When the North-East tells its own story

I grew up in Nagaland where stories are not written first. They are sung, remembered, argued over and passed down around fires and dinner tables. Our landscapes speak before we do. Our cultures travel by word of mouth long before they arrive on screens or brochures. For a long time, the Northeast was spoken about. Rarely did we speak for ourselves.

That is beginning to change.

As a proud Naga, I carry my identity wherever I go. It is in the language I think in, the music I return to and the memory of home that never quite leaves you even when you are far away. For many of us from the North-East, travel has always been about crossing distances that are physical as well as emotional. To leave the hills was often to step into unfamiliar narratives about who we are and where we come from.

Tourism, at its best, is not about selling destinations. It is about allowing people to encounter cultures on their own terms. The North-East has never lacked stories. What it lacked was access and agency. Today, both are being reshaped.

Across the region, better connectivity is quietly changing how the North-East meets the world and how the world meets us. Airports are no longer just transit points. They are the first chapter of a story. When a traveller arrives, the experience should tell them where they are before anyone needs to explain it.

This is why the transformation underway at gateways like the new terminal at Lokapriya Gopinath Bardoloi International Airport (LGBIA) in Guwahati matters. It is not about scale alone. It is about intention. When infrastructure reflects local identity, it stops being anonymous. It begins to belong. For many visitors, Guwahati is the first step into the North-East. What they see and feel there shapes how they understand the region beyond stereotypes.
The North-East is not a monolith. Nagaland is not Assam. Mizoram is not Arunachal Pradesh. Yet we are connected by shared histories of resilience, by music that carries memory and by communities that have learned to adapt without losing themselves. Our storytelling must reflect this complexity.

As someone deeply rooted in music and culture, I believe narratives travel further when they are honest. A folk song does more to explain a place than a paragraph ever can. A conversation with a local does more than any campaign. Tourism must be an extension of lived culture, not a performance created for outsiders.

Infrastructure plays a quiet but critical role in this shift. When connectivity improves, opportunity follows. Artists travel more easily. Students return home more often. Entrepreneurs bring ideas back instead of leaving them behind. When movement becomes simpler, identity becomes more confident.
This is where thoughtful infrastructure investment matters. When development respects context, it strengthens culture instead of diluting it. The North-East has seen too many years where distance defined destiny. That equation is changing.

The new terminal at Guwahati, developed by Adani Airport Holdings Limited (AAHL), is part of a wider moment for the region. It represents a gateway that is increasingly aligned with the aspirations of the North-East. Not loud, not imposing, but enabling. It allows stories to flow in both directions.

As Minister for Tourism and Higher Education in Nagaland, I see young people who are deeply global in outlook and fiercely local in identity. They do not want to be explained. They want to be heard. They want the world to meet them as they are.
The future of North-East tourism lies in this confidence. In letting the region speak in its own voice. In ensuring that when someone arrives, the first story they encounter is not borrowed, but rooted.

For the North-East, the journey has never been just about where we are going. It has always been about how we carry who we are along the way.

(TemjenImna Along is the Minister for Tourism and Higher Education, Nagaland).