Leh Ladakh
Fairs & Festivals
Many
of the annual festivals of the gompas take place in winter, a relatively idle
time for the majority of the people. They take the form of dance-dramas in the
gompa courtyards. Lamas, robed in colourful garments and wearing often startlingly
frightful masks, performs mimes representing various aspects of the religion
such as the progress of the individual soul and its purification or the triumph
of good over evil. Local people flock from near and far to these events, and
the spiritual benefits they get are no doubt heightened by their enjoyment of
the party atmosphere, with crowds of women and men, the opportunity to make
new friendships and renew old ones, the general bustle and sense of occasion.
Losar falls about the time of the winter solstice, any time between 8th and
30th December. All Ladakhi Buddhists celebrate it by making offerings to the
gods, both in gompas and in their domestic shrines.
Spituk, stok, thikse, chemrey and Matho all have their festivals in winter,
between November and March. Likir and Deskit (Nubra )time their festivals to
coincide with Dosmoche, the festival of the 
scapegoat,
which is also celebrated with fervour at Leh. Falling in the second half of
February, Dosmoche is one of two New Year festivals, the other being Losar.
At Dosmoche, a great wooden mast decorated with streamers and religious emblems
is et up outside Leh. At the appointed time, offerings of storma, ritual figures
moulded out of dough, are brought out and ceremonially cast away into the desert,
or burnt. These scapegoats carry away with them the evil spirits of the old
year, and thus the town is cleansed and made ready to welcome the new year.
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