Neermahal Tourism & Water Festivals

Festivals in Tripura provides no less scope to promote tourism in the north eastern state. Neermahal festival is one of the much-awaited annual events where the tourists flock to Rudrasagar to share the joy of water sports.

“Neermahal” literary means a water palace and it was built by none other than Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya in 1930. The venue is Melaghar, a 50 km away from the capital city of Agartala where the 3 day long festival beckons thousands of domestic and foreign tourists in December. Apart from water sports cultural shows are lined up to pull crowd in the evening.

The most striking feature of the annual tourism event is the boat race on the beautiful Rudrasagar lake. Boats of different shapes and sizes are deployed in the race where even the tourists can’t remain mute. Defying a chilly weather, the people from far flung areas of the country join the race that promotes the water sports event jointly organized by the state government and the fishermen cooperative society. The spotlight then falls on the fishermen who have been fetching livelihood from this huge 83-year old lake.    
 
Another salient feature of the festival is the swimming competition. This segment draws the participants from the outside the state which pulls huge crowd.

Thus, the festival gives the lake a new identify in the country’s tourism map. The huge water body turns home for lakhs of migratory birds to keep chirping from dusk to dawn. The tourists are deeply impressed by the white marble structure with considerable space for good air flow. Boats remain ready for the visitors to enter the floating royal palace comprising 15 royal cabins, a courtyard, chess playing room and conference room where the king addresses his people.      

But how the wonderful palace was built which bears striking resemblance to the Jagniwas palace in Rajasthan? The Tripura king got the inspiration from the Mughal architecture to have erected the palace. The he got it constructed deploying Martin & Burns, a British company in 1921 blending Hindu and Muslim architecture. 



Venue: Melaghr in Rajghat & Rudrasagar Lake.