Nepal's Festival Calendar: What Is Happening and When

The festival calendar in Nepal is not a tourist calendar. It is a religious and agricultural calendar that runs on multiple systems simultaneously: the Vikram Sambat (the Nepali national calendar), the Nepal Sambat (the Newar lunar calendar), and the Gregorian calendar, which governs government offices and flights but very little else. The result is that the major festivals of Nepal do not fall on the same Gregorian date from one year to the next. Dashain is in October. It is also, in some years, partly in September. Indra Jatra is in September. It is also, in some years, in August.

This is not confusion. It is precision. The festivals are timed to specific lunar moments, and the lunar calendar and the solar calendar drift relative to each other in ways that produce different Gregorian dates for the same festival each year. If you are planning a trip around a festival, check the date for the specific year you are travelling, not the month you read about in a general guide.

The structure of the year

The Nepali festival year runs from the spring festivals through the winter harvest and closes with Shiva Ratri in the late winter months. The density is highest between August and November.

Teej falls in August or September. It is primarily a Brahmin and Chhetri women's festival, a day of fasting and prayer at Pashupatinath temple, preceded by a night of celebration and colour. The lines of women in red at Pashupatinath on Teej morning are among the most photographed scenes in Kathmandu, though the festival is not designed for photography. It is designed for the women who are in it.

Indra Jatra runs for eight days in September and brings the Kumari out of her palace. The chariot processions move through specific streets in the old city of Kathmandu on a route that has not changed for centuries. Indra Jatra is a Newar festival, organised by the Newar community of the old city, and its meaning is specific to that community even as thousands of other people watch it.

Dashain is the largest festival of the Hindu calendar in Nepal. It runs for fifteen days, though the most significant days are the first and the tenth. Families who have moved away from their home villages return for it. It is the festival of return, the festival of the tika on the forehead, the festival of the goat at the butcher. If you are in Nepal during Dashain, you will feel it in the way the cities empty as people go home.

Tihar follows Dashain by about three weeks. Five days, five different beings worshipped in sequence: crows, dogs, cows, oxen, and on the last day, brothers. The illumination of Tihar in Kathmandu at night, every household lit with oil lamps and strings of lights, is the experience most often compared to Diwali in India. The comparison is not inaccurate but it loses specificity. The dog puja, when dogs are given garlands and tika, is its own thing, not found in the same form elsewhere.

The Newar festivals

The Newar community maintains its own festival calendar through Nepal Sambat, which is now over a thousand years old. The Newar festivals run through the entire year and many of them are not visible to outsiders because they take place inside homes and courtyards and at temples that are not part of the tourist circuit.

Indra Jatra and Bisket Jatra in Bhaktapur are the most visible. Gunla, the Newar Buddhist month of devotion and music, runs through August and involves daily processions to Swayambhunath and to the bahas and bahals of the old cities. The music of Gunla begins at dawn. If you are staying in the old city neighbourhoods of Kathmandu in August, it will wake you up.

Rato Machhindranath Jatra in Patan is the longest chariot festival in Nepal, running for several weeks and culminating in the display of the Bhoto, a jewelled vest, in the presence of the head of state. The chariot is built from scratch each year by craftspeople whose families have held the assignment for generations.

When to come for festivals

October is the densest month for major festivals that are accessible to outside visitors: Dashain's most significant days and then Tihar fall within it. September is the month of Indra Jatra. April is Bisket Jatra in Bhaktapur. November and December bring Vivah Panchami to Janakpur, the Mithila city in the Terai where the Ram-Sita wedding is celebrated with days of processions and crowds that fill the main roads. The summer months contain the Newar Buddhist festivals that are less documented and less crowded.

My advice is simpler than a calendar. Come for the festival you are most interested in and go to where it actually happens. Dashain is best experienced in a village if you can arrange an invitation. Indra Jatra is best experienced in the streets of the old city, not from a rooftop terrace. Tihar is best experienced walking through a neighbourhood at night. The festivals are not performances for an audience. They are things that happen, and the best position is inside them, not observing from outside.