Nepali New Year (Bikram Sambat) - Baisakh 1 on 13or 14 April, and the nine-day Bisket Jatra that brings the country into it

Nepali New Year - Nava Barsha, Baisakh 1 - is the day Nepal turns the calendar. It falls on 13 or 14 April, marks the first day of the Bikram Sambat year, and is a national public holiday. In the Kathmandu valley the whole holiday is the climax of the nine-day Bisket Jatra.

The one-line summary

Nepali public holiday on Baisakh 1, falling 13 or 14 April. Cultural category, iconic tier. Marks the first day of the Bikram Sambat calendar, which runs about 57 years ahead of the Gregorian year. In Bhaktapur it is the climax of the nine-day Bisket Jatra chariot festival.

The calendar

The first thing to understand about Nepal is that its official calendar is not the Gregorian one. Bikram Sambat is around 56 to 57 years ahead: while the rest of the world is in 2026, Nepal is in 2083 BS. The offset is not perfectly constant - the two calendars drift slightly year to year - which is exactly why Baisakh 1 lands sometimes on 13 April and sometimes on 14. It is a different new year from a different solar reckoning, not a later Gregorian date. The Bikram Sambat era is periodically re-fixed by Nepal's official calendar authority, the Panchanga Nirnayak Samiti, so the offset is a decision as much as an observation.

Baisakh 1 is day one of the first month. The next few years fall on 14 April 2027, 13 April 2028, 14 April 2029 and 14 April 2030 - 2028 is one of the 13 April years, in line with the pattern of the month moving earlier after a leap-year shift.

Bisket Jatra

The new year is a countrywide occasion marked in many ways by many communities, but the event that dominates it is Biska Jatra in the Bhaktapur valley, a nine-day festival centred on the day itself. It is one of the largest chariot festivals in Nepal and the most architecturally dramatic, concentrated in Bhaktapur and Thimi.

The signature event is the tug of war for the chariot of Bhairava at Bhaktapur's Taumadhi square. Bhairava is brought out of his temple, and the upper town (Thane) and lower town (Kone) pull the chariot between them; the winning side earns the honour of bringing it to their own part of town, while the other side waits their turn. On the last day, Bhairava is returned to his temple and the chariot is settled at the base of the five-storey temple. Throughout, enormous ceremonial poles are raised - one about 25 metres - and chariots are carried between villages, with the neighbouring towns of Thimi, Nagadesh and Bode joining in. Thimi marks it with the throwing of coloured powder and Dhimay music, and Bode with a tongue-piercing rite.

Two origins are attached to the festival. One is the display of a pair of long red banners - the world banner - at the start of the solar new year, which historians regard as the oldest tradition in it. The other, and the one most people tell, is a pair of serpents. The legends vary, but they all end with two serpents being killed and their bodies displayed on a tall pole, and the festival name is popularly - though not historically - read as "the serpent is killed."

Solar, not lunar

Biska is unusual among Nepalese festivals because it follows the Hindu solar calendar rather than the Nepalese lunar one. That is why it sits firmly in mid-April every year rather than wandering, and it is the reason the chariot festival can be planned around a fixed civic holiday while most of the other great Nepali festivals shift. It is one of the few major festivals in the country that is solar rather than lunar, and it is the clearest signal of what the new year is for: a solar reckoning, tied to the seasons and the agricultural year, rather than a lunar one.

How it is observed

Nepal's new year is celebrated collectively, across communities, and the celebration is different in different places. In the valley it is Bisket Jatra and the chariot processions. Elsewhere it is marked by families and communities in their own ways, with the new year being a genuinely multicultural moment rather than a single national ritual. The holiday often extends to several days around the day itself as people travel home and mark the occasion with family.

Because the whole of Nepal does not keep one calendar, the public holiday is the Baisakh 1 day, and it is the fixed date of that day in the Bikram Sambat calendar that matters - not a Gregorian day. Anyone planning around it needs the BS-to-AD conversion, and needs to remember the 13/14 April wobble.

Related holidays

The nearest neighbour in the Nepali calendar is Dashain, the fifteen-day autumn festival that is the biggest religious observance of the Nepali year and the occasion of the famous tika and jamara ceremonies. Between them, Dashain and Baisakh 1 bookend the Nepali year - Dashain closing the old year and the new year opening it. Nepal also keeps a national holiday on the first day of the solar new year in Losar and in other Tamang and Himalayan communities in January and February, which is a separate new year for those communities; the UNESCO-recognised Losar brief covers that one.

Sources

• Wikipedia - Nepali New Year (Baisakh 1 as the first day of the Bikram Sambat calendar; the 56-57 year offset and the 2083 BS example; the multicultural observance; Biska Jatra in Bhaktapur).
• Wikipedia - Bisket Jatra (the 14 April / 13 April-on-leap-years date rule; the chariot tug of war at Taumadhi; the serpent legends and the red-banner tradition; the solar basis of the festival; Thimi and Bode observances).
• Wikipedia - Bikram Sambat (the calendar, its offset and its periodic recalibration).