Fetes & Festivals
Ladakh is the land of fairs and festivities and one won’t leave Ladakh without attending a single festival in and around Leh. Starting from Losar, the new year of Ladakh, every occasion has its festival. Birthday, marriage ceremony, flowering season, harvesting season, Ladakh festival, Sindhu Darshan and festivals of the different monasteries are some of the fairs and festivities of Ladakh.
But Losar and many of the annual festivals of Gonpas are celebrated in winter, when majority of the people are idle. Losar is the Ladakhi New Year festival in the 11th month of Tibetan New Year. Monastic festivals attract majority of the tourist, as the monks wearing multicolored dresses perform them and some of these festivals takes place during summer.
The actual New Year celebrations begin with Namchot, a socio-religious event celebrated to observe the birthday and the Buddha-hood of Tsongkha-pa, the Tibetan saint-scholar and founder of the Geluk-pa school of Tibetan Buddhism in the 14th century.