A trip to Nagaland’s enchanted mountain village of Benreu

The narrow dusty road rounded precariously, hugging the hillside and looking deep down into a precipice. The path to Benreu, a tiny, remote mountain village in Nagaland’s south-western Peren district, was eventful and full of drama. km around it became a tragopan sanctuary in 1998, the country’s first community-led conservation project; today it’s a plastic-free zone and has adopted several sustainability practices. Every Naga village has a ceremonial village gate: Benreu’s faced Pauna, and a set of steps dropped down almost vertically into a scarily bottomless gorge. He pointed to a long jump pit near the gate and said, “If a woman steps into it, the whole village turns up the next day to purify it.” He wasn’t kidding.