent State Museum, with clothes, jewelry, weapons, and much else. I stayed inside until it closed at 3:30, and then spent some time on the grounds, with great views of the city, including the war cemetery, the saddle before it, and the hills all around. The sky was still cloudy, and had been ever since it clouded over in mid-morning. I took the bus back to near my hotel and spent some time in an internet café, somewhat rare in northeast India.
The next morning, a sunny morning, I walked to a small tank from the battle on display in a grove of cedars just off the road to Imphal. It was labeled a "Lee Grant" tank, American made, with two guns protruding from the turret, one much larger than the other. It had tumbled down the slope during fighting and been disabled, its occupants barely escaping from the Japanese.
I walked up the slope of the hill, through the cedars, to a mostly residential neighborhood on Garrison Hill and to a small hotel in a wooden building said to be the Deputy Commissioner's bungalow. I asked the folks working there if it was the same bungalow as the one from the battle, and they didn't know. I doubt it would have survived the battle and it was quite a distance from the tennis court. Perhaps it was the Deputy Commissioner's bungalow, but a new one built right after the war in a different location. It did look like a colonial residence and was furnished like one, with old furniture, Naga artifacts, and the like. The garden was full of flowers. I wandered around inside and sat for a while on a sofa reading a 1926 book on the Nagas found on one of the bookshelves.
I walked down the slope of the hill, taking a different route than the one I had come up, passing the gate leading to the Raj Bhavan, a big house now housing the state governor. (State governors are appointed by the Prime Minister in Delhi and are largely, but not completely, ceremonial. Chief ministers are the heads of state governments.) I came to a view of the upper end of the cemetery, with the cenotaph and the big white cross visible through the trees. A small gulch lay between where I was and the back of the cemetery. I made my way down and to lunch. One the way I met two other foreign tourists, one German and one British, the first foreign tourists I had met since I was in Tawang, 37 days earlier.
After lunch I tried to find a share taxi to Khonoma, a village about 12 miles northwest of Kohima and the site of finally successful siege of the Angami Naga by the British in 1879, but I couldn't find one. I also tried to find one to Kisama, six miles down the Imphal road, where there is a cultural center of some sort, but I was unsuccessful at that, too. Instead, I spent a couple of more hours at the war cemetery looking around, at the headstones, flowers, and views. The sky was now cloudy and a light rain fell at times.
Heading back northwest to Sonari, we passed the border about 8:30 and reached Sonari about 9. After a meal break we started again at 9:30, heading southwest through Assam past lots of tea estates. After the small town of Nazira we headed south, then west on narrow, very poor roads, past more tea estates, until we reached a good paved road just north of the state border. A sign at the border gave the distance to Mokokchung as 90 kilometers (55 miles) and the distance to Kohima, the Nagaland state capital, as 240 kilometers (150 miles).
From the border at about 500 feet elevation the sumo headed southeast into the hills of Nagaland. The very good road eventually veered more to the southwest before reaching Mokokchung. The road went up and down, rising as high as 4500 feet, passing many hilltop villages in the distance. We had good views, though they were hazy, especially to the west.
About 3:30 we reached Mokokchung, a hilly town set along several ridges and the shallow valleys in between, at about 4000 feet elevation at the town center. I had a steep climb, about 300 feet, to a very nice hotel where I got a big room for 1000 rupees, about $16, a night. I walked back to the town center and walked around. A huge modern church dominates the main intersection. People were quite modernly, and fashionably, attired compared to Mon.
Walking back to my hotel about 5, I met a man named Nakshi who told me he was a government "block officer" stationed in Mokokchung, but originally from Dimapur in southwest Nagaland in the lowlands right next to the Assam border. He invited me into his house for tea and bananas. I had a good dinner back at the hotel and afterwards a hot water bucket bath. A hotel generator kept the electricity on.
I had breakfast the next morning only after I'd watched the Cleveland vs. Atlanta NBA semifinal game on the television in my room. About 8:30 I walked up a nearby hill higher than the hill my hotel was on. On its peak I climbed an observation tower 50 feet high, with good views over the town and countryside. Below the tower lay a very long and thick log drum, with a slit in the middle.
About 9:30 a guy from the hotel who was getting off work took me to his village of Ungma on a hill three miles north of Mokochung. I spent about four hours wandering around the pretty little village, much more modern than Longwa or the other villages I'd seen in the north of Nagaland. The houses are of more modern style, with metal, not thatched, roofs. I visited a modern style morung with interesting carvings on its exterior and a big slit log drum next to it. In front of the morang stands a metal statue of three Naga warriors.
From the village center I walked generally down through the village under sunny skies. I passed a cemetery with pig sties next to it. I watched some kids playing soccer, and playing it very well. Many houses had flowers in their yards and flowers grew along the road. I eventually made my way down to an open market at the base of the hill, next to an archway over the road welcoming visitors to Ungma, and took a bus back from there about 2. I spent most of the rest of the afternoon at my hotel. There really wasn't much to see in Mokokchung.
The next day was a Sunday, with no buses or sumos. I spent most of the day at the hotel. In the morning I watched the first half of the Warriors' game before the electricity went off. It seems the hotel turns on its generator only at night. Later in the day when the electricity was back on I watched news and bits of movies. About 3:30 I took a walk to another hill in town with an observation tower, this one looking over the downtown and beyond. The day had been alternately sunny and cloudy, but it was cloudy now. I stayed up there a while enjoying the views. I could see the village of Ungma atop its hill which I had visited the day before. I got back to the hotel about 5:30.
That night I watched the big cricket final of the IPL, the Indian Professional League, with the Mumbai Indians playing the Chennai Super Kings, starting at 8. The night was rainy, with the electricity going off at times. I turned the game off at 11, with Mumbai way ahead. I read the next day they won by 41. I've grown to enjoy cricket in India. And I enjoyed the commercials. Indians have an obsession with light skin, with beauty products for women such as a skin cream called Fair and Lovely. During the cricket match there were commercials for skin creams for men: one called Fair and Lovely Men Fairness Cream and another called Fair and Handsome.
I was up at 5 the next morning and at the bus station at 5:30. Rain began to fall as I got there. My bus for Kohima, about 95 miles south, left at 6 and was uncrowded. The road at first was in good condition, perhaps as far as the town of Wokha, just after we passed a river at about 1100 feet elevation. We made a half hour meal stop in Wokha about 9, with rain falling. The road became much worse, full of potholes. We traveled up and down through the hills, only getting as high as 4500 feet. We had some sun, some clouds, some rain, and some fog. We reached Kohima at 1:30, but the last mile, through heavy traffic in town, took more than half an hour. I noticed a a sign for Billy Graham Road. I got off the bus about 2 and, after some difficulty found a good, though expensive (for India), hotel, with a room, after a discount, for 1350 rupees (more than $21) a night.
Kohima is a very hilly city, with an elevation of about 5000 feet, though, of course, with great variations around the city. It has about 100,000 people spread out over its hills. The busy center is on a saddle between two large hills. This saddle is a pass through which the highway from Imphal in the state of Manipur, to the south, passes on its way to Dimapur on the plains to the west. In 1944 during World War II the Japanese invaded India via Manipur and got as far as Kohima on their way to the plains of India. For almost three months, starting in early April, a terrific battle raged, with something like 10,000 dead. The British and Indians were besieged on Garrison Hill in Kohima for a couple of weeks before they were relieved by troops advancing from Dimapur. It took weeks more to clear the Japanese from Kohima and the hills around Kohima, and then push them back into Manipur. Troops advancing from Kohima and from Imphal, which had also been surrounded by the Japanese, finally met up in late June.
About 3:30 I walked to Kohima's beautifully landscaped War Cemetery, laid out on terraces on Garrison Hill, its foot at a busy traffic intersection on the Imphal-Dimapur road. I had time for only a brief look at it, as it closed at 4. I wandered around nearby until about 5 under cloudy skies.
The next morning I was up at 6:30 for the Warriors' game. I ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant during halftime. After the game ended, after 9, I walked back to the cemetery and spent more than two hours there. The sun was out at first, but then the sky clouded up. The cemetery must have twenty or so terraces, up the sides of the hill, with rows of identically sized white tombstones on green lawns. Bright flowers grow next to the tombstones and terrace walls. The cemetery is impeccably maintained. A large white cross stands at the low end of the cemetery, just above an intersection with a traffic cop in a small gazebo. Nearby one plaque describes the course of the battle while another, a memorial plaque, is inscribed, "When you go home, tell them of us and say, For your tomorrow, we gave our today."
The terraces hold the graves of more than 1420 soldiers, most of them British, but also a few Australians and Canadians and more than 330 Indians. At the top end is another white cross and the outline of a tennis court. Some of the heaviest fighting during the siege took place here, at the site of the Deputy Commissioner's bungalow and tennis court, and the fighting here is sometimes called the Battle of the Tennis Court. A small cherry tree grows nearby, commemorating a cherry tree that held a British sniper. Just beyond the tennis court are a few more headstones and at the far end of the cemetery a large stone cenotaph inscribed with the names of 1900 Indian soldiers whose bodies were cremated.
I ate a momo lunch about noon and then walked to the excellent State Museum, with clothes, jewelry, weapons, and much else. I stayed inside until it closed at 3:30, and then spent some time on the grounds, with great views of the city, including the war cemetery, the saddle before it, and the hills all around. The sky was still cloudy, and had been ever since it clouded over in mid-morning. I took the bus back to near my hotel and spent some time in an internet café, somewhat rare in northeast India.
The next morning, a sunny morning, I walked to a small tank from the battle on display in a grove of cedars just off the road to Imphal. It was labeled a "Lee Grant" tank, American made, with two guns protruding from the turret, one much larger than the other. It had tumbled down the slope during fighting and been disabled, its occupants barely escaping from the Japanese.
I walked up the slope of the hill, through the cedars, to a mostly residential neighborhood on Garrison Hill and to a small hotel in a wooden building said to be the Deputy Commissioner's bungalow. I asked the folks working there if it was the same bungalow as the one from the battle, and they didn't know. I doubt it would have survived the battle and it was quite a distance from the tennis court. Perhaps it was the Deputy Commissioner's bungalow, but a new one built right after the war in a different location. It did look like a colonial residence and was furnished like one, with old furniture, Naga artifacts, and the like. The garden was full of flowers. I wandered around inside and sat for a while on a sofa reading a 1926 book on the Nagas found on one of the bookshelves.
I walked down the slope of the hill, taking a different route than the one I had come up, passing the gate leading to the Raj Bhavan, a big house now housing the state governor. (State governors are appointed by the Prime Minister in Delhi and are largely, but not completely, ceremonial. Chief ministers are the heads of state governments.) I came to a view of the upper end of the cemetery, with the cenotaph and the big white cross visible through the trees. A small gulch lay between where I was and the back of the cemetery. I made my way down and to lunch. One the way I met two other foreign tourists, one German and one British, the first foreign tourists I had met since I was in Tawang, 37 days earlier.
After lunch I tried to find a share taxi to Khonoma, a village about 12 miles northwest of Kohima and the site of finally successful siege of the Angami Naga by the British in 1879, but I couldn't find one. I also tried to find one to Kisama, six miles down the Imphal road, where there is a cultural center of some sort, but I was unsuccessful at that, too. Instead, I spent a couple of more hours at the war cemetery looking around, at the headstones, flowers, and views. The sky was now cloudy and a light rain fell at times.
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