Patkai & Tirap Belt · Eastern Himalaya & Brahmaputra Belt
Festivals
| Festival | When | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Chalo Loku | Late October to November, over several days | The principal Nocte festival, marking the end of harvest. Pigs are killed and the meat distributed by clan and household under fixed rules, the village moves in procession between the chief's house and the community ground, and dancing runs across the days. It is the observance around which the Nocte year is organised. |
| Oriah | Spring — 16 February at Longding, and February to April elsewhere | The main Wancho festival, held over about six days at the start of the agricultural cycle, with dancing, the log drum, and household and chiefly rites that are not public. Longding has observed it on a fixed date since the mid-1970s. It is a Wancho festival specifically, and is sometimes wrongly attributed to the Nocte, whose corresponding observance is Chalo Loku. |
| Moh-Mol | April | The Tangsa spring festival, observed with dancing, communal feasting and rice beer. Each of the many Tangsa groups observes it in its own way, and there is no single canonical version. |
| Shapawng Yawng Manau Poi | February | The Singpho communal festival, danced in long files around tall painted posts to the recitation of origin and migration narrative by elders. The same festival is held by Kachin communities across the ridge, and the Indian-side gathering draws Singpho from both Arunachal and Assam. |
| Sangken | Mid-April, usually 14–16 April | The Theravada Buddhist new year water festival of the Tai Khamti and Singpho villages — Buddha images are taken from the temple and bathed, water is poured over elders, and steamed rice preparations are offered. The same festival as Songkran in Thailand and Thingyan in Myanmar, kept here in the same district as villages that observe none of it. |
| Pangsau Pass Winter Festival | January, at Nampong | A three-day festival at Nampong near the pass, run since the 2000s, bringing together Tangsa, Singpho, Nocte, Tutsa and Lisu performance, food and craft, with cross-border participation when arrangements allow. It is the one occasion at which the belt's whole cultural range is visible in one place. |
| Losar | February–March, following the Tibetan calendar | Observed at the Choephelling settlement at Miao — new year in a calendar that has been kept in this district for fifty years and in Tibet for very much longer. |
| Chalo Loku and Oriah as public holidays | Fixed in the state calendar | Both are gazetted holidays in Arunachal Pradesh, which is a real institutional fact: festivals that were suppressed or discouraged during the conversion period are now the state's own official observances. |
The festival calendar of Patkai & Tirap Belt — what is celebrated, when it falls and what happens. (8)