Tihar: Five Nights of Lights

Tihar opens quietly and very early. Before anyone in the household has eaten, food is set out on a rooftop or a doorstep for crows — kaag, the messenger and vehicle of Yama, god of death. Where the birds call from, what they take, how many gather: in folk tradition these are read as portents out of the realm of the dead. The whole five days are also called Yamapanchak, Yama's five days, and this first morning is the reason for the name.

This is a ritual calendar, not a route — so add your own places to it. Tihar happens on doorsteps, on rooftops, in courtyards and in front rooms, nationwide and mostly domestically, which is why the days below name what is happening rather than where to stand. Put your own stops on each day: the street you are staying on, the square you can walk to at dusk, the house you are invited into, the bakery selling sel roti. Two of the days below suggest a town to be in — those are worth following, and they are still yours to replace with wherever you actually are. That is what turns this from something to read into your plan.

There is nothing to book and nowhere to be today, and the offering is over within minutes of first light — so treat day 1 as the arrival day and get the practical side settled instead. Tihar is far easier to travel in than Dashain: most shops, restaurants and hotels stay open through the week, and the country does not empty out the way it does for Dashain's eighth to tenth days. Long-distance buses and domestic flights still fill up, though, because people do travel home for Bhai Tika on the fifth day — book the return leg before you need it.

The second morning is the one nobody forgets, and it is the most accessible thing in the whole Nepali festival calendar. Every dog in the country — the family pet, the guard dog on a farm, the stray asleep in the street — receives the full honours of a puja: a marigold garland around the neck, red tika pressed to the forehead, and a plate of meat, eggs and sweets. Police and army dogs are decorated on parade. The animal most often shooed out of a doorway spends one day at the centre of the household's gratitude.

Nothing about this needs a temple, a ticket or a time. Walk anywhere. A residential street on Kukur Tihar morning will show you more of it than any organised event, and by mid-morning most dogs in sight are wearing a garland.

One thing worth saying plainly: garlanded does not mean handleable. A stray with tika on its forehead is still a stray, and a dog surrounded by unfamiliar people and food is not the one to reach for. Photograph freely, ask before touching anybody's animal, and let the strays keep their distance.

The lamps start tonight in some households — a night early, ahead of tomorrow's main event — so it is worth being out after dark.

The third day is Tihar's centre and it has two halves.

The morning belongs to cows. Like the dogs yesterday, cows are garlanded, given tika and fed — the animal of abundance in Hindu theology, and the measure of agricultural wealth in the society that built this rite. In a city you will see this at the roadside rather than in a temple.

The evening is the reason to be in Nepal this week. At dusk, oil lamps go along every threshold, windowsill and parapet in the country, rangoli is laid at doorways, and households open their front doors to invite Laxmi — goddess of wealth — to walk the lit path inside for the year ahead. It is not a display staged for anyone; it is several million homes doing the same thing at the same time, and the effect at street level in a dense old town is genuinely difficult to describe.

Be somewhere with tight lanes and old brick for this, not a wide boulevard. Patan's Newar core is the strongest answer in the valley — the lamps read against carved wood and brick, and the square itself is a short walk from lanes where people actually live. Go out around dusk, walk slowly, and stay out: the lamps deepen as the evening goes on. Wherever you are in the country, the oldest and narrowest part of the nearest town is the right instinct.

After dark Deusi Bhailo begins — groups moving door to door, singing at each lit threshold, collecting money that goes back into the neighbourhood that sent them. It runs for the next three nights, not just tonight; it comes to you rather than the other way round, and being invited to join a group is common.

The fourth day carries three things at once, and which one you see depends mostly on where you are standing.

Goru Tihar honours oxen — garlands, tika and a meal for the animal that pulls the plough and turns the millstone. Visible in farming districts far more than in a city. Govardan Puja recalls Krishna raising the Govardan hill to shelter villagers from Indra's storm; where it is observed, a small hill of cow dung or grain stands in for the mountain.

Mha Puja is the day's most interesting ritual and the hardest to see, because it happens on the floor of a family's front room. Mha is the embodied self in Nepal Bhasa, and Newar households perform a puja directed at their own life force — the worshipper seated at the centre of a mandala drawn on the floor, honouring their own existence rather than any deity. It is the most inward rite in the Nepali year, and it is the opposite of a spectacle.

The same day turns the Nepal Sambat new year, the Newar calendar's own — which is a public holiday and does draw processions and civic events in Newar towns, though where and when is set locally each year and not printed anywhere useful. Ask where you are staying.

A small Newar town is the honest answer for today. Kirtipur is walkable, residential and Newar to its core, close to Kathmandu and quiet enough that a day of domestic ritual is actually perceptible in the streets. Do not go expecting to attend a Mha Puja — you would be sitting in somebody's family room. Go to be in the town on the day it observes its own new year, and accept an invitation if one comes.

Tihar closes on the bond between siblings. Sisters worship their brothers: a seven-strand tika of five colours pressed onto the forehead, marigold and makhamali garlands, oil poured in a circle around where the brother sits, sweets and fruit and a meal — and gifts back from him. The mythology runs to Yama himself, whose sister Yamuna kept him from being taken by extending the rite for as long as her marigolds stayed fresh and her tika stayed unbroken; the tika is protection against death, renewed for another year. In Nepal Bhasa the day is Kija Puja, and the emphasis shifts slightly — kija is the younger brother specifically.

This is indoors, it is family, and it is the day Nepal travels for. Roads and buses are busy in both directions and the morning is the ceremony's own; nothing else in the country is happening until it is over. If you have somewhere to be today, add it here — this is the day the plan is most likely to be a house rather than a place on a map. If a household invites you to receive tika, accept: it is being handed the whole festival in one gesture, and being offered it is not unusual.

Otherwise, plan a slow morning and go out in the afternoon. Public bhai tika events are held in some cities for people whose siblings are far away or who have none, and they are open — again, locally announced rather than published. The lamps are still up tonight and the deusi groups are still out, and then the festival is over.