Kumaon · Western Himalaya & Trans-Himalaya
Festivals
| Festival | When | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Uttarayani and Ghughutia | Makar Sankranti, mid-January | Children string fried dough figures with an orange into a necklace and call the crows to eat them at dawn. The Bageshwar fair on the same day was the trading meet of the middle hills and, in 1921, the site of the public renunciation of forced portering. Fairs run at Bageshwar, Rameshwar and along the Saryu. |
| Bagwal at Devidhura | Shravan full moon, July–August | Four khams fight a ritual battle in the temple courtyard behind cane shields until the officiating priest judges that blood equivalent to one life has been shed, at which point it is stopped. Stones were the traditional projectile; fruit and flowers have replaced them under administrative order in recent years. |
| Harela | The first day of Shravan, mid-July | Seven or nine grains are sown in a basket indoors ten days ahead and kept dark; the pale shoots are cut on the day, worn behind the ear and set on the household shrine. Kumaon keeps more than one Harela in the year, and the Shravan one is now also the state's tree-planting day. |
| Phool Dei | The first day of Chaitra, mid-March | Girls go door to door scattering rice, jaggery and the year's first flowers on thresholds, singing the phool dei refrain, and are given grain and sweets. It is the local new year and a flowering census at once. |
| Nanda Devi melas at Almora and Nainital | Bhadrapad, late August–September | Images of Nanda and Sunanda are made fresh each year from banana stems, worshipped for several days and then immersed. Nanda was the Chand dynasty's tutelary goddess and is claimed with equal force across the watershed in Garhwal, which is the clearest evidence that the two regions share a religious world they otherwise distinguish. |
| Ghee Sankranti (Olgia) | The first day of Bhadrapad, mid-August | A day on which ghee must be eaten, and a lump of it is pressed onto the heads of children. It falls when the crop is standing and the milk is at its best, and it was also the day craftsmen and tenants brought gifts to their patrons — which is what olgia means. |
| Khatarua | The first day of Ashwin, mid-September | Bonfires of pine and cucumber vine lit at dusk at the turn into autumn, with children carrying burning torches. Explanations for it vary and none is settled; the fire and the date are what everyone agrees on. |
| Hilljatra | Bhadrapad, after the transplanting | The masked agricultural pageant of the Soar and Kumaur villages of Pithoragarh — ploughmen, a pair of oxen, and the Lakhiya Bhoot in a horned mask. It came from the far-western Nepali hills and is performed on both sides of the Kali. |
| Syalde Bikhauti at Dwarahat | Baisakh, mid-April | A spring fair at Dwarahat in which participants from surrounding villages strike a stone in the town in a prescribed manner, followed by processions and a market. The ritual is old and the explanations offered for it disagree with each other. |
| Jauljibi and Thal fairs | November (Jauljibi) and Baisakh (Thal) | Trade fairs at the river confluences of Pithoragarh, drawing hill farmers, Bhotiya traders and merchants from across the Kali. They were the exchange points where high-valley wool and salt met plains cloth and grain, and they continue as fairs long after the goods stopped coming over the passes. |
The festival calendar of Kumaon — what is celebrated, when it falls and what happens. (10)