🎉Festivals of Uttarakhand

The day the sun begins its northward journey, marked across India but with a distinct Kumaoni flavour here. In the hills it opens the season of great winter fairs, above all the Uttarayani mela at Bageshwar on the Saryu and Gomati sangam.

The festival that announces spring and honours Saraswati, goddess of learning. In the hills it is also when the first yellow mustard and marigolds appear, and yellow is worn and offered everywhere.

A gentle spring festival that welcomes the new Hindu year and the flowering of the hills. It belongs to children, especially young girls, and is one of the most tender days in the Pahadi calendar.

The great spring fair of Dwarahat in Almora, held over two days around Baisakhi. It blends a harvest fair with old martial tradition and the worship of Bimandeshwar Mahadev.

A religious and theatrical festival unique to the twin village of Saloor-Dungra in the Painkhanda valley of Chamoli, honouring the village deity Bhumiyal Devta. UNESCO inscribed Ramman on its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009.

A vrat kept by married women for the long life of their husbands, recalling Savitri who won back her husband Satyavan from death. The banyan tree, bat, is central because Savitri's story unfolds beneath one.

Marks the day the Ganga is believed to have descended from heaven to earth. In Uttarakhand, where the river begins, it is one of the most important riverside festivals, above all at Haridwar and Rishikesh.

Harela means 'day of green' and marks the arrival of the monsoon and the new sowing season. It is tied to the marriage of Shiva and Parvati and is above all a festival of nature, treated in recent years as a day for planting trees across the hills.

A harvest and thanksgiving festival marking a season of abundance, when the fields are lush and the cattle give their richest milk. Its name comes from the custom of eating ghee on this day, believed to bring health for the year.

Called the Himalayan Kumbh, this is one of the longest and most revered pilgrimages in the region. Held roughly once every twelve years, it escorts the goddess Nanda Devi on a journey to her mountain home at Homkund, high below the peak that bears her name.

A centuries-old ritual fair at the Varahi Devi temple in Devidhura, Champawat, famous for the bagwal, a symbolic stone-throwing contest between four clans. Tradition holds it once substituted for a human sacrifice owed to the goddess.

A masked agrarian folk pageant of the Sor valley around Pithoragarh, brought long ago from the Sorar region of Nepal. It celebrates the monsoon farming cycle and the ox-and-plough life of the hills.

A rare festival of the Rung (Shauka) community of the Chaudans valley in Pithoragarh, held only when the kandali shrub flowers, which happens roughly once in twelve years. It recalls a legend in which a mother lost her son and the plant became a symbol to be ritually cut down.

Garhwal's own Diwali, celebrated eleven days after the main festival. Local tradition holds that news of Rama's return reached these remote valleys late, so the hills light their lamps on Igas instead, and it doubles as a harvest thanksgiving.