A gathering shaped by its place and purpose
Sounds of Soil is a small gathering for great music, raw nature and real people — set in the Himalayas, where culture, community and conscious living come together. For three days at VanVaas, musicians, travellers and friends share the same mountain home. There is a stage, but there is also everything around it — food, forests, conversations, walks, late nights and time with nowhere else to be.
It began with the mountains.
The floods of 2023 changed the way many of us looked at Manali. Extreme rain devastated parts of Kullu and the Beas valley, but the destruction also exposed something that had been building for years — construction along vulnerable stretches, debris, aggressive hill cutting and development moving faster than the mountains could comfortably carry.
VanVaas is our home in this landscape, and tourism is part of our world. So the question wasn't whether people should come to the mountains. It was what kind of reason we wanted to give them to come — and what kind of footprint we were willing to create when they did.
Sounds of Soil grew from there.
The person who imagined it.
Sounds of Soil was imagined by someone who found clarity, peace and possibility in the mountains. A deep love for music, nature and meaningful human connection led to the idea — to create a small gathering where good music and good people come together in a beautiful place, with a lighter footprint and a kinder spirit.
““I don’t want Sounds of Soil to become bigger for the sake of becoming bigger. I want it to remain a gathering where people and musicians actually get to know each other.””Founder