The Iconic Hornbill Festival Returns After Two Years

The Hornbill Festival of Nagaland has always been a very integral part of the Indian festivals calendar  

The COVID-19 pandemic turned the world upside down for two years, and we were confined to the four walls of our homes with only our memories of travel and our longings for more explorations to keep us going. This was an inevitable sequestering and unavoidable, but it did mean that we could not get our usual fix of cultural events because each of these events had the potential to be a ‘superspreader’ and certainly was one that no one should have attended.

Over the years, the Hornbill Festival of Nagaland has been celebrated as a 10 day annual cultural event, one that has showcased the diversity and richness of the state through folk music and dance, local cuisine, art and craft workshops, handicrafts and more. Organised by the state tourism and the art and culture departments, the festival is supported by the union government, and also aims to strengthen inter-tribal interactions.

Now, after two years, the Hornbill Festival is back and will be held from December 1 to 10, 2022, in the heritage village of Kisama situated close to Kohima, as always. A senior official at the Autumn Festival, organised in Delhi as a prelude to the Hornbill Festival, revealed that full attendance from domestic and international visitors is expected and that the festival will also help boost local enterprises.

Attendees at the festival will enjoy an immersion into the cultures of 16 major Naga tribes.

Statistics from the state tourism board reveal that 2.54 lakh visitors attended the Hornbill Festival in 2019, which was a record number of footfalls. This included 2,926 international visitors, 52,736 domestic visitors, and 1,98,736 locals.

This will be the 23rd edition of the Hornbill Festival.

Images: Shutterstock

Also Read: Meghalaya Has A UNESCO Site That Deserves A Place In Your Bucket List