Ongkor Festival is held around July and August in Tibetan Calendar

The Ongkor Festival is held around July and August in Tibetan Calendar. It is a festival that enjoys about 1,500 years of history in the Tibetan area. Before the autumn harvest, Tibetan people will put on festival costumes and bring scriptures and thangkas to gather in the fields, dancing and singing to celebrate the bumper harvest. As the most popular festival among Tibetan people, the festival will usually last three days with many other activities, including song racing, horse racing, bull racing, archery and wrestling. It is also a way to appreciate what the land has offered.

Ongkor Festival in Tibet

Because the crops ripen at different times in Tibet, Ongkor Festival has no fixed date among all Tibetan villages. When to celebrate the autumn harvest is decided by the lamas in the local monasteries and will last 1-3 days. And some villages will let all villagers decide the date according to the ripening of the crops. On the first morning of the festival, lamas and elder farmers will form a line together, holding up Buddha statues, carrying Buddhist scriptures on their backs, and blowing Buddhist trumpets. Followed by the peasants who will march around the farmland with wheat in their hands to thank for a good year of prosperity. All those hardworking peasants will feel joyful to see the wheat fields. After marching around the village, the activities will begin and local people will start to picnic in the meadow or invite friends to drink together in the tents.

In the beginning, Ongkor is just a ritual to worship gods to pray for a good harvest. Gradually, more and more folk activities have been added, such as horse racing, archery, singing and dancing, and Tibetan opera. All those peasants who have worked for a year wish to enjoy a good time during this festival. Because when the festival is over, they will start the autumn harvest.