Losar festival in Nepal

Celebrations of a traditional Tibetan New Year festival called “Losar” in Boudhanath stupa area in Kathmandu, Nepal.

 

Families prepare for Losar some days in advance by thoroughly cleaning their homes; decorating with fragrant flowers and their walls with auspicious signs painted in flour such as the sun, moon, or a reversed swastika; and preparing cedar, rhododendron, and juniper branches for burning as incense. Debts are settled, quarrels are resolved, new clothes are acquired, and special foods such as kapse (fried twists) are made. A favorite drink is chang (barley beer) which is served warm. Because the words “sheep’s head” and “beginning of the year” sound similar in Tibetan, it is customary to fashion a sheep’s head from colored butter as a decoration. Another traditional decoration that symbolizes a good harvest is the phyemar (“five-grain bucket”), a bucket with a wooden board that creates two vertical halves within. This bucket is filled with zanba (also known as tsamba, roasted qingke barley flour) and barley seeds, then decorated with barley ears and colored butter. (from Wikipedia)

Nepal: local life

Daily life pictures from a remote rural area in Rasuwa region of Nepal.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Photos by Artem Zhushman and Milana Nikolaeva

Tihar (Diwali) festival in Nepal

Tihar (Nepali: तिहार), also known as Deepawali and Yamapanchak, is a regional variant of Diwali celebrated in Nepal and by the Nepali-speaking population living elsewhere in Darjeeling, the Indian states of Assam and Sikkim, etc. It is a five-day-long festival that comes soon after Dashain. It is popularly known as Swanti among the Newars. Set in the Vikram Samvatcalendar system, the festival begins with Kaag Tihar in Trayodashi of Kartik Krishna Paksha and ends with Bhai Tika in Dwitiya of Kartik Sukla Paksha every year. Tihar, in general, signifies the festival of lights, where diyas are lit inside and outside the houses to make it illuminate at night.

Tihar is the second biggest Nepalese festival following Dashain. It is considered to be of great importance as it shows reverence to not just the humans and the gods, but also to the animals like crows, cows and dogs that maintain an intimate relationship with humans. People make patterns on the floor of living rooms or courtyards using materials such as colored rice, dry flour, colored sand or flower petals outside of their house, called Rangoli, which is meant to be a sacred welcoming area for the gods and Goddesses of Hinduism mainly Goddess Laxmi. (from Wikipedia)

Tea gardens in Nepal

Nepal, Ilam, 2016.