DISTANT CORNERS
BY A. A. KOSTAS
When I obtained my motorcycle licence from a training centre in suburban Melbourne, this wasn’t what I expected to be doing a few short months later.
I am driving with Emma on the back of my bike, taking us up and down and around the tangled hills of Nagaland. We’re tucked away in the furthest reaches of the Indian subcontinent, right about where the edge of the tectonic plate is busy smashing into Asia; pushing the Himalayas up and forming a natural border between India, Myanmar, Bhutan, China, and Nepal. In a few short months I have gone from a nervous rider puttering around the quiet side-streets of Australia to a strangely calm driver negotiating dusty roads swarming with cars, buses, autorickshaws, dogs, and other motorcycles. Calm, that is, until we take a spill on a sloped section of the road that is 95% mud. A landslide a few days back is still in the process of being cleared from where the road runs down to touch one of the mountain rivers. The mud is like ice, frictionless, and the brakes are useless. I feel the bike sliding away from me and in an instant I am standing on the mud road and Emma is on the ground beneath the bike. So much for a cool, calm, collected driver. By some miracle, the bike did not crush her leg and she is only left with a scratch and a bruise, and the bike is nothing worse than covered with sticky, stinking mud. I take it a lot slower after that, and almost get bogged twice in the wettest sections as a result. But we press on, up and over more sets of green hills, the road cutting through the wilderness and leading us on.
We are trying to reach Khonoma, the famed ‘green village’ of Nagaland — usually a day trip or weekend visit from Nagaland’s mountain capital of Kohima. But the rains have been worse than usual and nobody we talk to knows if the roads are passable. Plus I’m driving like an old man. Actually, scratch that, because I’m not nearly as confident as all the death-defying old men we are getting overtaken by, throttling past on bikes that are only slightly less ancient, sending black smoke signals up and over the clouded peaks.
Khonoma is most famous for something rather pleasant: in the late ’90s local residents became so concerned by the hunting of tragopans (an endangered species of pheasant) that the village council set aside a 20 square kilometre conservation zone. This area subsequently expanded and the general attitude of the residents turned toward environmental protection and low-impact living. By 2005, the village was being touted as India’s first ever green village; as the streets were litter free, the water responsibly managed, and the wilderness sanctuary home to more than just orange-necked birds: endangered leopards, black bears, and gibbons had found a home safe from human encroachment.
But Khonoma also has another, darker claim to fame. Situated as it is on a hill next to a wide valley of terraced farms, the village is a natural fortress, and from 1879 to 1880 the final battle of British colonial subjugation over the Naga Hills took place here. The resistance by the local Angami Nagas was fierce and surprisingly effective, with a lengthy siege the only way the British were able to force a truce. So Khonoma is a place steeped in natural beauty, fierce local pride, wounded spirits, and tragic history.
We eventually make it to the small parking lot at the junction where the village’s lone figure-eight road crosses itself. The sun has come out and beats down as we stumble up and down stone steps and alleyways, watching local children play football in the rare flat sections, weaving between wells of closely guarded water, and admiring the round meeting places set between houses. Huge standing stones are placed to commemorate special events or people, and the families’ dead are buried in alcoves right next to their former homes. The greatest honour of all is to be recorded as having hosted a ‘feast of merit’: an event where one couple invites all and sundry to feast until the couple has nothing left to offer. In the village custom, this then bestows upon that couple the ultimate merit — they have given all they can and they will be honoured forever in stone.
Emma and I climb to the remaining portion of the fort which held out against the colonisers and peek into the small chapel ensconced within. The views from the top are breathtaking. Thousands of cascading ripples mark the valley, a testament to human ingenuity and patience. The lime green of newly planted paddy zings next to patches of dark brown and we long to investigate further. But first we need lunch and some local conversation.
At the only restaurant open in town, we dine on pork noodles and fresh lemonade, chatting with locals and other visitors. There is a filmmaking couple from Mumbai, shooting b-roll for an upcoming documentary, and ex-Assam Rifles military men scoping out a new route for their touring company. And there’s the friend of a friend of a friend who heard we were stopping by and who drove up from his house further down the valley to see us. He’s the same age as us and has so far resisted the temptation of most of his generation to leave Khonoma or even Nagaland to seek better wages elsewhere. But he likes this valley, he tells us. It’s too beautiful to leave. Plus he’s opening an Airbnb on his property, so maybe that will bring in enough income for him to stay. Serendipitously, the couple from Mumbai recognises our friend — they had worked on feature films in Khonoma years ago and he had helped them out. It’s a popular spot for films and television. It turns out there’s nothing quite as pleasant to look at as an unspoilt, fiercely guarded, natural environment. So maybe there is a wider economic argument to make for conservation that’s been missing from the conversation — the film industry. Our friend advises us on the best path to take down to the valley floor. The farmers are out planting the new rice crop and he thinks it’s a spectacle worth witnessing. He’s right.
I’ve rarely had a more enjoyable afternoon than this one spent balancing on narrow, raised paths between miles of terraced paddy fields, watching as locals worked together to plant the seedlings. Knee-deep in muddy water, working with bare hands and at incredible speed, they transformed dead ponds into vibrant living cells. We marvelled at the effortless flow of the water through each terraced portion, the natural path of the mountain river harnessed to ensure an even flow through each section of the fields. We pointed out the scarlet dragonflies darting through the air and the small fish cultivated in the paddy to keep the soil healthy. If untouched nature is the epitome of beauty, then I would argue that the aesthetic rice paddies of Khonoma are a close second.
Meeting the filmmakers and hearing about their craft makes me see all of this through the vantage point of a documentarian or film director. Imagine this scene: a perfectly quiet valley stretching for kilometres from high, misty mountains down to the silver band of a river. White-winged eagles drift in spirals, looking down at the organic staircase creeping up the hills. A gentle breeze cools the sweat on the brows of the people bent over in the pools of brown water, their fingers thrusting into the silt, impregnating the land with a fresh crop. And then we zoom in on two young men, finished their work for the day, making their way back toward the village. They are laughing at each other, marvelling at their own physical achievement. They cross the small wooden bridge laid over the ravine and pass a section of the terrace where an old woman is working alone, hunching beneath the burden of the sun, moving slightly slower with each moment. One of the men, the taller one, pauses mid-joke and turns to look at the woman in her field. He gestures to her with a flick of his head, and instantly he and his friend are wading into the brown much, taking the green shoots from the woman’s bag and crouching beside her. She doesn’t say anything, and neither do they, but I can see her body relaxing. The work will be finished today, the young men are glad to help.
As we roll away from Khonoma I am thinking about what it means to journey and to travel if you live in an agrarian community. You are connected with the land and your livelihood depends upon it. By comparison I am rootless, having lived in six different cities across four countries in just three decades. To travel and roam throughout the skies and roads and waters of the world comes like a second nature. But now, I can’t stop thinking in microcosm: the well-worn footpaths between the houses on Khonoma hill, the little tracks winding down to different sections of the terraces, the rhythmic journeys taken day by day, season by season, generation after generation, all circling from the village to the terraces and back again. Does all travel have to be grand adventures spanning continents and oceans? What of the daily journeys, the necessary pilgrimages? These wear grooves into hearts and bodies, the land imprinting upon us just as we leave marks upon the land. Maybe we don’t have to go as far as we think to be travellers.
A. A. KOSTAS is a Canadian-Australian writer and lawyer, currently based in Singapore. His non-fiction travel and adventure writing and photography has been published by We Are Explorers, Microadventures NYC and The North Face ANZ; and his fiction and poetry has most recently been featured in The Clayjar Review, The Rialto Books Review, and After Dinner Conversation. You can follow him and read more of his writing on Substack: https://waymarkers.substack.com/