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Development and tourism in the North-Eastern states of our country are flourishing simply because the land houses an abundance of culture, context, and landscape. Arunachal Pradesh has a demographic that boasts of an abundance of communities and an amalgamation of cultures. While tourism is integral to the fabric of a state, it can have an adverse effect on the ecology and urban form of a space. A joint initiative of the Arunachal Pradesh Sangti village, organized by Namgey Khandu in collaboration with Hum and Further and Beyond Foundation (North East Waste Collective) wants to address this issue in collaboration with the local community.
The MonYul gathering believes that a solution can be reached if we practice community-driven responsible tourism. Awareness and deliberate intent will lead to the making of informed travellers who will be able to optimize and experience everything that the land has to offer without interfering and adversely affecting the ecology. The team wants to prototype village Sangti as a model community that integrates waste management, renewable energy, biodiversity conservation, natural farming, and water management within the existing community. The MonYul Gathering is an annual invitation to the world to celebrate the Lunar New Year in the Sangti Valley and immerse themselves in the cultural heritage of the Monpa. This year is the first chapter in the story of a community coming together to protect their culture, village, and way of life using responsible tourism as their primary tool.
Hum is a collective of designers who are seeking to create community-driven ecologically-regenerative systems to effectively handle the growing pressures of development, tourism, and urbanization in the North East.
Further & Beyond Foundation explores cultures and facilitates self-driven sustainable development in communities by designing and implementing locally relevant and ecologically sensitive frameworks.
— The Monyul Gathering
The four-day festival happens from February 27 to March 02, 2020. It is the first of its kind and has a unique paradigm that has been largely unexplored. Responsible tourism forms the ethos of their work and this is a good precedent for other communities, states, collectives and designers to practice. They have a series of workshops and experiences centred around the local culture. All the workshops are based on handpicked elements of local culture that they want the tourists to experience. During the Gathering, one can learn about the Monpa while trying their hand at Parasho and Bejakshing. Rooted in vernacular architecture, the tourists can stay in local homestays and explore the village on a bike or on foot. Traditional Monpa food promises a great culinary experience and the festival has something to offer to every type of enthusiast or tourist.
The Sangti Valley is blessed with nature’s abundance and hence, multitudes of tourists are attracted to the same. As one of the vulnerable Black-necked Crane’s wintering sites, an effective waste management system needed to be in place. The team aimed to practice a zero-waste policy and has done so efficiently. All waste before the collective’s involvement was either burnt or thrown directly into the flowing river.
The village of Sangti has been working to create a permanent solution to handle its waste. The goal is to create a community-driven system to collect, segregate and store waste in distinct categories and manage them accordingly. To execute the same, the team is conducting community waste management workshops, building a material recovery facility, and engaging the community in a drive to help make Sangti a zero-waste community. This year’s intent is to tackle waste management.
You can book tickets for the Monyul Gathering here.
You can check their work on IG here
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