The reason we decided to visit northeast India was to attend the Hornbill Festival  in Nagaland (Dec 1-10th).  I remembered seeing some very colorful people in someones photos in Los Angeles years ago and so we arrived in Kohima for the festival.  The festival was started 16 years ago so all the 17 Nagaland tribes could get together and exchange stories and ideas.  Before 1965 these people were headhunters and constantly in conflict with each other.  When the Christian missionaries arrived they worked very hard to get them to stop taking heads. Some were converted and stopped the practice. But it was about 30 years later when the Indian government made it a law to stop the practice that Nagaland abandoned it.  So now at the hornbill festival they can show case their skills at dancing and drumming.  There are games and contests too.  So the visitors can enjoy seeing whats up with the Naga people.   The roads are really bad here so there isn’t a lot of travel in Nagaland yet (the roads are coming)  It was really fun to experience their enthusiasm about their culture.  The elders are there coaching the younger ones on the music and dancing.  In the Naga culture they always had time for festivals, just now there are no head taking cerebrations.  This has left some people at loose ends and there should be more jobs available for them. A lot of the kids speak english so after a 3 hr show we would cruise around to the various tribal houses and eat, drink and talk with them (the kids translating.  This is a culture in transition I want to go back and hike around to some villages. The Nagas are bright and engaging folks. An event worth attending in a remote part of NE India.  There were only 1200 people there for opening day and most were Indians.