A first-of-its-kind festival celebrating the timeless legacy of the Himalayan landscape,people, craft and culture
5th – 15th December 2024 Travancore Palace, New Delhi, India
Royal Enfield Social Mission announces the inaugural edition of ‘Journeying Across the Himalayas’
scheduled to take place from 5th to 15th December 2024 at Travancore Palace, New Delhi. This
multidisciplinary festival showcase celebrates the power of collective action for change in Royal Enfield’s
spiritual home – The Himalayas.
The festival will feature a variety of programming, including key highlights such as: Interactive
Installations and Exhibitions
● From Folk to Fabric: The Himalayan Knot Textile Exhibition: The Himalayan Knot
is a textile conservation project bringing together Himalayan artisan communities, conservation
specialists, craftspeople, and designers to conserve pastoral lands and spotlight craft practices.
Curated by Ikshit Pande alongside contributors including Monisha Ahmed, Aratrik
Devvarman, Easternlight Zimik, Kevisedenuo Margaret Zinyu, Charlee Mathlena
and more, From Folk to Fabric is a tribute to the storytelling of this region, where traditional
textiles and craftsmanship echo the spirit of oral tradition and folklore. It traces the rich
craftsmanship across the Himalayan states and UT Ladakh, highlighting sustainable textiles and
regional crafts through folklore, attire, photographs and artefacts.
● An Ode to the Snow Leopard: Filmmakers Gautam Pandey and Doel Trivedy create a
first-of-its-kind 360-degree VR film experience, which transports attendees to the remote habitats
of highly elusive snow leopards, in high-altitude landscapes. Royal Enfield is extending its
conservation efforts to Keystone Species in the Himalayas, with a long-term vision of helping
build human-animal harmony in the region.
● Green Pit Stops: Harmony by Design: Curator and artist Vishal Dar showcases
Harmony by Design, an exhibition of drawings and scale models of Royal Enfield’s Green Pit
Stops, a project invested in circular economies at the intersections of traditional building
techniques, community partnerships and local ecologies.
● Helmets for India, Art for Change: Helmets for India is an artists’ collective promoting
road safety and changing mindsets towards safe riding practices. In partnership with India
Foundation for the Arts, this exhibit features works of 12 artists using helmets as a unique and
unconventional canvas to express their individuality, emotions, experiences and perspectives.
Some of the artists are Debangshu Moulik, Aravani Art Project, Aditi Mali, Indu Harikumar,
Nirupa Rao, Indu Antony, and more.
● Helmeted Hyphae: Designed and executed by ST+ART, Helmeted Hyphae is a strikingly
unique, six-foot-high structure that resembles a motorcycle helmet, constructed from
mycelium—a revolutionary, organic material grown through a delicate process that transforms
raw, biological matter into a lightweight yet durable form. Through its scale and material, this
installation aims to evoke both curiosity and respect about how natural materials can take on
bold, structural forms.
● Evolution of Ice Hockey in Ladakh, Then & Now: Curated by Ladakh Arts & Media
Organisation, this exhibition documents the sport’s history in the region, featuring players and
key opinion leaders, and celebrates both the sport and its legacy in Ladakh. Royal Enfield Social
Mission supports training and facilitates Ice Hockey and winter sports at a grassroots level in the
Indian Himalayan region. The programme aims to create an eco-system for developing winter
sports in the region and also support the National Ice Hockey teams to compete internationally,
with the vision of enabling their participation at the 2042 Winter Olympics.
● The Shape of the Wind is a Tree: An exhibition showcasing works by the recipients of
The Himalayan Fellowship for Creative Practitioners. It gathers the projects and
processes supported by the inaugural edition of The Himalayan Fellowship for Creative
Practitioners (2023 – 24), reflecting on elemental connections, sites of remembering, and
paths of return. This fellowship is part of the Royal Enfield Himalayan Hub, a collective learning
centre for climate resilience.
The works engage with ideas of self, sensory ecologies, and enduring stories rooted in
varied landscapes. Taking from American poet and environmentalist Wendell Berry’s
ecopoetic oeuvre—and most specifically, his poem ‘Elegy’
, the exhibition embodies and
represents relationships between inner and outer worlds where “the shape of the wind” is
held and remembered by the form of a tree, a symbol of rootedness intertwined with
movement. Each creative intervention in the space reflects a practice of reciprocity: quiet
acts of regeneration, places of rest, and maps that trace where songs and stories flow.
Through varied mediums, the exhibition invites reflection on the enduring energies that
sustain and connect us.
● Through the Lens of Community, Conservation and Culture: The Green Hub
Project has curated as an immersive, experiential multimedia space, Through the Lens of
Community, Conservation and Culture, which imagines a living forest ecosystem as a symbol of
the connections built over years of work with communities and youth in the Himalayas towards
conservation and collective action. Films, photos and soundscapes will bring these stories of
action from the Himalayas to life. This fellowship is part of the Royal Enfield Himalayan Hub, a
collective learning centre for climate resilience.
● Entanglements: A site-specific installation in partnership with sā Ladakh, that reflects on
the connection between two distinct landscapes—the Aravalli range and the Himalayas—through
regenerative art. Formed at different times in Earth’s history, these mountain ranges are
entangled by tectonic forces. The installation engages future custodians—students from Mira
Model School in Delhi—who contribute visual narratives on what they want to leave behind for
future generations.
Workshops and Discussions
Panel discussions will cover topics such as safeguarding intangible cultural heritage, responsible
tourism, and climate resilience; while also exploring themes of human-animal harmony,
culinary heritage, climate literacy, systems thinking for sustainable solutions, etc. The
festival will additionally feature engaging sessions on modern storytelling techniques and include poetry
and oral traditions. Prominent speakers from conservation, crafts, culinary and contemporary art,
filmmakers and authors will join representatives from the Himalayan communities, especially youth
changemakers, in discussions that platform stories from the Himalayas to make complex issues such as
climate change accessible to the general public. Visitors are encouraged to immerse themselves in the
festival’s curated food experiences and hands-on workshops on Himalayan crafts and circularity.
Festival Shops
Curated festival shops will offer unique Himalayan products, including decor, produce, books, and
handicrafts. A special apparel pop-up, The Himalayan Knot, will feature collaborations such as Royal
Enfield x EKA x Looms of Ladakh, Royal Enfield x Countrymade x The Action Northeast
Trust, and Royal Enfield x Sonam Dubal x The Action Northeast Trust, along with collections
by Ladakh-based Namza Couture, Ura Maku from Assam, Jejum Gadi from Arunachal Pradesh,
SWGT from Uttarakhand, and more, showcasing clothing and accessories that honour Himalayan
heritage.
Performances
Throughout the festival, attendees can enjoy cultural performances that bring the Himalayas’ rich
traditions to life, with musical acts by Taba Chake, Bipul Chhetri, Lou Majaw, Ao Naga Choir,
Parvaaz, and Joi Barua among others.
Grab your tickets on https://insider.in/journeying-across-the-himalayas-2024/event
