This Pink Orchid Flower “Wuyawon”, Native to Shingcha Village Of Manipur Is Attracting Thousands Of Visitors

“This flower has been blooming since forever but my village being small, approximately 80 households – most of them with no education, and of course no funds, hardly did anything to make this beautiful place a public tourist attraction. Even though I was born and brought up in this village, I have never seen this flower until 2014, because this flower blooms during the month when our summer breaks gets over. It starts blooming at the end of June and lasts till the second week of August but the peak time is July 15th to 25th.

It was in March,2014 when my cousin Mayo and I finally came back home for good after 15 years of my stay in Pune. The same year my friends and I went for a drive to have a look at the flowers for the first time and we couldn’t believe what we saw – such beautiful treasure just lying there unexplored! My cousin and I decided on the spot to promote this. We thought this could be our way of giving back a token of gratitude to our village since we were away for too long and have not done anything much for our own village! So, we started posting on social media and caught attentions of some like-minded people. A local facebook page called the “IHAO” took part in promoting the Wuyawon flower in 2015. Also, my cousin and I would accompany as much people as we could to see the flower.

Wuyawon is the new ground orchid in the district of Kamjong, Manipur – A pink flower in the low hillocks of Shingcha village which is a two hour drive, about 45 kilometers away from the district HQ and it is approximately 90 kilometers from Imphal (15 mins trek from the main road). Wuyawon is named after the Mount ‘Wuya Kachui’. Legend repeats that during the time of war the villagers would return and camp at the mount. It was believed that people resting there experienced nightmares and sleep paralysis; the name thus, was given. The people of Shingcha village gave the official name “Shingcha Wuyawon” on 24th of July, 2016.

The first Wuyawon Festival was celebrated in the year 2018 from July 20th to July 24th at Shingcha village, witnessing thousands of people turning up to see the beautiful Wuyawon in its full bloom in spite of the heavy rain. According to our registration record, there were over six-thousand visitors in 2018 and that is a pretty good number of people to turn up.

-Phila Faith Awungshi