Royal Enfield Social Mission will host the third edition of Journeying Across The Himalayas from December 3 to 9, 2026 at Travancore Palace in New Delhi. The week-long festival will feature more than 100 programmes created with Himalayan communities, artists and cultural practitioners. The schedule covers installations, live music, food, films, workshops, conversations and craft with tickets already available through BookMyShow.
The scale of this year’s programme is considerably larger with more than 25 installations and exhibitions, over 20 live music sets, more than 20 culinary programmes and above 50 workshops and conversations. The Himalayan Bazaar will also return with more than 45 brands and craft collectives from the region. Ten collections will debut exclusively during the festival adding a dedicated retail component to the week-long programme.
Art and community stories account for a large share of the 2026 edition. Before Time by Gautam Pandey explores Ladakh’s ancient petroglyphs and Into the Himalayas offers a virtual-reality look at snow leopard habitat. The Unquiet Orchard by Vibha Galhotra examines traditional beekeeping and modern apiculture and The Gaddi Suitcase focuses on Gaddi and Bhangali pastoral communities through sound, miniatures and Kangri folk music.
The music line-up includes Taba Chake, Raman Negi and Aabha Hanjura with a new performing arts programme developed with the Oddbird Foundation. Food also gets a substantial presence through the Chouka courtyard. Sessions will cover regional cuisines and tea traditions from Kalimpong, Assam, Sikkim, Shillong, Nagaland and Himachal Pradesh, alongside interactive culinary programmes led by chefs and community-led projects.
“Becoming” serves as the curatorial theme for the third edition and centres on how Himalayan communities respond to shifts in climate, terrain, migration and innovation. Workshops range from manga sketching to craft design and the schedule also includes talks with practitioners, community members and subject experts. Daily film screenings will be curated by the Dharamshala International Film Festival through its DIFF On the Road programme.
The festival returns after its 2025 edition drew more than 11,000 visitors and representatives from over 50 Himalayan communities. Last year’s programme included a recreation of Meghalaya’s living root bridges, a live Sand Mandala by monks from Namgyal Monastery and a joint appearance by Northeast music veterans Lou Majaw, Rudy Wallang and Joi Barua. Food and craft also emerged as major parts of the previous edition.
Journeying Across The Himalayas also connects with Royal Enfield Social Mission’s work across the region. The organisation plans to work with 100 Himalayan communities by 2030 and already supports programmes linked to climate resilience, textiles, biodiversity, heritage documentation, winter sports and responsible travel. The December event will place many of those community-led projects before the audience through a seven-day programme built around Himalayan culture, ecology and lived traditions.
