Wanderlust - 04.2020

42 wanderlust.co.ukApril 2020

“I

was about 20 when

I went for my fi rst

headhunt,” says the

old man, his beetly

eyes bright with the memory.

“I remember running back to

the village with my enemy’s

head in a bamboo basket, and

showing it to all the girls. I felt so

proud and happy.”

Langtoyimlok and I are sitting in

a smoky morung in the Phom Naga

village of Yaongyimchen, high in

the cloud-wreathed mountains of

Nagaland. A leathery, puckish man

of almost 100, he’s formally dressed

in a jaunty brown fur beret and

a scarlet waistcoat sewn with

cowrie shells. Around his neck hang

strings of orange beads, a wild

boar’s tusk and three small bronze

human heads. “These show I’ve

taken three heads,” he tells me,

fi ngering the smooth metal faces.

Headhunting – and no, we’re not

talking ‘searching for business

executives’ – used to be rife among

the Naga tribes, a Tibeto-Burman

people who inhabit the

mountainous tract straddling the

Indo-Myanmar border. Until a few

decades ago, there was nothing

a lusty Naga warrior adored more

than returning from a raid on

a nearby village with a bloody basket

of freshly taken heads. Heads, they

believed, were the dwelling place of

the soul and hence receptacles of

great power: the more of these grisly

prizes a village had, the greater

fertility and good fortune it’d enjoy.

TheBritish–nominalrulersof

thesejagged,tiger-riddledhills

fromthemid-19thcenturyuntil

1947 – didtheirdarndesttooutlaw

thepractice,butwithoutmuch

luck.Headhuntingwassimplytoo

embeddedintheNagawayoflife.

“Afterasuccessfulheadhuntwe

broughttheheadstothemorung,fed

themricebeerandhungthemup,”

Langtoyimloktellsmeinavoicelike

apairofoldbellows.“Sometimesthe

spiritsofthedeadwouldwakeusup

atnight,butthatonlymadeuswant

tokillmoreenemies.Aftersixdays

wetooktheheadsdown,peeledoff

theskinandfleshanddecorated

Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent

On a journey toNagalandontheIndo-Myanmarborder,

the British travelwriterencountersalocaltribeandlearns

all about the centuries-oldtraditionofheadhunting

The ast headhunters

CORRESPONDENT REPORT

them with buff alo horns.” I study his

impish features as he talks,

imagining him gleefully peeling the

skin off a week-old head.

The morung, or men’s dormitories,

used to be at the heart of Naga

society. Grand, decorous buildings

occupying defensive hilltop

positions, they were where the

young men slept, prepared for war

and learned the tribe’s traditions.

Although 99% of the Naga are now

Christian, many of the morungs still

stand: the one we now sitiniscarved

with elephants, a tiger

and naked Naga warriors.

Two fi re-blackened deer

skulls hang from a

wooden beam, a nod to

the human trophies that

once dangled from the

same spot. Outside,

a white Baptist church

towers over the village’s

palm-thatched huts.

The last known

headhunt took place in

1989, in a village just 32

kilometres from where we

sit. But the Naga are still

embroiled in a decades-

long fi ght for their independence–

a confl ict that has killed an

estimated 200,000 since the early

1950s. Although an ož cial ceasefi re

was signed in 1997, the situation

remains unresolved. During my

two-month visit, Naga insurgents

attacked an Indian Army post and

tensions over peace talks had led to

a heavy army presence throughout Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent; Dreamstime

Li ;

gua nd

we live without fear

A tiger carved in a morung; (right)

Langtoyimlok with his three bronze

trophies, one for each head he’s taken

Antonia spent two months travelling

across the Naga tribal territories of

north-east India and Myanmar