It was the early ’70s. The world had already seen flower power bloom, Hendrix set guitars on fire, and The Beatles turn from mop-tops to mystics. In India, the winds of change were blowing too. Rock ‘n’ roll, acid rock, and jazz were finding fans in smoky Bombay clubs, while Indian classical maestros were experimenting with fusions that would later go global. Then, in the hills of Malavli — a sleepy village halfway between Mumbai and Pune — something unprecedented happened.
Sneha Yatra was a three-day festival that drew around 5,000 people in the winter of 1971. You could hear Country Funk Revival or Atomic Forest one moment, and in the next, Amjad Ali Khan or sitarist Kumari Mangala's intricate ragas. Bands from Calcutta, Bangalore, Delhi, Pune, and Bombay played covers of The Doors, Jethro Tull, and The Rolling Stones, while others snuck in original material that would never be recorded — or heard again. There were folk singers, psychedelic jams, and even debates on youth, politics, and freedom.
The audience was just as eclectic: students, filmmakers, engineers, and radicals from all over the world. Some came for the music, some for the mood, and some… well, let’s just say the seventies were a colourful time.
The strange thing is, for such a big cultural moment, almost nothing survives. There are no official recordings, barely any photographs, and only fragments of memory kept alive by those who were there. Many of the bands vanished after the festival; some musicians left music altogether. Today, you’ll find more rumours than archives — that Kabir Bedi wandered through the crowd; that Nandu Bhende arrived from a nightclub gig in Mumbai and woke everyone up with a thunderous set; that conversations about revolution flitted about the night air.
Sneha Yatra planted the seeds of a movement in the way Woodstock did. In the years after, India saw a wave of concerts and festivals, from Led Zeppelin at Mumbai’s Slip Disc to The Police at Rang Bhavan. Yet, the original spirit of Sneha Yatra — a homegrown mix of idealism, music, and cultural cross-pollination — remains an enigma.
Fifty-plus years later, maybe that’s part of the charm. You can’t binge-watch it on YouTube or stream a 'Sneha Yatra ’71 Live' album. You can only piece it together from half-forgotten stories, knowing that somewhere in those hills, for three days, India had its very own Woodstock.
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