Sri Lanka

Dear Shankra Family,

Our names are Mahi Murugar and Madu Murugar and we are the founders of Shankra Festival.

It has been many months, too many, since our last communication; we were excited to announce the new temporary location, and instead, we have disappeared, overwhelmed by grief and disappointment. We want to begin this message by apologising for the lack of communication, for the long wait in the hope of giving you some wonderful news. We are writing only now to tell you there is no such good news, and it is a duty for us to explain everything that has happened in the last few months, because we owe it to you, because we know that many of you still support us and because you deserve to know everything in the most transparent manner.

Trying to be brief, we want to give an overview of the last few years of our company’s activities.

In 2022, following the two cancelled festival editions enforced by the pandemic, we managed with great difficulty to relaunch Shankra Festival, even though there were so many costs and dreadful expenses.

Later, in 2023, we returned to work with much enthusiasm, and thanks to your support we were able to repay all the previous year’s expenses and invest the money for the new year. As you know, unfortunately, just a few hours before the official start of the Festival, a landslide hit one of our areas. In addition to the shock and fear that immediately pervaded us, we were faced with the possibility of having to cancel everything and having to bear sudden expenses in order to make the area and the people safe. Fortunately, the weather decided to give us some beautiful sunny days the following days, and the municipal administration granted us permission to start again.

We did this with great joy, but the economic loss for having had to delay everything was substantial: many frightened people decided to leave or stop coming altogether, we had to close one dancefloor, precisely the Lotus floor, and had to deal with too many expenses, following revenue loss at the bar while having to cover the damage costs for the material and the land. Despite this, we went on thanks to all of you who decided to stay, thanks to all the beauty we saw on the dancefloor and throughout the village; thanks to your love and encouragement.

And so, we were sure that the 2024 edition would be the turning point, that we would recover from all the loss, able to recover and reinvest time and money to make the event even more exciting.

Instead, on the 21st of June 2024, Lostallo was hit by one of the scariest storms ever seen here.

We have never seen so much rain all at once, we have never been so afraid of Nature. Because of heavy and sudden rains pouring down, the river started overflowing. Everything was flooded in a few minutes; the festival location, where we were working together with about forty team members, was quickly inundated and forced us to flee. It was an infernal nightmare of the most violent torrent, we were stuck on that big bridge you all know.

There were also victims, while we, despite everything, were very, very lucky. By then, it was clear that the Festival could not occur, even without much explanation. In addition to the great sorrow for everything that had happened, we found ourselves in an abyss of financial difficulty. All the income we had up to that point, the money from your tickets to be clear, had been used to cover the previous year’s losses.

Despite the huge financial loss, we have not received any reimbursement from insurance companies, donations, or any other competent body. It was, and still is, a time of great difficulty, of great pain, and grief. We fell into a state of confusion, but at the same time, we continued to fight, to strive, and to seek all possible solutions to get back on our feet.

We did not run away, we did not run a scam as many have suspected, even understandably given our prolonged absence and silence.

Our honest intentions have always been at the service of music, in seeing people from all over the world come together under one sky, to share the freedom of expression through rhythm and dance, connecting with the lightness of love and the beauty of life. Never, and never ever, have we done all this for pure personal profit, and we would like this to be the only truth we ask you to believe.

Honestly, the heaviness of these situations has taken a significant toll on our health, mentally, physically, emotionally and also, morally. It is as if the constant strain is wearing us down, leaving us exhausted in ways we cannot fully express through words, making it harder to find the strength to cope with circumstances we do not have control over.

Those who have been to Shankra several times know how much investment has been made over the years to make the event more and more meaningful, because your money should be at the service of everyone, not at our service. That is why we have always believed in keeping the ticket prices below 150 Swiss francs, way lower than other international festivals, just as we have always kept the food & drinks prices affordable and honest; which in country like Switzerland it is not so obvious to achieve.

We are well aware that we have unintentionally created false expectations by telling you in January that you would get all the information for the new festival on 15 February. Please acknowledge that we did this in good faith because we really believed we could make it once again.

Not being able to hold the Festival in the Lostallo area, we requested and obtained agreements with over 35 farmers in 3 different Towns in Canton Graubunden. In the end, we did not get the permits from the respective Town Councils, and every negotiation failed, despite the fact that there seemed to be all the right premises.

Time has inevitably passed, and unfortunately, we have to tell you that Shankra Festival 2025 will not take place. We declare this with a heavy burden on our hearts.

We are still working with the municipality of Lostallo to see if the area’s inaccessibility can be resolved by 2026, and in the meantime, we will continue to look for all possible alternatives.

As you can therefore imagine, we are in enormous difficulty, but never, not even for a second, have we forgotten the debt we owe to all those who bought tickets for the Festival. We are extremely late with the refunds, but we are again forced to ask you to wait a little longer with the promise that we will return everything to those who are entitled to it.

Even in the event that our company goes bankrupt, we will privately take it upon ourselves to reimburse each and every one of you. We won’t use legal loopholes to deny our responsibility.

In the coming weeks, all people who have purchased tickets will receive an email with some crucial information. From the bottom of our hearts, we ask you again to be patient and stay close to us because we need your willingness and understanding to restart this celebration that is Shankra Festival.

We want to take this opportunity to publicly thank the municipality of Lostallo, which has always shown us its closeness and which we are sure will do everything to help us bring the Festival back to its territory.

Likewise, we would like to thank all the farmers who have given their beautiful land over the years, and all the locals for rejoicing with us.

But above all, we want to thank all of you once again for your support, which is very often touching. We hope to see you again very soon to dance all together once more.

Shankra Team
Your Life Is Your Message