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Dumji Festival 2024: One of the biggest festival of Everest Region
Dumji is a festival celebrated in the Everest region that gathers all Sherpa together to celebrate and honor the anniversary of Guru Rinpoche’s birth on the lotus flower. The founder of the earliest monastery of Khumbu was Lama Sangwa Dorji, also was the first to begin the Dumji festival in Pangboche Monastery about 365 years ago to match the birth anniversary of Guru Rinpoche.
Except for Khumbu, the rest of the Sherpa celebrate the Guru’s birthday on the tenth day of the sixth Tibetan month, but in Khumbu, celebrated a month earlier and festivities begin on the first day of the fifth month.
The Festival has both the religious as well as community benefits. It serves as a duty to help bring the villagers together. Every year, eight local representative families have to provide food and drink for the entire village during the celebration. The responsibility for this festival falls once or twice in a lifetime.
The first 6 days are preparation days, where the villagers visit the hosts’ homes to lend them a hand and prepare different kinds of local food and drinks.
Dumji festival proper begins on the seventh day when the flagpole raised in the monastery. In the following days, young monks sit upstairs and play horns and then Tengboche monks perform Chhyam/mask dancing with colorful customs and swords in Tengboche, Namche Bazar, Khumjung, and Pangboche. It is done towards evil spirits away from the village.
Also, different instruments, fire rituals, changing of prayer flags around the village and most importantly the worship of Khumbila, the patron deity of the entire Khumbu region. The host distributes food, drinks, and other to the villagers. On the last day of the Dumji festival, villagers received personally blesses from the festival Gurus.
“The tradition says that every family should take turns to host the festival, thus it might become extremely costly for them.”
The celebration of this Dumji festival differs from a different place to place. Although most of the time Sherpa focused on Tourism but in this one-month duration festival they worship and celebrate.
Want to know more about this festival then why not visit the specific place to get the exact information. Or if you are lucky enough then you can participate in this festival too.
Let’s do Trekking in Nepal and visit Everest Region to meet the Sherpa people.