The village where India ends — and the chief sleeps in two countries
Longwa is a remote Konyak Naga village in the Mon district of Nagaland where the India–Myanmar border literally runs through the chief's (Angh's) house — his bedroom is in Myanmar, his kitchen in India. The Konyak people, historically the last headhunters of India, are distinguished by elaborate face tattoos (earned through a headhunting raid) and are guardians of a warrior culture now channelled into the world's most dramatic festivals. The Mon district is reached by a full day's drive on mountain roads from Dimapur.
The Konyak Naga of the Mon district were among the last communities in Asia to practice headhunting — a ritual tied to spiritual power, agricultural fertility, and warrior status that persisted into the 1960s. The oldest tattooed elders, some still alive, carry facial ink marks that record kills in battle. British colonial patrols attempted to suppress headhunting from the 1870s onwards but the remote Mon hills resisted full pacification until after Indian independence. The arbitrary drawing of the colonial border through the middle of Konyak territory created the anomaly of Longwa village, w…