Tripura Hills & Plains · Northeast Hill Massif
Festivals
| Festival | When | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Garia Puja | Boishakh, mid-April, for seven days and nights | The principal festival of the Kokborok-speaking communities. A bamboo pole is dressed as the deity Garia and carried from household to household over a week, with dance and song at each stop, and petitions made for the jhum crop, livestock and children. It opens the agricultural year that Mamita closes. |
| Buisu, Bizu and Sangrai | Mid-April, at the turn of the solar year | Three new years within a fortnight, in the same territory: Buisu for the Tripuri, Bizu for the Buddhist Chakma — with pachon, the mixed-vegetable dish of at least five vegetables — and Sangrai for the Mog, a Buddhist water festival with bamboo dancing. The Bengali Poila Boishakh falls in the same days, which makes mid-April the densest fortnight in the region's calendar. |
| Kharchi Puja | July, on the eighth day after the new moon, for seven days | The worship of the fourteen dynastic deities at Old Agartala, conducted by chantai priests who carry the images to the Haora river to be bathed. The name is read from a word for earth, and the rite is understood as a cleansing of it. A large fair runs alongside for the week. |
| Ker Puja | A fortnight after Kharchi, in July or August | A protective rite for the settlement, in which a bounded area is placed under observance and movement in and out of it is restricted for its duration. It is the counterpart to Kharchi — one festival opens the ground and the other closes it. |
| Hojagiri | The full moon after Durga puja, October | The Reang observance for the goddess Mailuma, at which the Hojagiri dance is performed — women balancing on an earthen pitcher with a bottle and lamp on the head. Prosperity and the harvest are the subject. |
| Durga Puja and the Matabari Diwali Mela | September–October, and Diwali in October–November | Durga puja on the plain in the full Bengali form, and a few weeks later the Diwali mela at the Tripura Sundari temple at Udaipur, which draws crowds from across the region and from the plains beyond it. |
| Ashokastami Mela at Unakoti | April | A pilgrimage fair at the rock-carving site, with bathing at the streams that run through the hillside. It is the one time of year the site is crowded. |
| Orange and Tourism Festival, Jampui | November | Held at Vanghmun on the Jampui ridge as the mandarin harvest comes in, with Mizo dance including Cheraw and a fruit market that is the ridge's main annual income event. |
| Neermahal Water Festival | August | Boat races on Rudrasagar around the water palace, with cultural performances on the bank — a festival built around a monument rather than a rite. |
| Hangrai | Mid-January, at the winter solstice turn | The Tripuri observance at the same point in the calendar as the plains' Poush Sankranti, marked with rice cakes and household feasting on both sides of the region's cultural line. |
| Mamita | Autumn, at the rice harvest | The Tripuri harvest thanksgiving, with village-wide dance and the first offering of new rice. |
| Kokborok Day | 19 January | Marks the language's adoption as an official language of the state in 1979, and is observed with literary events, publishing and school competitions. |
The festival calendar of Tripura Hills & Plains — what is celebrated, when it falls and what happens. (12)