The land of festivals, Nagaland never waits for any special occasion but its every day is meant special where many festivals are celebrated every month or practically every week at different areas of Nagaland. This is why the land is always touted with festivals of festivals.

Photo Credit- Heather Layton

It is the land of 16 major tribes where the village gates are always open for everyone. Nagaland, where hands are hard at work, ancient recipes still aromatize the locals and ancient rocks and stones are still present that leads to old age civilization. Nagaland simply showcases ordinary days with extraordinary features including its blooming festivals, out of all the most famous- the Hornbill Festival, attracts many tourists all across the world. The festival which is celebrated during 1-7 December every year is the pride of the Kisama Heritage Village and is the perfect medium to explore the Naga culture and heritage.

The December month which is special for Christmas is made more special with this unique festival when during the entire months all the hotels at Nagaland are booked and thousands of tourists make it their home base during festivals.

Organized by State Tourism, Art & Culture Department, the Hornbill festival brings all the tribes of the state under one umbrella and people from various cultures and tribes assemble here and celebrate the Hornbill festival. Their ancient cultures include everything right from the fire-making, bamboo pooling, archery, Naga wrestling and many more and all these activities are performed here with great enthusiasm just only for promoting and fostering the ancient tribal cultures. The most interestingly, Naga chili eating competition attracts everyone’s attention since the Naga chili is believed to be the hottest one in the world.

Photo Credit- Heather Layton

The most appealing part of this seven days extravagant festival is that the participation is compulsory whereby every tribal member from different groups shows their archery skills, martial skills, power, costumes, dances, crafts and arts and by aggregating everything brings the magnificent Hornbill festival.

Dance is the most important part of Naga culture and the Hornbill festival is simply incomplete without any dance performance. The people of Nagaland bring the dance performance so perfectly in all the festivals to express their emotions. These people have convincingly many reasons to celebrate right form harvest, joy, happiness, sorrow and even war and that is why the land is truly termed as the “land of festivals”.

The primary focus of Nagaland’s Hornbill Festival is to restore culture and tradition that were reclining day by day and was showing a slow death.

Photo Credit- Heather Layton