15/12/2015
Wishing everyone a happy,prosperous and the most comforting Losar/New Year filled with smiles and happiness with lots of traveling :).
The Losar festival marks the beginning of the New year in Ladakh/Tibet and is considered to be the most important festival of the region. During this festival the Ladakhi Buddhists make religious offering before their deities in the domestic shrines or in the Gompas. A medley of cultural events, ancient rituals and also traditional performances are performed during this festival. You can enjoy a good stage fight between the good and the evil, chanting with blazing fire torches and making way into the crowd, ibex deer dancing, battles between kings and ministers and much more. There is blaring music accompanied with dancing, celebration dinner with relatives and friends and unmitigated joy all around. Every year the date and the location of the festival change.
The Losar festival dates back to pre-Buddhist Bon era in Tibet.Historically, the Buddhist festival of Losar is celebrated around the time of the winter solstice, but Ladakh follows a different set of rules when it comes to them celebrating their Losar festival. There is an interesting story that is at the root of the Losar celebrations in Ladakh. King Jamyang Namgyal, on the eve of setting out on an expedition against the Balistan forces in winter was advised not to lead an expedition before the new year. To solve the problem, keeping the regard of the advice, he pre-poned the New Year celebrations in Ladakh by two months. This became established as a tradition and since then Losar is celebrated on the 1st day of the eleventh month every year (as per the Lunar calendar).During this ceremony people offer considerable amount of incense in order to propitiate the local deities and the spirits. Later, this ceremony was converted into a yearly Buddhist festival which most probably started during the tenure of the ninth Tibetan king, Pude Gungyal.