Editor’s Letter: Festival Season in India, October 2021

Every October, India seems to change its lighting. Streets that were ordinary in September are strung with bulbs, pandals rise out of bamboo and cloth on vacant lots, and the smell of marigold and incense hangs over markets from Kolkata to Kullu. This month’s issue of Travel Viewpoint is about festivals, and in particular the long, overlapping season of Navaratri, Durga Puja, Dussehra and Diwali that runs from late September into November. It is the time of year when travelling in India feels least like sightseeing and most like being let into somebody else’s celebration.

I want to say something honest at the start. This is October 2021, and the festival season is not quite what it was. The second wave of the pandemic is still recent memory for most of us, and many states and cities have set rules on crowd sizes, pandal visits, processions and timings. Some of the big public events have been scaled down or moved partly online, and the rules have changed from week to week. Please read everything in this issue as an invitation to plan, not a promise of what you will find. Check local guidelines before you go, carry a mask, and be generous with the people who are working hard to keep their traditions alive under difficult conditions.

Why festivals make the best travel

Monuments stay where they are. Festivals happen once a year, and they are the moment when a place shows you what it cares about. You can visit Mysuru Palace on any afternoon, but on Dasara evenings, when it is lit with thousands of bulbs, you understand why the city built it. You can walk through Kolkata’s north on any day, but in the weeks before Durga Puja the clay workshops of Kumartuli are full of half-finished goddesses drying in the sun, and the city’s whole personality is concentrated in a few lanes.

Festivals also slow you down. Roads close, shops keep odd hours, trains fill up, and you are forced to stay in one neighbourhood and look closely. That is not a bad thing. Some of my favourite travel memories are of being stuck: waiting for a procession to pass, sitting on a step with strangers, being handed a sweet by someone who wanted nothing in return.

What is in this issue

We begin with a broad view. Our piece on Dussehra celebrations across India maps how the same festival becomes a burning of effigies in Delhi, a royal procession in Mysuru, a gathering of village deities in Kullu, and something else again in Bengal and the south. Alongside it, our guide to where to see Ramlila performances takes you to the stages, big and small, where the story of Rama is told night after night in the run-up to Dussehra.

Then we go deeper into individual places. Kullu Dussehra is unusual because it begins on the day the rest of the north is finishing, and it is less about effigies than about hundreds of local deities carried down from their villages to the Dhalpur ground. Mysore Dasara gets its own feature, with the palace, the procession and the city’s long royal connection to the festival. Our guide to Navaratri Golu explains the step-displays of dolls that families in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh set up in their homes, and why visiting friends’ Golu is part of the season.

For Diwali, we map celebrations across the country, from lamps in the north to Kali Puja in Bengal and the different stories each region tells. We also look at Bandi Chhor Divas, the Sikh observance that falls on the same day as Diwali and remembers the release of Guru Hargobind from Gwalior Fort. Across the border, our piece on Dashain explains Nepal’s biggest festival of the year, which shares its roots with Dussehra but has its own rituals of family, blessings and tika.

Our visit to Kumartuli in Kolkata is a reminder that a festival begins long before the day itself. And to end the issue, we have put together a route: a way of following the season from east to south, so that you can see how one set of stories looks completely different depending on where you stand.

How to travel during the festival season

A few things we have learned, sometimes the hard way. Book transport and rooms early; festival weeks are some of the busiest of the year for trains and flights, and prices rise. Keep your plans loose on the main festival days themselves, because roads close for processions and immersions and nothing runs to timetable. Dress modestly at temples and pandals, remove shoes where asked, and ask before photographing people at worship. Many celebrations are religious first and spectacle second.

Be careful in crowds, especially this year. If a place feels too packed, step back and come again early the next morning. Pandals and temples are often at their most beautiful when they are almost empty, at dawn, with only the priests and the flower sellers about.

Finally, eat. Festival food is half the point: bhog in Bengal, sundal at Golu visits, sweets everywhere at Diwali. Buy from busy stalls, carry water, and accept what you are offered with thanks.

Festivals close to home

You do not need to travel far for any of this. Some of the most rewarding festival evenings happen a short walk from your own front door: the neighbourhood pandal you have passed for years without going in, the Ramlila staged by local volunteers in a school ground, the Golu display at a friend’s house that you have never been invited to because you never asked. If long journeys still feel like too much this year, treat this issue as a guide to looking at your own city with a traveller’s eyes. Go early, go curious, and talk to the people who build these celebrations every year.

A note of thanks

This issue was put together by a small team who love this season. Thank you to everyone who shared their memories of Pujas and Dasaras past, and to the readers who wrote in during a hard year to say that they were looking forward to travelling again. We are too. Wherever you spend this festival season, at home or on the road, we hope it is a safe and bright one.

Happy reading, and happy festivals.

Khushi Anand, Editor