Chenab Valley & Chamba · Western Himalaya & Trans-Himalaya
Festivals
| Festival | When | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Minjar Mela | From the second Sunday of Shravana, usually late July or August, for a week | Chamba's great fair, dated by tradition to a victory in 935 CE and to the Ravi changing its course. A silk tassel called a minjar, made in imitation of the maize flower, is distributed and worn through the week and thrown into the Ravi on the last day along with a coconut, a rupee and a seasonal fruit. The Chaugan carries a week of nati, wrestling, a market and the Minjar song repertoire. |
| Manimahesh Yatra | Radhashtami, in Bhadon (late August or September) | A pilgrimage on foot from Hadsar to the glacial lake at about 4,080 m below Manimahesh Kailash. Ceremonial chharis set out from Bharmour and from Chamba and converge on the lake, where pilgrims bathe and circle it. The route is walkable for only a few weeks and the whole event is compressed into them. |
| Suhi Mata Mela | March or April, for four days | A Chamba fair in memory of a queen said to have given her life so that a water channel would reach the town. The procession from the palace to the Suhi Mata temple on the ridge is made by women and children only; men do not take part in it. The songs are specific to this fair. |
| Baisakhi | 13 or 14 April | The turn of the agricultural year, marked with fairs at village shrines across Chamba and the Chenab valley and with the first movement of flocks towards the high grazing. |
| Lohri | 13 January | Observed with bonfires on the lower Chamba and Chenab valley slopes where the Punjab and Duggar calendar reaches; much less central here than it is in the foothills below. |
| Kailash Kund Yatra at Bhaderwah | Bhadon (August–September) | A walking pilgrimage from Bhaderwah to the Kailash Kund lake high above the town, associated with the serpent deity Vasuki Nag whose temple stands in the town itself. |
| Machail Mata Yatra | August, over several weeks | A walk of roughly thirty kilometres from Gulabgarh up the Paddar valley to the Chandi temple at Machail, which has grown in four decades from a local observance to the largest gathering in the upper Chenab. |
| Nuala | On a date the household chooses, after a vow | Not a public festival at all. A Gaddi household that has undertaken a vow to Shiva holds an all-night sung and enacted worship in its courtyard and feeds the village at the end of it. The date can fall years after the vow was made. |
| Village jatars and deity processions | Through the open months, on locally fixed dates | Palanquin deities are carried between shrines with musicians and a medium, and the surrounding villages gather. These are the fairs that structure the ordinary calendar, and they far outnumber the famous ones. |
The festival calendar of Chenab Valley & Chamba — what is celebrated, when it falls and what happens. (9)