Telangana · Deccan Inland Plateau
Festivals
| Festival | When | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Bathukamma | Nine nights from Mahalaya Amavasya to the eve of Durgashtami (September–October) | A women's festival with no temple, no priest and no male officiant. Each evening women build a conical stack of seasonal flowers — tangedu, gunugu, marigold, pumpkin flower — in descending rings on a brass plate, carry it to an open space, set the stacks in a circle and sing and clap around them until dark, then carry them to the village tank and float them. Day one is Engili Pula Bathukamma and the ninth, Saddula Bathukamma, is the largest. The flowers used are tank-bund and field-edge blooms of exactly those weeks, and the explanation offered locally is that returning them to the water is part of the point. Nothing else in the Deccan looks like it. |
| Bonalu | Ashadam (June–July), across successive weekends | Goddess worship in the Hyderabad and Secunderabad temples and in villages across the plateau. Women carry a bonam — rice cooked with milk and jaggery in a decorated pot, topped with a lit lamp — on the head to the temple, preceded by the Pothuraju dancing with a whip. The Rangam, in which a woman standing on an earthen pot delivers the goddess's answers about the coming year, is performed the morning after at Golconda's Jagadamba temple, Secunderabad's Ujjaini Mahankali and Lal Darwaza. |
| Sammakka Saralamma Jatara | Magha Shuddha Purnima (January–February), every second year | A four-day gathering at Medaram in the forest, of Koya origin, drawing crowds counted in the crores. The characteristic offering is bellam — jaggery — given in a weight matching the devotee's own and called bangaram, gold. There are no images and no stone temple. |
| Peerla Panduga | Muharram, lunar | Village Muharram across the plateau, in which metal alams are installed, fire pits lit and walked, and the laments sung in Telugu tunes. Custody of the alams and the duty of carrying them frequently rests with Hindu families, by inheritance rather than by invitation. |
| Sankranti | Mid-January | Three days of harvest observance — rangoli with gobbemma, sakinalu and ariselu fried in quantity, cattle decorated, and the Gangireddu bull-and-drum pairs going house to house. |
| Ugadi | Chaitra Shuddha Padyami (March–April) | The Telugu new year, opened with ugadi pachadi, a preparation combining six tastes — neem flower, raw mango, tamarind, jaggery, salt and chilli — eaten as a statement about the year rather than as a dish. |
| Dasara and the Jammi tree | Ashwayuja (September–October) | Nine nights of goddess worship closing with Vijayadashami, when the shami (jammi) tree is worshipped and its leaves exchanged as gold. It runs directly on from Bathukamma, which ends two days earlier. |
| Ramzan and the haleem season | Ramzan, lunar | For thirty nights the old city's economy reorganises around iftar — haleem degs on every corner, the Charminar markets open past midnight, and the Mir Alam and Madina areas at their annual busiest. |
| Sadar | The day after Diwali | A Yadav festival in Hyderabad in which decorated buffalo bulls are paraded and made to rear on their hind legs to drumming. It is specific to the city's pastoral community and has no counterpart elsewhere. |
| Komuravelli and Vemulawada jataras | Sankranti to Ugadi (January–April) | Village pilgrimage season for the Mallanna and Rajanna shrines, with Oggu Katha performed through the night and the patnam ritual in which devotees are consecrated in the deity's service. |
| Dandari and Gussadi | Diwali, October–November | A Raj Gond festival of the northern forest in which masked and feather-crowned dance troupes tour a circuit of villages over several days and are fed by each in turn. |
The festival calendar of Telangana — what is celebrated, when it falls and what happens. (11)