Category Archives: 1. Getting to NorthEast India

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, half naked and with 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. Totally a modern town/city. No one, not even in the remote parts of Mon unless there were some festivities happening, 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. It was a great festival for the young Nagas for they seldom get to see their own culture in action.

Finally I got to see the locals dressed in their traditional gear!

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 and arrange a few villages to get the villagers to dress in tribal gear just for their privileged tourists and maybe perform some festival dances.

Normally the villagers would go about with their business, dressed like what we usually do, jeans and t-shirts, or a plain neat cotton shirt and business pants. All of the sudden, before these rich European tourists arrive in their nice fancy large TATA jeeps, the villages get a phone call from the travel guide, the Tourists are coming! dress up and get ready to dance! So all the performing villagers get dressed, half naked with their traditional gear and ready to rock and roll in their own dying cultural dances. So there you go! These tourists get their “authentic and unique travel experience” and still get to pretend that these villagers are still in the stone ages!

And I? got by spending 25days in Nagaland (first trip) 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 Rp1000-5000 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 have 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. They still retain their bamboo houses, 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.and Yes they don’t dress in half naked tribal gear, the young kids are in Tshirts and jeans while the older folks in bermuda shorts and shirts.

I shall not bore you with more inform and descriptions about the places! Go find it out yourselves.

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 the area.

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 -> TRIP 1. (no they won’t give the form to me unless I have my 4 applicants present and waving at the registration officer and say Hey we want a permit application form!)  , then submit that form to arrange for an interview on another day -> TRIP 2, then make another trip down with all four of us for the interview -> TRIP 3, after which they will decide if they will take their sweet time to decide if we are getting the permit done (yes they will decide twice before acting on the permit). 14days or more later…you may or may not get your permit -> TRIP 4.

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 and the Indian Tourist Commission.  (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? The Tourist Commission been promoting the whole area as the latest touristy place to visit?)

“Oh no you have to be invited for that, you can’t just visit willy nilly. (which was a total flib that the silly guy working for the Indian mission just made up because he absolutely have no clue where the North-East was and probably still thinks that Nagaland was filled with terrorists and belongs to China).

The hornbill festival needs no invitation, its suppose to be drawing tourists to the State to improve its economy…. blah blah blah didn’t hold any water for him. Nope, you can’t visit Nagaland, case closed. NEXT!

Other useless fun permit facts

For a RAP to Nagaland, you need 4 foreign tourist to the permit. It has to be consisting of only foreign tourists, Indian tourists are not allowed on the RAP. For Indian Tourists visiting, they have another system call the Inner line permit (ILP), you can’t mix Indian Tourists with Foreign ones. Seperate Permits needed.  In the permit, it states, these 4 tourists have to travel together, which doesn’t really make sense to me why we needed to travel together? Are we any ‘safer’ travelling in a group of 4? Does a lone traveller impose any danger to the natives there? I really don’t know.

Oh well I am in India, I shouldn’t ask why, to stupid regulations.  In India, when you hit a silly regulation or law,  most Indians would shrug and say “Because it just is”,  some guy on top decided something and stuck with it even thought it doesn’t make any sense to anyone else.

Finally Found my Permit

I found 2 foreigners who were coming to Nagaland on their own, and one “bogus” foreign name,

Then I found another 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. (Yea and lonely planet said I should get the permit done in Calcutta)

New Delhi Nagaland house is apparently the best place to get your permits done. A Calcutta travel agent I met with, told me he usually get his paperwork done in New Delhi Nagaland house instead of Calcutta’s foreign registration office which takes  2 weeks to approve if you are lucky, if you are not, it would take more than a month. He absolutely advise me NOT use the Calcutta office ever!

My third 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 that bogus) and another traveller, took the same New Delhi Permit route with almost no problem at all, permit was approved within the day! Plus it is absolutely free, because I had a photocopy of the blank permit from the previous application. A copy would cost you 25rp at the office.

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 by combining 4 other lone travellers to the permit then charge you money for it. Smart EH!

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 that’s why you need their expensive rip off crappy guide and services.  And by the way, the rest of North-East India is safe too, so is Arunachal Pradesh which I had spent 1 month travelling around.

In the North-East India, I had visited Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh , Assam (many  many times), Meghalaya, with exception of Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur (all pretty boring if you go during non-festival times). I am suppose to add Sikkim as the other North-East state but I am adamant about it, the North-East should only consist of 7 States and not 8.

Spent almost combined 5 odd months just visiting this area so I guess I can consider myself a little expert on the North-East India especially on how to travel alone or cheaply without a rip off travel agent or a travel guide.