Mon
A tea gatherer returns from the days work at tea estates in Shiyong Village.
A young Konyak beauty joins a group dance during the festival of Aoleng.
Konyak women wearing traditional bead jewelry, brass wrist bands and mekhlas (wraparound) as they await their turn to dance at the celebration of Aoleng at Mon town.
A boy wears a traditional sash and brass head pendant. The heads are symbolic of heads taken in the past, and signified the number taken by each warrior.
Vast tracts of forests are cleared for cultivation in the ancient method of slash and burn called Jhoom.
The Ang, or hereditary village chief, of Jabuka village proudly displays his collection of elephant skulls at the rear of his long house.
The Konyaks, like all Naga tribes, were fierce headhunters for centuries before contact with missionaries in the 19th century, converted them all to Christianity in a hundred years.
Traditional tools on the courtyard of a Konyak house, including a mortar and pestle, cane baskets and spindle.
Women in a Konyak village assemble at a stream to collect drinking water in large hollow bamboo. This is the first task every woman in the household does as the day starts, and repeats in the late afternoon.
Though considered as a symbol of Nagaland, the Great Indian Hornbill has been hunted to near extinction in the state. Each house in a village will display their share of the kill.
The Nagas are great hunters and the most coveted trophy is the Mithun, a local bison which has been hunted to extinction in the wild in India. The only existing Mithuns now are all domesticated and sacrificed only during community feasts or festivals.
A lady constructs a waist band of beads. Beads once formed an important trading product with people of the plains, in exchange for essential commodities, especially salt.
The Konyak's, unlike the rest of the Naga tribes, were the first to adopt to the gun through contact with British settlers in the plains of Assam.
Thatched huts are slowly making way to tin roofs at the frontier village of Longwa straddling the Indo-Burma border.
A man in Chui village uses a large Mithun horn as a musical instrument.
The Konyaks are one of the few tribes amongst the Nagas to practice metallurgy, though on a small scale. Most blacksmiths also double up as carpenters.
Paraphernalia of Naga artifacts including wooden statues, Bone smoking pipes, walking sticks, hunting baskets and Dao belts, on display at the Ang's house at Longwa village.
Mon is where India ends and Burma starts. Nagaland's northernmost district, Mon is bounded by the state of Arunachal Pradesh to its north, Assam to its west and Burma to its east. The district is now home to the Konyaks, once feared headhunters but now entirely Christian in faith. Konyaks are ruled by hereditary chiefs known as Anghs, and the institution of Anghship is only prevalent among the Konyaks. The village of Longwa on the International border between India and Burma is ruled by an Angh, half of whose house lies in India and the other half in Burma!