There’s nothing like experiencing the local tribal culture of a place with a glass of homegrown wine in your hand, native to the area. The Chikoo Festival in Bordi offers its visitors a unique experience and an opportunity to indulge and immerse themselves in the rustic lifestyle of the Warli tribes. Infact, there’s much more to it with chikoo farming and the story behind India’s first homegrown chikoo wine, Fruzzante.
The Chikoo Festival
This yearly two-day fiesta near the Bordi Beach is a must experience. The festival takes you on a tour amidst the tree farms, connecting you directly with nature. From stargazing, camping and mountain trek to farm safari and wine tour, the Chikoo Festival has it all.
It started 7 years back and today the carnival is the best place to experience the rustic festivity. The aim of the festival is to inform people about the interesting tale behind the way the chikoo farms were set up at Maharashtra-Gujarat border, making it the most popular for its cultivation in the country. It is perfect for gardening enthusiasts to marvel over how farmers with little technical knowledge grow the fruit with the ability to withstand seasonal adversities.
Chikoos in the Chikoo farms
Inside the tree farms with man-made hives
The Chikoo Safari in the flora and tree farms takes one through honey harvesting, bonsai cultivation, farming techniques like grafting and other unique practices vital for the chikoo to be produced and the other trees to thrive.
Bonzai cultivation in Chikoo Safari
Honey Harvesting in tree farms
Besides the obvious chikoo attraction, Bordi is much about the green cover and there is nothing like lying in the grass amidst trees, looking at the constellations in the sky and camping there all night. Stargazing is one of the major attractions of the festival and the town, luring some to visit the location just for this, even beyond the festival. This place also offers awesome barbeque prepared food, cooked organically with leaves and mud for a perfect smoky flavour.
This two-day trip to Bordi during the festival will help you explore the adventurer in you. The Bahrot Mountain Trek and night camping will help you connect to the local lifestyle in the most rustic style.
The highlight of the event captures the visit to the country's home-grown winery, Fruzzante. The event is much about the chikoo wine, it’s variants, Spice Garden and the other flavours like the newly introduced Pineapple, Mango, Star fruit and honey. The festival takes you on a wine tour, where the organisers show the process of fermenting their much-appreciated products. Where the world focuses on fermenting grape juice for wine, the chikoo wine was Priyanka Save and Nagesh Pai’s brainchild, clad with innovation.
Wine tasting at Fruzzante vineyards
This festival is also a perfect opportunity to interact and connect with the local inhabitants, getting to know a different culture, delving further in an austere lifestyle and experiencing a different way of living, staying closely connected to nature. The Warli paintings on the walls are a perfect treat for art lovers and the ones who are inclined towards the desi lifestyle for its ethnicity.
Kumkum from the Warli tribe
Houses in the Warli village
But this art form is not restricted to the walls of the gullies and the houses in the Warli village but is also majorly seen in the products sold at stalls put up by various local inhabitants. These include different items like bags, jewellery, canvas paintings, keychains, etc, done beautifully by combining the art form. With over 250 stalls at the carnival, this type of a community living is pretty recurrent for the eyes of the visitors, immersing them in the local culture.
For all the wine lovers around and those who like to experience different types of cultures, this place is not to be missed. The Festival is all about connecting to nature with a perfect blend between adventure and of course, everything chikoo!
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