Chham — the Masked Dances

The masked dances are the day most people mean when they say Mani Rimdu, and they fill the courtyard at Tengboche Monastery from morning until late afternoon.

Monks perform in heavy brocade robes and large painted masks, moving to long horns, drums and cymbals in a slow, weighted step that is nothing like festival dancing elsewhere in Nepal. The sequence runs through a series of distinct appearances — protective and wrathful deities, figures who clear obstacles, skeletal lords of the cremation ground, and comic interludes that break the tension and are genuinely funny to the crowd. Each dance carries its own meaning inside the ritual rather than being a performance of a story for an audience, though the whole cycle is understood as the establishment of Buddhist teaching over the older order.

The monks train for months. Roles are assigned and rehearsed, and the dancing is physically hard in a mask at Tengboche's altitude.

For a trekker on the Everest Base Camp route, timing an ascent to land at Tengboche for this day is one of the few genuinely great pieces of trip planning available in Nepal — but it fills the lodges at Tengboche and Deboche completely, so book far ahead or plan to stay lower and walk up. Bring warmth: the courtyard is in shade for much of the day and it is cold sitting still.