Kohima Heritage Walk

In April 1944 the Japanese 31st Division under Lieutenant-General Kotoku Sato marched over the Naga Hills from Burma, cut the Dimapur–Imphal road, and laid siege to the tiny hill garrison at Kohima. What followed — sixty-four days of some of the closest, most vicious infantry combat of the entire war, culminating in bayonet and grenade fighting across the width of a tennis court at the Deputy Commissioner's Bungalow — halted the Japanese advance into India. Along with Imphal, Kohima broke the Japanese offensive and turned the war in Southeast Asia.

The engagement is commemorated at the Kohima War Cemetery, on the site of the DC's Bungalow at the base of Garrison Hill, and is carved with the Kohima Epitaph — 'When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say, For Your Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today' — one of the most quoted memorial inscriptions in the English language.

The walk exists because Kohima is more than a festival town for one week a year. It is a battlefield whose sequence — First Battle of Kohima Ridge, Battle of the Tennis Court, Battle of Garrison Hill, Battle of GPT Ridge, Battle of Aradura Spur — can still be read off the topography of the modern town if you know where to look. The walk is that reading, in the company of a guide who knows both the military history and the Naga side of the story.

The Kohima War Cemetery is the first stop — 1,420 Commonwealth war graves stepped down the slopes of Garrison Hill in immaculate order, with the Kohima Epitaph at the base and the memorial to the 2nd British Division at the top. The cemetery is quiet, deeply moving and physically laid out on the actual defensive perimeter of the 1944 garrison — the graves stand where the trenches did.

From the cemetery, the walk moves onto Garrison Hill itself and the site of the DC's Bungalow, where the Battle of the Tennis Court was fought at grenade-throwing distance across the concrete court. The court is still there, marked and interpreted. It is one of the strangest experiences in modern Indian tourism: a suburban tennis court that decided a war.

The walk then moves through the eastern side of the ridge — including a stop at the WWII Museum in Kohima, with its restored Japanese and Allied field equipment, the tank on the poster, and a small collection of personal photographs and letters. The route continues past surviving pill-boxes and the GPT Ridge sight-line down towards Aradura Spur, which is where the final Japanese positions were cleared in May 1944.

The walk closes at ete Coffee — a small local coffee house in central Kohima — with a cup of Nagaland-grown coffee. The debrief over coffee is part of the experience, not an afterthought; it is where the guide answers questions and points out what to read next.

The walk is operated by a local heritage-tourism specialist under the Nagaland Tourism programme. The guide is briefed on the military sequence — divisional order of battle, timeline of the siege, key personalities like Sato, Slim, Warren, John Laverty of the Royal West Kents, and the Naga scouts and porters whose contribution was decisive but historically under-credited.

The Naga side of the battle is the part most military histories still under-tell. Kohima village was ordered evacuated ahead of the fighting; families walked with what they could carry to Chieswema and beyond, and Naga porters and scouts fed intelligence and supplies to the Allied lines throughout the siege. The walk is careful about this — the story is not only a British or Japanese one, and the guides make that explicit.

Total walking is moderate — about 2.5 to 3 km, mostly on paved footpaths inside the cemetery and along Garrison Hill, with a couple of gentle inclines. Wear closed shoes with grip. December weather in Kohima is cool and dry: 10–18 °C during the walk hours. A light warm layer, sun protection and a bottle of water are enough.

The cemetery is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission site — quiet voices, no eating or drinking inside, no climbing on gravestones. Photography is permitted and welcomed at the memorial and the epitaph but not directly at named graves without cause.

For families with older children (roughly ten and above) the walk is one of the most educational experiences of the whole festival week — the tennis-court scene in particular tends to be remembered long after the trip.

Registration and booking contacts are announced by the Department of Tourism, Government of Nagaland ahead of the festival and are also handled by the appointed local operating partner each year. Because the walk runs to a fixed 9 a.m. start every day from 2 to 10 December, booking a day in advance is usually enough during the festival window, but weekends and the 1 December opening day fill early. If you are travelling with us, we handle the booking as part of your itinerary.

The four-hour format ends comfortably before the Kisama arena's afternoon peak, so a common pattern is Heritage Walk in the morning, Kisama for the closing dance sets in the afternoon, and Kohima Night Carnival in the evening. The walk is inside the standard Hornbill Festival permit envelope — no additional documentation is required.