Culture and tradition are unique to every part of our country, and in every region our unique set of circumstances help shape the dance, art, culture, music and even the foods, sport and way of life.
In keeping with our aim of bringing to you the widest range of experiences from across india - both good and bad, beautiful and ugly - we have found yet another rare story.
In a remote and forested mountainous corner of Arunachal Pradesh in the north-east of India, villagers from the Adi tribe get together on a cold winter day each year to head out on a community hunt. They are after a small species of pipistrelle or bat that lives in a cave deep in the forest.
The festival is also seen as an opportunity to bring the tribe together and for them to bond and reunite. Those living outside the village return for the hunt. The whole village - women and children included - head out at four in the morning on a cold dark January day and walk several hours from their village carrying long bamboo poles and woven palm mats, to carry out the operation. They camp in a forest clearing near the cave where the women set up fires for the impending bat roast. The men, meanwhile, head into the cave and block off the exit with the palm mats. The bats panic when the bamboo poles are waved at them and make for the exit to the cave. As this has been blocked, the villagers kill them en masse with the bamboo poles against the mats. This year, over 2700 bats were killed, tells us the village headman. The bats are brought outside the cave and any that are still alive are smashed and put to death. The feast then starts and the villagers partake of the huge quantity of meat that they have generated. What they cannot eat is then dried and can be stored for months, for future consumption. Some of the bat meat is even gifted to friends and relatives!
So while people in urban cities may look down upon this age-old tradition, commenting that it is perhaps inhumane or uncivilized, the people of the Adi village believe that killing the bats in hordes only once a year actually helps to maintain the natural demographic of the bat population. It has been reported that the bat population in this cave has actually increased over the years, perhaps as a complicated result of their restricted yearly culling.
Wilderness films India has a policy of not interfering with our documentary subjects. We do not prevent a leopard from killing a Barking deer and instead preaching to it the merits of soya and vegetarianism. We do not stop practices that in our narrow urban vision are cruel, unhygienic or inconsiderate.
However when it comes to the survival of critical species or wild populations that could potentially get exterminated or decimated, we do make exceptions.
The Amur Falcon success story from Nagaland is indeed one that can be emulated.
We took it upon us to neither preach nor throw the rule-book at the villagers but have a sensitive discussion with them and convey our view-point on bat conservation and wilderness ethics. When the villagers realized that they earned a not immodest amount from the stay of our crew in a village home along with meals and an honorarium for a local chaperone, the joint idea of village home stays and bat tourism occurred to them as a brilliant new paradigm.
Now, they are in distance communication with us and in a conversation through the village headman, the villagers have agreed to end this 200 year old cultural and culinary practice of theirs, in lieu of suitable eco tourism rehabilitation. In one fell stroke - wildfilmsindia - the largest cultural archive on South Asia - would have actually killed an ancient cultural practice, were this to happen!
This footage is part of the professionally-shot broadcast stock footage archive of Wilderness Films India Ltd., the largest collection of HD imagery from South Asia. The collection comprises of 150, 000+ hours of high quality broadcast imagery, mostly shot on HDCAM / SR 1080i High Definition, Alexa, SR, XDCAM and 4K. Write to us for licensing this footage on a broadcast format, for use in your production! We are happy to be commissioned to film for you or else provide you with broadcast crewing and production solutions across South Asia. We pride ourselves in bringing the best of India and South Asia to the world...
Please subscribe to our channel wildfilmsindia on Youtube for a steady stream of videos from across India. Also, visit and enjoy your journey across India at www.clipahoy.com , India's first video-based social networking experience!
Reach us at rupindang [at] gmail [dot] com and admin@wildfilmsindia.com
To SUBSCRIBE click the below link:
www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=WildFilmsIndia
Like & Follow Us on:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/WildernessFilmsIndiaLimited
Website: www.wildfilmsindia.com
In keeping with our aim of bringing to you the widest range of experiences from across india - both good and bad, beautiful and ugly - we have found yet another rare story.
In a remote and forested mountainous corner of Arunachal Pradesh in the north-east of India, villagers from the Adi tribe get together on a cold winter day each year to head out on a community hunt. They are after a small species of pipistrelle or bat that lives in a cave deep in the forest.
The festival is also seen as an opportunity to bring the tribe together and for them to bond and reunite. Those living outside the village return for the hunt. The whole village - women and children included - head out at four in the morning on a cold dark January day and walk several hours from their village carrying long bamboo poles and woven palm mats, to carry out the operation. They camp in a forest clearing near the cave where the women set up fires for the impending bat roast. The men, meanwhile, head into the cave and block off the exit with the palm mats. The bats panic when the bamboo poles are waved at them and make for the exit to the cave. As this has been blocked, the villagers kill them en masse with the bamboo poles against the mats. This year, over 2700 bats were killed, tells us the village headman. The bats are brought outside the cave and any that are still alive are smashed and put to death. The feast then starts and the villagers partake of the huge quantity of meat that they have generated. What they cannot eat is then dried and can be stored for months, for future consumption. Some of the bat meat is even gifted to friends and relatives!
So while people in urban cities may look down upon this age-old tradition, commenting that it is perhaps inhumane or uncivilized, the people of the Adi village believe that killing the bats in hordes only once a year actually helps to maintain the natural demographic of the bat population. It has been reported that the bat population in this cave has actually increased over the years, perhaps as a complicated result of their restricted yearly culling.
Wilderness films India has a policy of not interfering with our documentary subjects. We do not prevent a leopard from killing a Barking deer and instead preaching to it the merits of soya and vegetarianism. We do not stop practices that in our narrow urban vision are cruel, unhygienic or inconsiderate.
However when it comes to the survival of critical species or wild populations that could potentially get exterminated or decimated, we do make exceptions.
The Amur Falcon success story from Nagaland is indeed one that can be emulated.
We took it upon us to neither preach nor throw the rule-book at the villagers but have a sensitive discussion with them and convey our view-point on bat conservation and wilderness ethics. When the villagers realized that they earned a not immodest amount from the stay of our crew in a village home along with meals and an honorarium for a local chaperone, the joint idea of village home stays and bat tourism occurred to them as a brilliant new paradigm.
Now, they are in distance communication with us and in a conversation through the village headman, the villagers have agreed to end this 200 year old cultural and culinary practice of theirs, in lieu of suitable eco tourism rehabilitation. In one fell stroke - wildfilmsindia - the largest cultural archive on South Asia - would have actually killed an ancient cultural practice, were this to happen!
This footage is part of the professionally-shot broadcast stock footage archive of Wilderness Films India Ltd., the largest collection of HD imagery from South Asia. The collection comprises of 150, 000+ hours of high quality broadcast imagery, mostly shot on HDCAM / SR 1080i High Definition, Alexa, SR, XDCAM and 4K. Write to us for licensing this footage on a broadcast format, for use in your production! We are happy to be commissioned to film for you or else provide you with broadcast crewing and production solutions across South Asia. We pride ourselves in bringing the best of India and South Asia to the world...
Please subscribe to our channel wildfilmsindia on Youtube for a steady stream of videos from across India. Also, visit and enjoy your journey across India at www.clipahoy.com , India's first video-based social networking experience!
Reach us at rupindang [at] gmail [dot] com and admin@wildfilmsindia.com
To SUBSCRIBE click the below link:
www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=WildFilmsIndia
Like & Follow Us on:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/WildernessFilmsIndiaLimited
Website: www.wildfilmsindia.com
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Travel