Koraput–Kalahandi Uplands · Central Highlands & Forest Belt
Festivals
| Festival | When | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Chaita Parab | Chaitra, March–April | The Desia year's largest festival — a spring observance across the highland communities combining a communal hunt, the first eating of new mahua and mango, offerings at the village earth shrine, and days of dhemsa. Village work stops; the disari fixes the date. |
| Dussehra at Jeypore | Aswina, September–October | The old Jeypore court's ten-day Durga observance centred on the Kanaka Durga temple, with processions, night markets and a fair that draws the whole plateau into the town. It is a court festival in form and a market festival in practice. |
| Chhatar Jatra, Bhawanipatna | Aswina, at Dussehra | The chhatar — the ceremonial umbrella standing for Manikeswari — is carried at night from the temple to the Jena Khal grounds and back, with ghumura drumming the whole way and the town awake for it. |
| Nuakhai | Bhadraba Sukla Panchami, August–September | The new-rice festival of the Kosli-speaking western belt, whose day is fixed each year by the almanac. It is principally a Sambalpur and Bolangir observance and reaches this region through the Bolangir lowland and the Kalahandi plains — not the highland villages, where the first grain of the year is millet and the year turns at Chaita Parab instead. |
| Push Punei | Pausa Purnima, December–January | The winter harvest festival of the highland — new grain cooked at home, offerings at the village shrine, and the year's fullest markets, held when granaries are at their highest and work at its lowest. |
| Karma Puja | Bhadraba Sukla Ekadasi, August–September | A branch of the karam tree is cut, carried in and planted in the courtyard; sisters fast, the night is spent dancing round it, and the branch is floated away at dawn. Shared with Chota Nagpur and the Chhattisgarh plains. |
| Bihan puja and the sowing rites | Baisakha to Asadha, April–July | Seed is brought out, offered at the earth shrine and sown only after the village priest has sown first. The sequence — which crop, which field, which day — is set by the disari and differs between villages within a few kilometres of one another. |
| Parab, Koraput | Early November | A district-organised festival of the highland's dance, craft and food, held over several days at Koraput. It is a modern platform rather than an old rite, and it is the one occasion where forms from across the plateau are performed side by side. |
The festival calendar of Koraput–Kalahandi Uplands — what is celebrated, when it falls and what happens. (8)