Alau Meru, a Naga woman farmer, starts her day early. She sets out to the field down below the village, works for about three hours, clearing weeds and regulating water for the paani-khti (wet-cultivation). This is a routine that most people in Khonoma village stuck to for over 400 years. But now, things are changing. The insurgency-ridden state is waking up to a new potential: village tourism.

At first sight, Khonoma is a like any other village in the northeast: lush green, virgin. But tucked away in the green are reams of history and stories of the valiant Angmani tribals. Each of the three rooms in Alau Meru’s double-storeyed house—dainty ones with wooden floors—bring in at least Rs 200 a day, with some more money coming from the food that she serves to her guests.

“Till four years ago, these rooms were lying idle. Things changed only when the village council established the village tourism development board,” she said. “Initially we were shy to ask for money after keeping the guests for two days. But now we have got used to it,” she said.

Like Meru’s, the Khonoma Tourism Development Board has set aside about a dozen other houses as part of the village tourism plan. The Village Council too helps regulate tourist flow into the village.

“The best thing is that we don’t have to go looking for tourists. It is the Nagaland Tourism Association or officials of the state tourism department that contacts us and sends us the guests. Our responsibility does not end with providing them good accommodation and food. We also have to work as guides for tourists,” said Khrieni Meru, another housewife who now speaks with the poise of an entrepreneur.

The village tourism board and the village council together have motivated the Khwunomias—as the Khonoma residents call themselves in the Tenyidie language that the Angamis share with a few other Naga tribes—to help attract more visitors.

“In 1998, we converted about 96 sq km of our community forest into a sanctuary with the primary motive of conserving the Blyth’s Tragopan, an endangered pheasant that is also the state bird of Nagaland,” said Megovino Savino, a young woman who runs a grocery shop in the heart of Khonoma. “And though some tourists find it difficult to adjust, our village is a No Smoking Zone,” she said.

Young children too have been roped into making Khonoma a tourist destination. Every school-going child here has an earthen tub where he or she grows a plant.

“Khonoma, 20 km from Nagaland, is a historic village. It was this village that had put up the last organised Naga resistance against the British in 1879,” said Vizieu Chasie, a primary school teacher. While the British put up a memorial for four of its officers—Major C.R. Cock, G.H. Damant, Lt H.H. Forbes and Subedar major Nurbir Sai—at the highest point in the middle of the village soon after they occupied it, the Khwunomias in 1979 marked the centenary of the last battle by erecting a huge memorial atop the highest peak to the east of the village.

Khonoma, incidentally, has also been home to some of the most illustrious Nagas, including A.Z. Phizo, the founder of the Naga movement for a sovereign state, T. Sakhrie, a well-known advocate of non-violence, and former chief minister J.B. Jasokie among others.

With the Khonoma idea a success, the state government has taken the plan to about half a dozen villages around Kohima in the last few years. Touphema, chief minister Neiphiu Rio’s village, is one such centre. Last week, Union Panchayati Raj Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar stayed over for a night in Touphema, about 40 km from Kohima, and said rural tourism could actually change the entire economy of the Northeast.

And as one listens to Khrieni Meru describe how she has opened a bank account of her own, the telephone rings. “It must be from a travel agency in Guwahati or the state tourism department,” she said, expecting another booking.