Friday, January 23, 2015

Preparations Underway For Tabuk City's Ullalim Festival Which Is Expected To Boost Kalinga Tourism

The province of Kalinga is in the thick of preparations for the upcoming staging of this year's edition of the Ullalim Festival. The festival is part of the province's celebration of its 20th founding anniversary which happens to fall on Valentines Day.

It can be recalled that Kalinga and Apayao used to be lumped together as a single province. However, the passage of Philippine Republic Act No. 7878 in February 14, 1995 divided the province into two different provinces.

The Ullalim Festival is a five-day affair that will feature civic parades, trade fairs, sports challenges like mountain biking and whitewater rafting, cultural events, and pageants. The main highlight of the festival is the Awong Chi Gangsa (Sound of a Thousand Gongs), a cultural performance that features more than a thousand people. The province wants to break last year's record and increase the number of participants to at least two thousand. In fact, representatives from the Guinness World Book of Records are expected to come and document the show for a possible entry in their celebrated reference book.

The festival will start on February 14 and will end on February 18. Some events will be staged earlier than the foundation day like the Trade and Industrial Fair which will start on February 9 and the Mountain Bike Challenge which will be staged on February 13.
Participants in one of the events during the festival last year. Photo courtesy of the Tabuk City, Kalinga Facebook page.
The province is starting to flex its muscles for its tourism industry. It's spending more time and resources in its tourism campaigns which is a good thing because the province is rich, naturally and culturally. Kalinga has the goods, it just needs to get the word out so that tourists will start paying attention.

Just recently, an international team of environmentalists and natural science experts explored the province's caves (Tawang, Gawaan) and an underground river (Maling). The province hopes that this will help in opening the areas mentioned to tourists.