Festivals in Ladakh

Festivals in Ladakh are colorful and mostly based on ancient traditions and rituals. India’s ‘Little Tibet’, as Ladakh is known locally, has festivals from the Buddhist and Islamic cultures, reflecting both the immigrant and indigenous populations.

Ladakh's many festivals include Hemis, Thiksey, Dosmoche and many others, not least the Harvest Festival which takes place during the whole of the first half of September every year, with a program that sees it passing through villages all over the region.

The main events include archery and polo games as well as the famous mask dances of the monasteries and traditional folk dances. Losar – the Ladakh festival equivalent of New Year is also celebrated to the full, in early February, with folk songs and dances, feasting and plays.

Hemis is a Ladakh festival, for example, which is held from the 9th to the 11th of June every year is one of the most important and sacred Buddhist festivals and celebrates the birth of Tibetan Guru Padmasambhava who founded Tantric Buddhism. The most important year in the 12-year ‘astrological’ cycle used locally is that of the Monkey because, it is said that, rather than being born to a King or minister as some would have it,

the Guru Rinpoche, as he was formerly known, appeared spontaneously and miraculously in the blossom of a lotus in Lake Danoshka, on the tenth day of the sixth month of a monkey year. Thus, in Monkey years (the latest of which was 2004, the next being 2016), several precious Thanka paintings, including the four-storey tall Thanka of Guru Padmasambhava are hung in the courtyard.

In Ladakh, every occasion is a reason to hold a festival and every festival is an opportunity to dress up in all the finery possible and join in with the singing and dancing with the ret of the community, so that festivals in India’s Ladakh region are a joyous swirl of color and culture that visitors cannot fail to marvel over. The women in their bright clothing and the Lamas performing traditional ‘good versus evil’ plays are an awesome sight. Births and marriages occasion special festivals in Ladakh, commemorations of the founding of monasteries and the flowering of the mountain blooms are all celebrated with festivals.

Most of Ladakh’s festivals are held in winter but there are still plenty for summer visitors to enjoy. At the heart of every festival are the monks from the Buddhist monasteries that abound in the region, dressed in colorful silks and wearing the traditional masks that usually identify them as representing the ‘good’ and ‘evil’ spirits featured in their plays.

The main festivals occurring during the tourist season in Ladakh are Budha Prnima which usually takes place in late May or early June; Hemis Tse Chu in June or July; Yuru Kabgyat and Karsha Gustor in July; Phayang Tsedup, Korzok Gustor, Dakthok Tse-Chu, Sani Naro Nasjal and Shaehukul Gustor in August. If you are lucky enough to be present at one of Ladakh’s festivals, your visit will imprint the unforgettable beauty of India upon your mind in yet another way.