Kohima

Northeast India · Nagaland

Kohima, Nagaland

Hornbill festival hills and WWII history · ~41-42 km from Dimapur

Plan this trip

Getting there

By road

~41-42 km from Dimapur

By rail

Dimapur, ~41-42 km — Nagaland's only rail link

By air

Dimapur Airport, ~41-42 km

Best time to visit

December for Hornbill Festival; October-May otherwise

Don't miss

Kisama Heritage Village

Kohima War Cemetery

Khonoma

Dzukou Valley

Things to do

Hornbill Festival immersion

WWII cemetery visits

Dzukou Valley trek

Where to eat

Orami's Naga thali

Dream Café

Festival morung kitchens' smoked pork with axone

Sources: open-meteo, wikimedia, Photo: The Anonymous Earthling · CC BY-SA 4.0

What to pack

Warm layers, festival passes, walking shoes for village terrain

A quieter corner

Khonoma, India's first green village, terraced into the hills nearby

About Kohima

Hills

Where it is

Kohima is the capital of Nagaland, a hill city spread across ridges of the Naga Hills in the south of the state, near the border with Manipur and on the road up from the plains town of Dimapur.

History

Kohima grew from the Angami Naga village of Kewhira, where the British set up the headquarters of the Naga Hills District in 1878. In 1944 it was the scene of one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War, when British and Indian troops halted the Japanese advance into India, and it became the capital when Nagaland was created as a state in 1963.

People

Kohima is home to the Angami, one of the Naga peoples, alongside members of Nagaland's other tribes; English is the official language and Nagamese serves as a common tongue. Each tribe keeps its own festivals, shawls and dishes, such as the Angami Sekrenyi festival and pork cooked with bamboo shoot.

Known for

The Hornbill Festival at Kisama
The Kohima War Cemetery
Khonoma, India's first green village
The Dzukou Valley trek
Naga shawls and smoked pork dishes

Did you know?

Some of the fiercest fighting of the 1944 Battle of Kohima took place across the deputy commissioner's tennis court, which is now marked within the Kohima War Cemetery.