Special gathering at Spiti: Trans-Himalayan ethos mark annual Ladarcha fair at Kaza

Abhimanyu Pandey

THE Ladarcha fair is today the largest annual event of the Spiti valley, and one of the biggest festivals of Himachal Pradesh. This event takes place in Kaza, typically in the third week of August. It includes a state-level cultural festival and a street market selling clothes and shoes.

For locals from all over Spiti, the Ladarcha fair is a significant yearly event. It provides them a brief break during the busy harvest season, an opportunity for live entertainment and socialising, and an inexpensive market to annually replenish household supplies. The fair has an intriguing past, marked by rich old trans-regional connections and even some mystery.

The festival’s name, ‘Ladarcha’, comes from a ground near Chichim village in upper Spiti. The Ladarcha maidan used to be the site of a large trans-Himalayan trade fair several decades ago. Every July, for several days, traders from Spiti valley, Pin valley, Ladakh, Tibet, Rampur-Bushahr and Kullu used to congregate at the Ladarcha maidan for conducting barter trade. Elders from upper Spiti say the old fair used to be called ‘Jhingdui’ by locals. In the Spiti Bhoti language, this word means ‘a festive gathering of traders’.

Around the beginning of July, Changpa nomads from Ladakh would cross into Spiti from the Parang pass near Chichim, bringing sheep, wool and highly-prized pashmina. Khampa traders from Tibet would bring rice, salt and maize. Indian traders from the lower hills would get sugar, clothes, oil, etc. Locals from the Pin valley would bring their valuable Chamurti horses. In general, the locals of Spiti would barter the livestock and goods from the outside for the barley and horses of Spiti. The old trade fair also had much music, dance and revelry on the side, and would see enthusiastic participation from local youth.

Perplexingly, there is no mention of this fair anywhere in the otherwise extensive colonial-era documentation of Spiti. This is strange, especially given the detailed descriptions which the British produced on other annual trade fairs in the vicinity of Spiti, such as the Patseo fair of Lahaul, Lavi fair of Rampur, and the one at Gartok in western Tibet. To the colonial authorities, these fairs were crucial sites for gaining information on the composition, volume and demographics of the lucrative trans-Himalayan and Indo-Tibetan trade, particularly in wool. Colonial sources often mention that trans-local trade was conducted within Spiti. But they only describe the actors involved and the objects bartered, and say nothing about the sites and timings of such trade.

The sole published reference from that period to a trade fair within Spiti is an article from 1923 in ‘The Geographical Review’ by Henry Lee Shuttleworth, then the Assistant Commissioner of Kullu (and thereby Spiti). This article refers to the shifting of an unnamed wool mart in Spiti, 40 miles eastward, but it is uncertain whether the reference is to the Ladarcha fair. In fact, the only contemporaneous published account that mentions the old Ladarcha fair by name is the travelogue by Parmanand Sharma, a government official who visited Spiti on election duty in the summer of 1957. Sharma mentions that he could visit the Ladarcha maidan but not the ‘big trade fair’, for unusually heavy snow had prevented it from taking place that year.

The old fair came to an abrupt halt following the Sino-Indian war of 1962, since the Tibetans could no longer cross into Spiti. Then, in the 1980s, the fair was revived by the Himachal Pradesh government as a state-level festival. For two reasons, the location of the revived fair was shifted from the Ladarcha maidan to Kaza. Firstly, the maidan was parcelled out and distributed as nautor land to the locals of Chichim, turning the former commons into private land. Secondly, Kaza was the seat of the local administration and more easily accessible by road than Chichim/Ladarcha.

The revived Ladarcha mela attempts to capture at least a part of the cultural flavour of the old trade fair, since every year it features artistes from Spiti and Ladakh, besides Tibetan migrants. Popular artistes and cultural troupes from other corners of Himachal and other states participate too. But when I attended the Ladarcha fair in August 2019, the loudest cheers from the local crowd came for the young and charismatic Ladakhi singer Faisal Ashroor, who belted out much-loved Ladakhi and Tibetan numbers. This event shows that old cultural memories and bonds remain strong among the Spiti locals, even as they navigate a fast-changing world and new influences.

— The writer is doing his doctoral research on Spiti