Back to India – Nagaland and Odisha

I love Mother India -the chaos, the cacophony of horns, the colours, the odor of incense, and oh my the food. It’s been 18 months since my last visit and I was delighted to land in Delhi and get in my first Masala dosa and chai.

Back this time to head to Nagaland – a remote part of India bordering Myanmar and to the east of Bangladesh – for the Hornbill Festival. A celebrated gathering of the 17 local tribes who come together to compete, have some fun and imbibe a lot of beer.

Steph and I had gone lux and booked into the ultimate travelling camp, so were picked up at the airport in Dimapur (2.5 hour flight from Delhi) in nice car with a guide and driver for the windy three hour drive to Kigweme to our home for the next four nights. Dorje sorted us out with tea and sandwiches and then our butler (yes butler) Saurab took us on a tour of the property and our toasty tent complete with duvets, heaters and super hot shower in the ensuite (all needed as it is blimmen freezing up here at 2000m in the humid damp hills). We had an immense dinner of thali and gulab Jamon, provided by an outstanding chef team who kept us very full for the next five days.

Sunday – first day of the festival and we headed into Kisama heritage village to see the tribes beginning to gather in preparation for the opening ceremony later in the day. It was lovely as the tribes arrived in procession (albeit with no fanfare), singing and chanting as they marched and danced up to their Morung. They would settle in, have some food and practice some of there performances. There were very few tourists around so it was quite lovely. It was, however, where we discovered a weird trait of some of the domestic Indian tourists, who clearly all think they are very important instagram influencers or wannabe journalists as they were interjecting themselves into the dance practice, putting large cameras in the Nagas faces without asking, and then asking the troupes to get together so they could pose in front of them. To be honest this just got worse and worse throughout the week.

It was a lovely morning, and we wandered back to the camp, via a village stroll around Kigweme – super clean and full of cute kids.

In the evening we went back to see the official opening ceremony – hoping for some fab performances. Oh no, we got a lot of speeches including from the welsh high commissioner of all people. It was pretty dull so we headed back to camp for a delicious dinner

Monday was when the performances started, we headed off early to watch the tribes prepping and then into the arena. There are no allocated seats and all the tribes also sit in the arena to watch each other, so the tribes probably outnumbered the spectators by 2:1. We nabbed front row seats (as our guide sat in them while we were wandering around), and it was a delightful couple of hours, and lots of really enthusiastic competitors. It reminded me a lot of Matatini – the equivalent event in NZ where Māori come together to compete). We stayed until early afternoon and then went back to camp for a nap. After a lazy afternoon, we sat around the fire for a chat with Easterine Kire – a famous Naga author who shared some of the most important Naga traditions.

On our last full day in Nagaland we decided to head up to Khonoma – one of the more famous Naga villages who battled valiantly against the british during colonisation to retain their land. The village was gorgeous, very clean, with some lovely churches. 90% of the Nagas are christians – mostly baptists – and Nagaland has the highest baptist penetration of any area in the world. We had a lovely walk around, chatted to lots of people, admired the architecture (i love a corrugated iron church) and then went for a wander up to the terraced fields

We then headed back to town for more performances. Its the same crew every day but their enthusiasm levels definitely do not diminish as the days go by. We watched the log pulling ceremony, checked out all the craft stands, and sampled some lovely Naga coffee. It was a really chilled way to spend a few days. The food was good, lots of loos, not too many crowds, a really lovely atmosphere – would highly recommend. We headed back to camp in the late afternoon, this time for a fireside chat with Catriona Child – the daughter of Ursula Graham Bower – who was in Nagaland during the second world war as an anthropologist and ended up on the frontline.

Kolkata

A bumpy 2.5 hour ride back to Dimapur, short flight to Kolkata and then the 1 hour horn honking commute into town (at least the uber only costs £6), and we were at the lovely Glenburn penthouse with a view of the Victoria Memorial. We wandered around the Memorial and the cathedral, did some shopping (silk and linen clothes are such good value), and then had a lovely afternoon tea on the terrace. We skipped a sit down dinner and went to the famous Kusums for double egg double chicken rolls, followed by delicious Mango Doi. Nom

Bhubaneswar

It was an early start, back to Kolkata airport for a flight to Bhubaneswar. We had decided to see a few spots in Orissa with the few days we had left, though we definitely will be returning for a few weeks in the future to go to the hills to see the tribes. Mr Badal (organised through the highly recommended Alternative tours) met us and we headed to the tribal museums. I hate museums, but had to endure this one politely as every gallery had a lovely lady who wanted to describe all the artefacts. It was actually pretty interesting, if somewhat over engineered.

We meandered down to Konark, stopping for Rasgullah (cottage cheese balls in syrup) en route. A lazy few hours by the sea and then we went to an outstanding dance festival at the open air auditorium – fantastic Kattakali with lots of beautifully dressed audience members.

Konark and the Sun Temple

We were up at dawn and headed past the early morning fisherman to head to Konark to see the Sun temple in the morning light. We weren’t alone – there were lots and los of locals dressed in their best saris (I had one on too) – taking lots of selfies and shots for the gram (the young ones) and big group photos (the families). The temple was lovely, though not in a great state of repair, with lots of the eroded sections having been replaced with plain stone blocks. Our guide delighted in pointing out all of the erotic carvings (including various salacious positions and gropes). We had a lovely couple of hours meandering and then headed back to the hotel for a shower and an enormous breakfast of chole battura, vada and dosa

Raghurajpur

Mr Badal then took us to Raghurajpur, a delightful little village filled with painters and artists. Yes it was an exercise in parting tourists from their cash – but a lot of it was really quite lovely (and we may have came home with a few palm etchings of jaganath). When I was younger I would have been violently against ‘being dragged around a craft village’ now I find it quite fascinating, and I don’t really object to buying a few things. We also got to check out the laundry of Puri – the Dhabi ghat – industrial washing on the river.

Puri

We headed down to the humidity of Puri and wandered around the Jaganath temple – the destination for most of Puris visitors – pilgrims who are all gorgeously dressed and in a lovely mood. Non Hindus aren’t allowed in, but it was delightful to wander around and absorb the atmosphere….and try the snacks

We found a great place to buy some chenna poda (the famous Puri cheese cake with cardamom) and retired to the hilarious Chanakya BNR heritage hotel with its enormous terrace to while away the afternoon, before heading out for a spectacular Special Veg Thali at the Peace restaurant for £1.50 for dinner. We were entertained by very loud weddings taking place in our hotel, the one next door and the one across the road, and hopeful they wouldn’t go on all night.

Yogini 64

We had a lazy morning with another huge breakfast of puris, dosa and chai. We then headed up to Bhubaneswar visiting a craft village en route and then stopping at this amazing small outdoor 64 yogini temple, dedicated to the worship of the mother goddess with 64 carved stone figures of the yoginis arranged in a circular pattern around the main shrine. We then had a wander around the village and chatted to some of the friendly locals and watch the kids play cricket

Bhubaneswar temples

Onwards to Bhubhaneswar, for a sweltering walk around the main 700 temples. The priests were pretty hustly in getting their tips, but they had plenty of banter. I loved the Mukteshwar Mahadev temple and the Shree Parsurameswara. We also swung by the Ananta Vasudeva Temple, and saw the famous Lingaraj temple (which non hindus can only see from the viewing platform outside). We had some lime soda with a lot of salt and masala, and were fairly sweated out so retreated to the hotel. We made it back out to do some shopping (love Fabindia), managed to squish a blanket, 6 placemats, a table runner, a duvet cover and four cushion covers into our carryon. We then went to Kanika which was supposed to have the best Odisha thali in town – it was ok, but not amazing for £15.