The Lingo Pole at Khalna Tole

Raising

A long timber pole — the lingo — is brought to the open ground at Khalna Tole and hauled upright by ropes worked from several directions at once, with men steadying the base as it rises. Cross-banners are fixed near the top. Getting it vertical and stable takes a long time and a great many hands, and the raising draws a crowd of its own on the evening before the new year.

Toppling

The pole does not stay up. On the following day it is pulled down again, deliberately, by crews hauling on the ropes until it goes over — and that fall is the moment the old year is understood to end and the new Bikram Sambat year to begin. This is the pivot of the whole festival: the chariot processions run either side of it, and Bhaktapur dates the turn of its year to the pole rather than to a calendar page.

The Danger

A pole of this size, falling in a crowd, is genuinely dangerous, and the direction it goes is not fully controlled. People move well back as the final pulls begin, and visitors should take the crowd's cue seriously and early rather than holding a position for a photograph. This is the single point in the festival where a casual onlooker is most likely to be in the wrong place.

Reading the Pole

The raising and felling of a tall pole at the turn of the year is an old pattern found in several forms across the region, and interpretations of the Bhaktapur pole vary — accounts connect it to the serpents of the origin legend, to the marking of the solar new year, and to fertility. The festival itself does not settle the question, and the practice is considerably older than any single explanation offered for it. What is not in doubt locally is the function: when the lingo comes down, the year has turned.