Before heading to the mountains of Nepal to start my three-week Annapurna circuit trek, I got a list of festivals from the government tourist office in Kathmandu. I found that October 5 marked the national holiday of Narak Chaturdasi, when "the dog is worshiped and given good things to eat." Later that month was Kojagrat Purnima, when celebrants show their devotion to the goddess of wealth by staying up all night and gambling. (Like going to Vegas for religious purposes.)

I asked the friendly tourism official what kind of festivals I would find in the high mountains of the Annapurnas. "We cannot keep track of those," he said with a resigned shake of his head. "At this time of year there are many festivals."

Some travelers avoid anything smacking of "high season" like it's some kind of plague. In the Himalayas, however, high season is high for a reason. The scenery is so stunning it makes you flush just looking at it; the weather has the electric crispness of fall that only hints of the winter to come. Besides, this is harvest time. Since most rural mountain families are still farmers, harvest time is party time.

A few days into our trek, we passed through a stone gate with prayer wheels and saw a sign in scrawled Tibetan on a pole. That night we heard a chorus of voices gathered in the distance. Two days later we saw a new sign in English, inviting all the passing tourists to come to a festival that night in a local schoolhouse. When we strolled over at dusk to check it out, the small building was not only bursting with song, but with people as well. The town's population had tripled. At least half of them were milling around outside, enjoying the end of the farming season and sharing bottles of barley wine. I recognized a few of the porters from the trail, men who had been lugging cases of beer and soda, corrugated tin roofing material, and even a metal bed frame up a steep incline for days.

A few days later, at the 11,000-foot town of Manang, we hit pay dirt. In an area that's a week's walk from a road, with sporadic electricity, it's pretty easy to tell when something is in the air. First it was the crowds: for once the foreign hikers were outnumbered by locals. Big families were roaming the flagstone "main street." For the first time on the circuit, a few kids actually stared. Instead of Nirvana t-shirts and Chicago Bulls baseball caps, many locals were wearing hand-woven sweaters and hats made of yak wool. They were chattering, spinning prayer wheels, and shouting at their friends from villages a day's walk away.

Then the "spooks" appeared. Sometimes in packs, sometimes alone, young men covered in animal costumes sprung out from doorways and chased screeching women down pathways and into houses. Men dressed as monkeys, tigers, or rams, all making whooping noises and poking young women in the behind with a broom handle. (It didn't take a deep knowledge of the local language to pick up the symbolism.)

From the roof of my guesthouse, I could see a crowd starting to gather in a clearing. As if the gods were smiling down on the occasion, the clouds were drifting into the distance and all the jagged mountain whitecaps were glowing. By the time I rummaged through flannels to find my camera and run to the clearing, the crowd had formed a ring. They surrounded a swirl of drummers, dancers, and more young men in costumes. "What is this about?" I asked a trekking guide that I'd met in the hotel restaurant.

"I don't know," he said with a shrug. "I am from Pokhara. This is local festival." We all watched the elaborate dances and devoured the panoramic scene: a perfect blue sky, snow-capped mountains hulking over the town, and swirling red and yellow costumes topped by elaborate head-dresses. The choreography was coordinated and serious, but a jester entertained on the sidelines of the circle. All the while, the animal men snuck about the periphery, getting a laugh and a squeal when they caught a young woman by surprise.

After a reading of prayers and some symbolic offerings, the village leader lit a torch and began a raging bonfire of hay and scrap wood. In my three-week trek, it was to be the only time I saw a fire without a cooking pot on top of it.

As the blaze calmed down and the sun drifted toward the 24,000-foot peaks nearby, the out-of-town villagers began hiking back to their own hamlets. The people of Manang moved the party indoors and kept talking, playing games, and singing into the night. At my guesthouse, I tried again to gain some insight into the day's "Tarkya" festival. As I played cards with some other hikers, I tried to pry some info out of a nearby guide who was leading a pricey European trekking tour. "Every town has a festival now," he told me. "This is not special."

Nearly two weeks later, I entered the Pokhara tourism office ready to be enlightened. I proffered some press credentials and a few snapshots of the festival. "What is all this?" I asked the local Director of Tourism. After we sipped some tea and made small talk about the state of tourism in Nepal, he gave me a hearty smile and handed back my papers. What he seemed to want to tell me was that I was thinking too hard, missing the whole point of random celebration.

"I'm sorry," he explained, "but I can't help you with this question. At this time of year, there are many festivals."

Tim Leffel has circled the globe three times and worked in a variety of countries as a writer, hotel reviewer, or English Teacher. His articles have appeared in trips, Transitions Abroad, and Big World. Now a married dad, he spends most of his time grounded at home--in Nashville, TN.

 

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