The Bunga Dyah Chariot

The Build

The chariot is not stored and reused. It is built new each year, from timber, bamboo and rope, by families holding hereditary rights to specific parts of the work — the wheels, the spire, the lashing, the ropes each belonging to particular groups whose claim is inherited rather than contracted. There are no nails in the traditional construction. The whole tower is bound together, and the flex in those bindings is what allows a structure of this height to move over uneven ground without tearing itself apart.

The Dimensions

Assembled, it stands over sixty feet — a spire of bound greenery and cloth rising from a heavy four-wheeled base, with the deity's shrine at the bottom. Its wheels are cut from solid sections of trunk. At full height it is one of the tallest structures anywhere that is regularly moved by human power, and it visibly sways as it travels.

The Pull

Hundreds of people take the ropes, and the chariot advances in a stop-start progress through the lanes of Patan across weeks rather than hours. Responsibility is distributed by neighbourhood: each tole along the route pulls the chariot through its own section, and the pride attaching to a clean, strong pull through one's own ground is a real and competitive thing. The chariot halts at appointed places, sometimes for days, and offerings are made where it stands.

When It Goes Wrong

A sixty-foot tower of bound timber, hand-hauled through medieval streets past power lines, is a hazardous object, and the chariot tilts, snags and sometimes collapses. This is not treated merely as an accident: a collapse or a serious delay is widely read as an omen bearing on the year, and the repair and resumption become part of that year's account of the festival. Delay is normal, and the published schedule is an intention rather than a timetable.