districts of the three neighbouring states as well as myanmar becomes the bane of nh 39 as it enters manipur through mao gate about 32 km from kohima the nagas who dominate manipurs senapati district through which nh 39 passes block the highway whenever any dispute with the vashnavite meiteis who are the dominant community in the state but are concentrated in the oval shaped 1843 sq km imphal valley that accounts for only 825 of manipurs land mass arises and that happens with troubling regularitywhen the nagas block this lifeline prices of food fuel and all other commodities in the valley skyrocket last year a 120day blockade of the highway by the kukis another tribal group that had in the 1990s engaged in violent clashes with nagas that claimed hundreds of lives demanding a district be carved out of the areas theyre concentrated in the overall nagamajority senapati district and a counterblockade by nagas caused a severe shortage of commodities and sent prices of lpg cylinders shooting up to rs 2000 a cylinder on an average nh 39 faces disruptions about 60 days a year moreh on the indomyanmar border is where nh 39 ends once a sleepy village moreh is now a bustling town where trade much of it clandestine worth an estimated rs 50 lakh a day export of indian medicines machinery fuel and essential commodities and import of cheap chinese goods is conducted this business is mostly controlled by tamils who started settling here from the mid1960s indias look east policy envisages constructing a wide expressway from moreh to myanmar and beyond it takes about 19 hours to travel from numaligarh to moreh but with night travel out of the question on almost all stretches of nh 39 the entire journey would actually take two days and that makes nh 39 perhaps the slowest highway in the country and of course the most unsafe as well