The India you thought you knew stops at the foothills
Kohima sits at roughly 1,500 metres above sea level, and the air there does something immediate to your assumptions. The town is the capital of Nagaland, a state that shares borders with Myanmar and Arunachal Pradesh, and it looks nothing like the India that fills calendars and tourism campaigns. The buildings climb steep hillsides. The market sells smoked pork, fermented bamboo shoots, and dried hornets alongside fresh chilies. The signs are in English and Nagamese. The churches, and there are many, because Nagaland is predominantly Christian, are large and plainly built, filled on Sundays with choirs whose harmonies carry down the valley.
