Ziro Festival of Music

Ziro is one of the oldest town in Arunachal Pradesh located at a height of 8000 ft. Ziro has been nominated for World Heritage Site. It is the home to the Apatani tribes of Arunachal Pradesh. 

The Apatani tribe is sub-divided into number of clans. They live in fairly large villages. In the Apatani villages the house are closely constructed and bamboos are the initial part of their construction. It is said that the Apatani women were beautiful and in order to protect them from other they have start practising tattooing and nose plug.

We (THE TEAM) had decided to visit Ziro Festival of Music to promote our newly formed adventure travel company called “Pedal roads”. Half of the team travelled by train and others will hit the road. Me, Nitu, Pranab and Shashank have decided to travel by train.

Ziro host the India’s greatest outdoor music festival every year. It is organized in the month of September every year. This year it started from 24^th September till 27^th September, 2015. The venue has two stages one is name as Danyii stage and the other as Piilo stage. The artist at Danyii stage performs from 1400 hrs to 1700 hrs and after that the performances start in the Piilo stage till 2200 hrs. Many prominent artists like Tetseo Sisters, The Koniac Net, Barmer Boys, Prateek, Guru Rewben, F16’s, and Boomarang etc were part of the ZFM 2015. There were also tented accommodation facilities available which are offered by Shoes on Lose, Kite manja and Camp Venture.

 Day 1; 21^st September, 2015.

At 2130 hrs we boarded the train till Naharlagun from Guwahati railway station. After fixing up our luggage and we chatted for few hours and decided to sleep as we had to travel the following day too till Ziro.

Day 2; 22^nd September, 2015.

We reached Naharlagun railway station at around 0530 hrs and had to wait till our vehicle arrived at the station. Finally our sumo had arrived at 0900 hrs along with our friend Duyu. Immediately we started our journey towards Ziro. On the way stopped to have our brunch, we all had some simple awesome food at Potin.  After an attractive but bumpy ride through rough terrain we had reached Ziro at 1400 hrs. As we already had decided to stay at Duyu home in Bulla village (one of the Apatani village) near Old Ziro so went directly towards Bulla.

Day 3; 23^rd September, 2015.

We had decided to ride our mountain bikes through the Apatani villages nearby and to the venue of the Ziro Festival of Music at the Biirii ground but unfortunately it started raining so we had to ride back to Bulla basti (village). In order to finalise the route for the tour we planned to organise at the festival, I went out with Duyu and his brother on his bike. We covered all the 9 Apatani Villages viz Hong, Dutta, Bamuchi, Mudang, Tage, Hija, Lempia, Bulla, Hari and Old Ziro (town). Based on those visit we had decided to reduce the distance and exclude Hong and Lempia from the route due the road condition.  

Day 4; 24^th September, 2015.

The first day of the Ziro Music festival 2015. The programme started post lunch time .Before being a part of the festival we had planned to explore the Apatani villages nearby with our mountain bikes on the route we had decided. So we started our ride from Bulla basti and covered five different Apatani villages nearby.

Route: - BULLA – HARI – BIIRII (festival ground) – MUDANG TAGE – DUTTA – HIJA – OLD ZIRO (town) – BULLA.

During the ride we had seen the some unique culture of the Apatani people like the paddy-cum-fish cultivation,  Lapan – a wooden platform for traditional gathering of each clan, Babo – a wooden pole erected near the lapan where aerial dare devil act were performed.

After the beautiful ride the rain God had again delayed our plan to visit the festival ground.

Day 5; 25^th September, 2015.

On the 2^nd day, officially we were a part of ZFM 2015, we were there at the “things to do” counter, organising a guided cycle tours to the different Apatani villages as a team “Pedal roads”. The counter was just in front of the main stage i.e. Piilo stage. After finishing off trips for the day, we headed towards the stage to enjoy the live music. After a while we had to rush back to our workstation counter , as we had more enquiry for the following day , credit goes to the announcement made by  the management committee about the various activities in ZFM’2015.

Day 6; 26^th September, 2015.

The next day, we had reached the ground early, as our trips starts from 0800 hrs and we were almost fully booked for the whole day. After completing the trips for the day, we had time to enjoy the live music in the evening till the show ends.

Day 7; 27^th September, 2015.

The last day of the music festival , many people started leaving for their next destination and even there were new visitors, who had specially came to enjoy the last day show. The last day was quite a scene of people pouring in and out of the ground .We had cancelled our afternoon trips as the whole team was invited for lunch at Duyu’s sister residence, so it was a day for some homely food. So at 1300 hrs we had left the ground heading towards Duyu’s sister’s place. The food was delicious and after spending some few hours in productive discussion we had decided to move back to the ground as few of our team member was heading back to Guwahati.

We had reached the ground at around 1630 hrs and Guru Rewben was performing at the Danyii stage at the same time. We locked our cycle and were all set to enjoy every movement of the show as we have closed our booking for this season in the ZFM 2015.

Day 8; 28^th September, 2015.

We decided to travel back the next day to Guwahati by Arunachal State Transport from Ziro along with the cycles. So the whole day was all ours, we had planned to help Duyu and his mother in their paddy field in harvesting their crops. After cycling for around 2km us tasty lunch at the paddy field, a new technique for harvesting crops.  After a long tiring but work full of fun at the field we were exhausted.

Rested for a while and started with Packing and planning for the next day.

Day 9; 29^th September, 2015.

The next morning we had reached the bus stand before the schedule time, booked our tickets and fixed the deal with conductor for the extra luggages.

It was a long bumpy ride till Guwahati however due to tiredness of the whole week we had slept all the way long. The bus had arrived the next day at 0230 hrs.

A Life time experience ZFM 2015.