Travel deep dive
Sing-Sings and Birds-of-Paradise in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea
The Highlands are the mountainous heart of Papua New Guinea: wide, cool valleys of gardens and villages between forested ranges, with Mount Hagen and Goroka as their main towns. Their yearly cultural shows, where groups from across the mountains dance and sing in ceremonial dress, are the region's great draw. The forest above the valleys is home to birds-of-paradise. Most visits are built around the days of a show, a few early mornings with a bird guide, or both.
Updated 2026-10-05
What a sing-sing is
Sing-sing is the Tok Pisin word for a gathering at which people dance and sing in ceremonial dress. In the Highlands it belongs to community life — a feast, a wedding, the opening of a church — and the dress, the songs and the steps differ from one valley to the next. The shows bring these groups together in one arena, so a single day sets the dress and songs of many valleys side by side.
The Mount Hagen and Goroka shows
Mount Hagen, the main town of the Western Highlands, and Goroka, the main town of the Eastern Highlands, each hold a cultural show once a year, over a weekend. Groups enter the arena one after another, singing and dancing to the beat of the kundu, the hourglass-shaped hand drum played across the country. Painting and dressing take the groups hours before they walk in, so the show day starts early.
Feathers, shells, paint and wigs
The dress is assembled from forest, garden and old trade: headdresses of bird-of-paradise, parrot and cassowary plumes; crescents of gold-lip pearl shell called kina, worn on the chest, once a store of wealth traded up from the coast and the name of the national currency; bands of fur, belts of woven fibre and bunches of leaves; and faces painted in strong colour.
Two groups are known far beyond the country. Huli wigmen wear wigs of human hair, grown by the men themselves for the purpose and crowned with feathers, and paint their faces yellow and red. The Asaro mudmen, from the Asaro valley near Goroka, perform in heavy masks of pale grey clay, their bodies coated in the same clay.
Going to a show
A show visit is arranged through a local operator, who books the rooms, the transfers and entry to the showground; the towns have few hotels, and rooms for the show days are taken many months ahead. Mount Hagen and Goroka are reached by domestic flights from Port Moresby, which are often delayed or cancelled, so plans keep a spare day before the show.
Journeys on the ground are made with the operator's driver, who knows the current situation in the valleys — the usual practice for safe travel in Papua New Guinea. The towns lie high in the mountains, so mornings and evenings are cool even when the midday sun is strong; a warm layer and a rain jacket belong in the bag.
Birds-of-paradise at dawn
Most of the world's birds-of-paradise live in New Guinea, and the high forest around Mount Hagen has its own, among them the ribbon-tailed astrapia, whose male trails two white tail ribbons several times the length of its body, and the King of Saxony bird-of-paradise, with two long plumes rising from behind its head.
The males display at dawn on favoured branches, so a sighting means an early start with a local guide, usually from a birdwatching lodge in the mountain forest. No morning is certain — rain, mist or a bird that does not come are part of it — and two or three days at a lodge give more chances than a single dawn.