1st-of-its-kind Meghalayan Age Festival to be held from March 7-15

Shillong: With an aim to promote tourism, the Meghalaya government on Thursday announced that the state will organise a one-of-its-kind festival, ‘The Meghalayan Age Festival 2020’, at Thadlaskein in West Jaintia Hills from March 7 to 15.

The nine-day festival will feature several attractions like ‘glamping’, hot-air ballooning, caving, hiking, live performances and a variety of culinary treats.

While addressing the media, Meghalaya chief minister Conrad K Sangma said that the primary objective is to make the state a high-end tourism destination.

“We would like to package and to project ourselves as a high-end destination. And in the process of course many tourist will come and we welcome all kinds of tourist. Keeping that in mind we strongly felt that we needed to market ourselves and package ourselves and give that initial boost by having activities like these to take us forward in this particular goal that we have. And hence we came up with the Meghalayan Age Festival,” said Sangma.

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The government aims to make this festival a calendar event.

“The caving society that we have, they never got any official support from the government or any union in the past and they have just been spending their own money doing it on their own. And it is for the first time that government of Meghalaya has supported them to buy different types of equipment for caving and these equipment are a long-time investment. We will promote this so that local caving enthusiast will benefit from this,” said Sangma.

He also informed that an invitation has also been sent out to all the chief ministers of the Northeast states.

Sangma mentioned that a National Tourism Conclave will be held during the festival wherein ministry of jal shakti Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, DoNER minister Jitender Singh, union minister of youth affairs and sports Kiren Rijiju would be key participants of the conclave.

The festival has been named Meghalayan Age Festival because the geological age in which the people live from (4200) years to the presennlt is the Meghalayan Age. The scientific fact was established two years ago based on geological evidence found at Mawmluh Caves in Meghalaya.