Some mountainmagic of Khonoma 💚 Nagaland 🇮🇳
👏 A special thank you to Neikedolie Hiekha for hosting us through the Best Tourism Villages by UN Tourism Upgrade programme mentoring visit, with insightful meetings and continuous hands-on learnings about how local community, cultural heritage and nature based rural life & sustainabletourism truly can come to life.
👉 No news, but so great to see “my repeated theory” at work: The keys are accountability – communication – collaboration.
🤓 We had a good bunch of meetings & masterclasses on sustainability – best practices & lessons learnt in other villages in the 🌍 network – how to approach the opportunities of improvement (aka “gap areas”) – with TOP 4 advice 🙏 from Mandip Singh Soin, FRGS who joined us online this time; further gained insights into the strategies, action planning, incentives for homestays etc. provided also online by Chandradeep Singh – thank you for the facilitation & continued support to Khonoma and all future candidates, Dr Kamakshi Maheshwari!
🙏 The Village Council with the Ecotourism Management
Committee (ETMC) with all the stakeholder groups are on the same page.
🌹to the engaged Students, Youth, Women Unions of the village with special kudos🌹and respect to the young ladies’ voices with music and dance performance – barefooted although cold, because – that’s the tradition.
💚 plasticfree starts with that smile at the café ☕️ selling Khonoma GreenVillage Kipo WildApples.
🌿 The organic farming, including the paddy fields are worth a working visit. First happy coffee plants in the preserved forests spotted too :-) so bye, bye Nescafe et.al!
🐃 My handmade Nagaland shawl was well recognised at Delhi airport and I will wear it with pride in further village meetings anywhere, as a great reminder!
