“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.

... contd.