For the first time, amid the global coronavirus pandemic, Nagaland will be taking its 21st edition of the Hornbill Festival to a virtual platform from December 1 to 5, on three national and regional audio visual news channels.
Dubbed as the ‘Festival of Festivals’, the Hornbill Festival, which has put the state on the global tourist map, is a 10-day annual cultural and tourism extravaganza that elaborately showcases the rich and diverse Naga ethnicity through folk dances, traditional music, local cuisine, handicrafts, art, craft workshops highlighting indigenous textiles and designs, among various other Naga experiences.
However, owing to the Covid-19 pandemic this year, the state government has announced it will make the festival virtual. Tourism officials informed that the virtual event will showcase a series of cultural programmes during the next five days with the content sourced from government archives.
According to the head of the Tourism department, Ajanuo Belho, the Nagaland Virtual Hornbill Festival 2020 will air on NDTV 24×7 on December 1 (10.30 AM) and December 5 (12.30 PM); Doordarshan Kendra on December 1 (5.30 PM) and December 4 (3.00 PM); and Northeast Live on December 1 (11.30 AM) and December 3 (3.30 PM).
The premier festival kicks off on December 1, which also marks the Nagaland statehood day. In 2019, the Indian Air Force (IAF) also participated in the event by conducting a spectacular fly-past over the festival site, the Naga Heritage Village Kisama, 10 km away from the state capital Kohima, with Sukhoi 30MKI fighter planes, to commemorate the 57th year of Nagaland state.
The Tourism department had recorded a total of 2,82,811 visitors to its 20th edition of the Hornbill Festival in 2019, which included 3015 foreign tourists and 55,584 domestic tourists.
