Coming up is our trip’s highlight and ultimate immersive experience in Papua New Guinea’s ’s diverse, colorful tribal culture – the Mount Hagen Sing Sing! The prior week’s village visits, demonstrations, enactments, and lectures barely scratched the surface of the complex beliefs and customs of the nations’ peoples. The introduction of Western religions and recent rapid modernization brought on by mining operations is eroding native traditions at a rapid pace. Some tribes are trying hard to hang onto their ancestral practices, but one wonders for how long…

Reaching Mount Hagen from Tari necessitated another charter flight. The woeful lack of infrastructure was evident from the air.

Our lodge, Rodon Ridge, would be the most modern and well-appointed of the tour’s wilderness accommodations, thanks to its proximity to Mount Hagen, the interior highlands’ commercial heart. A Princess Stephanie’s astrapia, famed for its iridescent greenish-blue feathers that shade to indigo in the back, was carved onto each of the lodge’s double doors – a reminder that we’re in a birder’s paradise!

The lodge also has an abundance of blooming plants on its grounds, including many species of orchids.

One of the region’s birdwatching hotspots is Kumul Lodge. The guesthouse puts fruit out on the grounds to provide for close-range viewing as the birds help themselves to the hospitality. Our group opted for the outing as birds-of-paradise, being heavily hunted, are understandably skittish and usually found high up in the canopy.

Departing at the ungodly hour of 5:50 am, it took over 1.5 hrs over bumpy roads to reach our destination, but the sight of the electric blue male Ribbon-Tailed Astrapia made it all worthwhile. Sadly, its hallmark tail feathers were MIA, likely from its annual molt, but it was a real treat to see it up close and personal nonetheless.

Watching the female Brown Sicklebill play with her food was supremely entertaining — she’d pluck a piece of papaya with her curved beak, toss it skyward, then catch and swallow it midair.

Like most of its species, the West Papuan Lorikeet was a riot of color, and a joy to find.

One of events on the itinerary was a Pre-Sing Sing show. It didn’t mean much when I booked the tour, but it turned out to be the highlight of my trip!

Apparently Rodon Ridge invites a curated list of cultural groups to camp on its grounds every year, providing them with accommodations in exchange for a private performance the day before the official Sing Sing. The show is held on its expansive helipad, a large tree-encircled clearing near the lodge.

I was excited to learn that guests get primo access – akin to having a backstage pass – to watch the groups gear up. Hearing that we could start right after breakfast, I scarfed down my food and dashed out. It was already abuzz with activity when I got there around 8:40.

Here are some images showing various stages of preparation throughout the morning. A silver lining to the post-COVID dip in tourism was that we could all find our own slice of photographic heaven: no jostling, no crowds. I was left to putter around, checking out the scene and snapping pix of whatever caught my eye. It was magical…

I caught two Huli Wigmen at the initial stage of donning their headdresses and came to realize it’s a multi-layered process.

Later in the morning, I spotted this young Huli in his ceremonial wig. Going to town with the fancy face paint, it took over an hour to complete before he was finally ready to get started on the rest of his body.

This young woman’s group sported arguably the most extravagantly large and beautiful headdresses. But at the opposite end of the face paint spectrum, the finishing touches for her face would just be some daubs of color on the cheeks and tip of her nose.

It was fascinating to watch the Melpa men grooming and painting their faces in bright red and yellow, outlined in a combination of white, black, or blue. Store bought colorants are increasingly supplanting traditional body paints from clays, muds and local dyes mixed with pig fat. This man was absolutely focused on the task at hand. Liquid Paper, valued for its brilliant intensity, is supposedly now the white paint of choice!

The dancers come with an entourage of support. Some serve as face paint artists.

Others help with body decoration, while the rest are charged with assembling the elaborate headdresses or assisting performers with their costumes.

Unfortunately for the King of Saxony, this Bird of Paradise is obviously very popular among the locals: its scalloped brow plumes are on every one of these headdresses!

To safeguard these natural resources which are crucial to the country’s traditions, the Wildlife Conservation Society in PNG provides ‘Bilas Protection Kits’ to help tribes extend the lifespan of ceremonial feathers. Each kit consists of a heavy-duty airtight plastic bag, mothballs, acid-free paper for wrapping, and instructions. If the feathers are wrapped individually, and carefully assembled when needed, headdresses can last as long as 15-20 years!

Kina shell breastplates (also called Moka Kina) are highly valued among Highland societies, especially the Melpa people, and many are still passed down through generations. Traditionally, gold lip oyster (kina) shells are polished and carved into crescents, then pierced at each end to be strung up and worn. They can also be mounted on a backing and adorned with red, a color signifying power and status. However, due to large scale commercial harvesting and export from Indonesia, the shells are no longer as rare as they once were.

Finally, it was show time! Each dance began with a short introduction by the MC, though I often caught only fragments of what was said amidst the hubbub.

This famous female group from Simbu Province of the Eastern Highlands was expressing its appreciation to Rodon Ridge management for hosting the Pre-Sing Sing event.

This display of chanting and traditional weapons is intended to showcase the Melpa men’s warrior spirit. Since their ceremonial dress always includes either a triple-spiked spear or an axe, one wonders if their motto for social gatherings might be, “Party hardy, but keep our powder dry.”

While visiting the Melpa and Asaro villages was on yesterday’s schedule, I couldn’t resist a final birding hike on the Kumul Lodge trails instead. So today marked my first encounter with the Melpa, and I have to say, these high energy, Amazon-like Melpa ladies are a sight to behold!

As can be seen here, large cardboard pieces with crescent-shaped cutouts make handy substitutes for kina shell breastplates. The different Melpa groups, which were rehearsing separately all morning, came together for this performance and kept going like Energizer Bunnies…

Nothing captures the spirit of Papua New Guinea like the Huli Wigmen’s Kumia (Bird of Paradise) Dance, an elegant homage to nature, tradition, and ancestral identity. Their synchronized hops, set to the beat of kundu drums, echo the flamboyant courtship moves of this iconic family of birds – one of which, the Raggiana bird-of-paradise, serves as Papua New Guinea’s national emblem.

Check out the second dancer on the right – the young Huli with the intricate face paint now has his ceremonial wig decked out in long white ribbon-tailed astrapia and black sicklebill streamers!

I didn’t catch many details about this group, but the towering 12 foot headdress was crafted from white cockatoo and other feathers. With his head covered by raffia, it’s a wonder the masked performer could see where he was going. If nothing else, it must be pretty toasty inside!

This group of men first performed a marching chant followed by this unusual ‘line dance’, set to a whistling tempo. According to the MC, mastery is shown by lifting the apron with a specific knee movement.

Just before lunch, the village chief demonstrated how to start a fire the indigenous way to cook some sweet potatoes in a mumu (traditional in ground earth oven). Despite his valiant attempts, the kindling proved recalcitrant, and eventually a lighter had to be deployed to get the fire started. I have to say, he looked kind of exhausted…

MLB, a contemporary band, entertained us over the lunch break. It was a hoot seeing them create percussion music by slapping flip flops on oversized PVC pipes. It was reminiscent of Karawari musicians who cleverly made use of the abundant bamboo found in the Sepik River Basin.

The first performance after lunch was by a group from the Jimi District in the neighboring Jiwaka Provence. While the Huli Wigmen fashion human hair into wigs, this group transforms it into beards secured by a strap behind the head. So one can reasonably assume the short, bearded ‘men’ are boys rather than dwarfs!

As the men — young and old — swayed their hips, seashell strands and natural materials suspended from their waist and armbands rattled rhythmically, adding a percussive element to the haunting notes of the pan flutes.

The much anticipated Asaro Mudmen was up next. As the MC noted there are multiple origin stories surrounding the Mudmen. In one account, the Asaro were forced to flee their land after losing tribal skirmishes, until they came up with an ingenious ploy. Masquerading as vengeful spirits of fallen warriors, they emerged silently, ghost-like, with white mud-covered bodies and large grotesque masks. Gripped by fear, their superstitious rivals fled without a fight.

This performance commemorates the event. In stark contrast to the typical high octane Sing Sing, the Mudmen’s choreographed moves were slow and deliberate, both to mimic the gait of the walking dead, and out of practical necessity: the mud masks can weigh up to 25 lbs! The occasional clicking of their sharp bamboo finger extensions punctuated the unnerving silence, while the fanning of leaves – as if to ward off imaginary flies drawn to decaying flesh – heightened the ghoulish atmosphere.

The Omo Bugamo Skeleton Men, another crowd fav, wrapped up the event. Legend has it that hunters from a village went into the mountains and failed to return. A group of warriors was sent to search for them and came across a cave. Once inside, they found the remains of the missing villagers and soon realized the evil spirit that killed them was still lurking. The warriors improvised, disguising themselves as skeletons using black and white clay to blend in with the dead, and managed their escape while the monster slept.
In this theatrical reenactment, the Skeleton Men battled and ultimately subdued the evil spirit – with great gusto, as you could see!