Festivals worth planning a trip around

A festival changes a place. Pushkar in November is a different town from Pushkar in February; the ghats of Varanasi on Dev Deepawali are lit by lamps along their whole length; Hemis monastery, quiet for most of the year, fills with masked dancers and families from across Ladakh. Seeing these is one of the best reasons to travel in our lands, and one of the hardest to arrange late, because rooms near the action are limited and go first.

We chose the festivals below because they are worth the effort and because they can be combined with a good journey around them. We have left out many smaller ones that are lovely if you happen to be there but not worth fixing your dates for. One warning applies to almost all of them: most follow the lunar calendar, so the dates move by two to four weeks from year to year. Check current status before you travel and before you book flights.

The table lists the festivals we most often plan journeys around, with the months in which they usually fall. Where a festival follows the lunar calendar, it can fall in either of the months shown. Ask us for the confirmed dates in the year you want to travel.

The Pushkar Camel Fair is the one most travellers know. It falls in October or November, around Kartik Purnima. The early days are for trading camels, horses and cattle on the dunes west of town; the last days, around the full moon, bring pilgrims to bathe in Pushkar's lake. We prefer the trading days, at dawn, when the light is low and the herders are working. Our 8-night journey pairs the fair with Udaipur and is from ₹4,30,000 per person.

In February, the Jaisalmer Desert Festival brings three days of music, turban-tying and camel events, ending on Magh Purnima. Gangaur in Jaipur, in March or April, is a women's festival with processions through the old city on its last two days. In October, the Marwar Festival in Jodhpur brings folk music to the fort around Sharad Purnima.

Nepal's great autumn festivals are Dashain, 15 days ending on the full moon of Ashwin in September or October, and Tihar, five days of lamps in October or November. Dashain is a family festival: offices close, people travel home, and on the tenth day elders give tika and blessings. Indra Jatra, in September, brings the Kumari's chariot through Kathmandu's Durbar Square. Our 7-night Kathmandu Valley journey in festival season is from ₹3,00,000.

In Ladakh, Hemis Tsechu falls in June or July, on the 10th and 11th days of the fifth Tibetan month, when the monks of Hemis perform masked cham dances in the courtyard. The season suits it: the passes are open and Leh is warm. Winter brings Dosmoche in February and Losar, and in the Everest region, Mani Rimdu at Tengboche falls in October or November, for those prepared to trek.

Dev Deepawali, on Kartik Purnima in November, is the night Varanasi lights its ghats with clay lamps from end to end. The best view is from a private boat, booked well ahead, and the best rooms are the riverside palaces, which fill months before. Our 4-night journey is from ₹2,30,000 per person. The Ganga Mahotsav, a festival of music and dance, runs in the days before it.

Holi is played everywhere, but in the Braj country around Mathura it lasts a week. At Barsana and Nandgaon, a few days before Holi, the women of each village meet the men of the other with sticks in Lathmar Holi, a crowded, joyful, sometimes rough event that we watch from a rooftop. In January and February, the Magh Mela at Prayagraj brings pilgrims to bathe where the Ganges and Yamuna meet.

The Hornbill Festival runs from 1 to 10 December every year at Kisama Heritage Village, about 12 km from Kohima. Each of Nagaland's tribes builds a traditional house, called a morung, and performs its dances, songs and games through the day, with food stalls and night concerts. It is one of the few festivals with fixed dates, and Kohima's best rooms book out early. Our 8-night journey adds Kaziranga's rhinos and is from ₹2,90,000.

The Ziro Festival of Music is four days of outdoor music in late September, in the rice valley of the Apatani people in Arunachal Pradesh. Arunachal needs an Inner Line Permit, which we arrange. Rongali Bihu, the Assamese new year from about 14 April, and the Raas festival on Majuli in November are the other two we plan around.

Thrissur Pooram, in April or May, is Kerala's greatest temple festival: caparisoned elephants in two facing lines at the Vadakkunnathan Temple, the rapid exchange of coloured parasols called kudamattam, and fireworks before dawn. It is very hot and very crowded, and worth both. Onam, the harvest festival of August or September, is quieter and more domestic, with flower carpets, a feast served on banana leaves and snake boat races on the backwaters. From December to March, the Theyyam rituals of North Malabar run through the night in village shrines.

Goa's Carnival fills Panjim with floats, music and King Momo's parade over the four days before Ash Wednesday, usually in February. On 3 December, the Feast of St Francis Xavier draws pilgrims to the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Old Goa, after a nine-day novena.

Two more in Kerala are worth knowing. The Nehru Trophy Boat Race on Punnamada Lake near Alappuzha, usually on the second Saturday of August, is the best known of the snake boat races, with about 100 rowers to a boat. The Kochi-Muziris Biennale, a large exhibition of contemporary art, fills the warehouses and old houses of Fort Kochi from December to March in the years it runs.

For Pushkar, Dev Deepawali, Hornbill and Hemis Tsechu, we suggest booking six to nine months ahead, because the rooms close to each festival are few and some hotels set minimum stays and higher rates for festival dates. For Dashain, Tihar and Onam, three to four months is usually enough. Build a day or two of slack around the main festival day, in case the date moves or crowds slow you down, and keep the rest of the journey quieter, so the festival is the high point rather than one more busy day.

Festivals also change what a journey costs. Hotels near Pushkar and Kohima charge more for festival nights, the luxury tented camps at Pushkar are set up for the fair only, and private boats on the Ganges for Dev Deepawali are booked by the evening. We show these costs plainly in the first route, and if a festival makes a journey much dearer, we tell you and suggest a quieter week nearby that still catches its edges.