Rato Machhindranath: Patan's Month-Long Chariot Journey

Every year, in the hot weeks before the monsoon, the people of Patan build a wooden chariot with a spire of bamboo and greenery that rises as high as a small tower block. They place a red-faced deity inside it and drag it through their city, stage by stage, for a month or more. This is the chariot festival of Rato Machhindranath, the longest-running festival in the Kathmandu Valley and one of its most extraordinary sights.

Who is Machhindranath?

Rato Machhindranath, the "red Machhindranath", is honoured as the god of rain and good harvests. Buddhists identify him with the bodhisattva of compassion; Hindus regard him as a form of Shiva or as a saintly teacher. The Newar people call him Bunga Dyah, after the village of Bungamati south of Patan, where he resides for part of each year. He spends the remaining months in a temple in the centre of Patan.

Legend says the valley once suffered a twelve-year drought. A king, a priest and a farmer travelled to distant Assam to bring the deity back, and when he arrived the rains returned. The festival re-enacts his welcome.

Building the chariot

Construction begins weeks before at Pulchowk, on the western side of Patan. The base is a massive timber platform on four enormous wheels, each representing a form of the god Bhairav. Above it rises a tapering spire of bamboo poles lashed with cane and rope, dressed in juniper branches and topped with a gilded ornament. No nails are used. The whole structure stands around eighteen metres high and leans alarmingly.

A second, smaller chariot is built for Minnath, a companion deity, and follows the first throughout.

Specific families and craft groups hold hereditary rights to each task: carpenters, cane-binders, rope-makers, the men who climb the spire and those who steer.

The journey

The festival begins in the lunar month of Baisakh, typically late April or May, on a date set by astrologers. The image of the god is bathed, repainted and installed in the chariot. Then the pulling starts.

Hundreds of men haul on long ropes while a leader standing on the front beam shouts the rhythm. Musicians with drums and cymbals walk ahead. The chariot lurches forward a few hundred metres at a time, swaying under overhead wires and between house fronts, and may stop for the night or for several days at set points where residents come to make offerings.

The route passes through the old neighbourhoods of Patan: from Pulchowk to Gabahal, on past Sundhara to Lagankhel, and finally to Jawalakhel. At Lagankhel, a coconut is dropped from the top of the spire into the crowd, and catching it is said to bring the birth of a son. On one stage the chariot is pulled only by women.

Because progress depends on auspicious days, repairs and the occasional breakdown, the timetable is loose. The whole procession commonly takes four to six weeks.

Bhoto Jatra: the finale

The festival ends at Jawalakhel with the display of the bhoto, a jewel-studded black vest. According to the tale, it was given to a farmer by a serpent king, stolen, and placed in the deity's keeping until its rightful owner could prove his claim. An official holds the vest up from each side of the chariot for all to see. The head of state and the Kumari of Patan attend, and the day is a public holiday in the valley. The monsoon is expected to break around this time.

Afterwards the god is carried in a palanquin to Bungamati for his stay there. Once every twelve years, the chariot itself is built in Bungamati and pulled the entire distance to Patan and back.

How to see it

• Find out where the chariot is. Local newspapers, hotel staff and guides in Patan will know the current location and the next pulling day.

• See it parked. Even at rest, the chariot is astonishing. You can walk right up to it, watch people make offerings and examine the construction.

• Watch a pull. Late afternoon is usual. Stand well to the side on a raised step or shop front, never in front of the wheels or near the ropes. The chariot can tip, and it has done so.

• Go to Bhoto Jatra for the ceremony and the crowds, arriving early.

Why it matters

The festival binds together farmers hoping for rain, craftsmen exercising inherited skills, and neighbourhoods taking turns as hosts. It has been carried out for well over a thousand years. Seeing that swaying green tower inch along a Patan street, pulled by its people, is to see a city renewing an old contract with the weather.