Shifest visitors prefer camping at hill sides
Source: The Sangai Express / Mungchan Zimik
Ukhrul, April 27 2018:
With majority of the young visitors to the Shirui Lily Festival opting to camp in the open by the hill sides, the home stay arrangement has taken a marginal hit.
Not surprising, for the young visitors prefer to camp at the hill sides to add more to the sense of adventure and enjoy the scenic beauty of nature.
Notably the camp sites are located at the foothills on the way to Shirui village and beyond at Phangrei.
Strumming the guitar under the open sky in the night and getting greeted by bird songs in the morning have attracted the visitors more than the home stay arrangements.
Not only this, most of the visitors were appalled by the rate charged at the home stay with the rate ranging from Rs 500 to Rs 1000 per head, per night while food comes at Rs 150-200 per plate.
According to town folks, most of the guest visitors arranged their own accommodations although a separate booking counter was opened for home stay at Mini Secretariat office complex ahead of the festival.
Campsites and make shift hotels can be seen mushrooming from Langkhan upto Phangrei covering a distance of about 10 kms.
Most of the young visitors could be seen heading straight towards the camp sites.
Indigenous games, wrestling, tug of war and wooden bike rally (long gari in Manipuri) are held at Shirui village to enthral the visitors.
Shirock nite is another item that has turned out to be a hit with the visitors with many of them thronging the venue where the musical events are held: A contest for rock bands based in the North East is also held as part of Shirock.
US band Queensryche is set to rock Shirock tomorrow.
Visitors are mostly from Imphal and other districts of the State while some have come from Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura and Madhya Pradesh besides some tourists from Europe.
Over 5000 registered free travelling passes were issued for the visitors.
More than 6000 visitors have applied for trekking up the Shirui peak to get a glimpse of Shirui Lily.