Anthurium Festival

High in the hills of Mizoram, an hour's drive from Aizawl, the village of Reiek sits at the foot of the mist-wreathed Reiek Mountain, its slopes bright each autumn with the bloom of the anthurium, an exotic, waxy flower that has become one of the state's proudest products. The Anthurium Festival, Mizoram's most popular festival, grew directly out of that flower.

The festival's origins lie in horticulture as much as culture. Encouraged by the state Horticulture Department, Mizo women took up large-scale anthurium cultivation as a route to financial independence; the flowers, prized for their quality, grew into an export business. To celebrate and promote both the flower and the state, the Mizoram Tourism Department launched the Anthurium Festival in 2006, staging it each year in the peak bloom season of late September or October at the Reiek Tourist Resort.

Over two to three days, the festival unfolds as a celebration of Mizoram itself. Displays of anthurium blooms and visits to plantations sit alongside a full cultural programme: folk music and dance, indigenous Mizo games and sports, fashion shows, handloom and handicraft exhibitions, and traditional Mizo cuisine, with adventure activities like zip-lining for the daring. The setting adds to it, Reiek is a heritage village where the Tourism Department has preserved the traditional huts of the different Mizo sub-tribes, a chieftain's house, a bachelors' dormitory and more, so that visitors encounter Mizo life as well as its flowers. Drawing visitors from across the country and beyond, the Anthurium Festival has become one of the Northeast's most prominent tourism festivals, a place where the region's horticulture, hospitality and culture bloom together.