Udaipur Tales Festival celebrates oral storytelling with diverse performers

“This is a platform where we do only storytelling. It’s not a literature festival. It’s three days of uninterrupted storytelling,” says Udaipur Tales International Storytelling Festival co-founder, Sushmita Singha.  Returning for its seventh edition this year, the festival has steadily carved out a singular space for oral storytelling in its most elemental form. 

Founded by Sushmita Singha, a culture curator and author, along with social entrepreneur Salil Bhandari, Udaipur Tales was conceived nearly a decade ago. “The idea for the festival came about nearly 10 years ago when we were discussing how we could bring together and conserve the stories of tribal communities and the land itself. We didn’t want to do a music concert or something similar because there’s plenty of that already. What felt missing was a space dedicated to stories,” she says. 

At the time, the founders were unaware that adult storytelling festivals even existed. “The more we thought about it, we realised how much of our oral tradition gets lost over the years,” she says. The first edition was modest in scale but revelatory in impact. “Initially, we had expected no more than 100 people and had seating for about 80. By the third day of the first festival, we had around 120 people attending. That’s when we realised this had truly worked.” she reminisces. 

Over six editions, the festival has evolved from an experiment in nostalgia to a space of reflection, interpretation, and lived experience. “We began with the idea of pure entertainment. There was a certain romanticism to it — listening to stories the way we did as children,” says Salil. What changed, he explains, was a more profound understanding of the form itself. “We began to understand storytelling as something far deeper than entertainment. Every story, regardless of genre, carries a strong central message.”

He recalls a past retelling of Mandodari’s story as a turning point. “The storyteller shared her own perspective, but the audience took away very different meanings from it. The strength of the story lay in how it allowed people to interpret it through their lens.” This, he believes, is why audiences return year after year.

The 2026 edition brings together an expansive lineup of storytellers and performers, including Divya Dutta, Rajit Kapur, Arif Zakaria, Danish Hussain, Divy Nidhi Sharma, Meiyang Chang, Mayur Kalbag, Prithwiraj Choudhury, Geetika Lidder, Vilas Janve, and Jyoti Pandey, among others. Genres range from contemporary and romance to dastangoi, history, mystery, horror, thriller, and folk traditions. The format remains deliberately analogue, foregrounding voice, presence, and attentive listening as the core of the experience. 

The three-day programme will unfold through a curated mix of solo storytelling sessions, music-led narratives, and folk performances rooted in regional traditions. Alongside established voices, the festival continues to create space for emerging storytellers through open-mic sessions and competitions, reinforcing its role as both a platform and a pipeline for the art form.

Inclusivity remains central to the festival’s vision. This year’s edition will feature performances by inmates of Udaipur Central Jail, sign-language interpretation across select sessions, participation from blind school students, and a dedicated children’s segment.

As it enters its seventh year, Udaipur Tales positions itself not as a spectacle-driven cultural event, but as a sustained listening practice. One that privileges depth over scale, and storytelling as a living, shared human experience.

The Udaipur Tales International Storytelling Festival is being held from January 9 to 11 at Park Exotica Resort, Udaipur. Tickets on Bookmyshow at ₹250.