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FESTIVALS

Dashain and Tihar in the UK: what happens, and where to find it

Khaja Khoj  ·  16 September 2026  ·  7 min read

If you have Nepalese neighbours, you will have noticed it. For a few weeks in autumn the community halls get booked out, the grocers run out of marigolds, and someone at work turns up with a red mark on their forehead and a bag of sel roti to share. Dashain and Tihar are the two biggest festivals in the Nepalese calendar, and in the UK they have quietly become part of the autumn in towns like Aldershot, Farnborough, Hounslow, Swindon and Ashford.

This is a guide for anyone who wants to understand what is being celebrated, and for Nepalese families new to the UK who want to know where to find it. Both festivals follow the lunar calendar, so the dates shift each year: Dashain falls in late September or October, and Tihar follows about two weeks later.

Dashain: fifteen days, one homecoming

Dashain is the longest and most important festival in Nepal. It marks the goddess Durga’s victory over the buffalo demon Mahishasura — good over evil, told across fifteen days. But ask anyone who grew up with it what Dashain means and they will not start with theology. They will tell you about going home.

In Nepal the whole country empties out of the cities and back into the villages. Offices close for a week or more. Buses to the hills run overloaded. It is the one time of year when the entire extended family is expected in one place, and for Nepalese families living abroad that is exactly what makes it difficult. Dashain is a homecoming festival observed thousands of miles from home.

The days that matter most

  • Ghatasthapana — day one. Barley seed is sown in a bowl of soil and kept in the dark. Over the following days it grows into jamara, the pale yellow shoots you will see tucked behind people’s ears later in the festival.
  • Fulpati — day seven. Flowers, leaves and sugarcane are brought into the home.
  • Maha Ashtami and Maha Nawami — days eight and nine. The most ritually intense days, traditionally involving animal sacrifice in Nepal. In the UK this is usually replaced by an offering of coconut or pumpkin, and by buying meat from a Nepalese or halal butcher instead.
  • Vijaya Dashami — day ten. The main event. Elders place tika, a paste of vermilion, yoghurt and rice, on the forehead of everyone younger than them, press jamara behind their ear, and give a blessing and usually some money. This is the day the visiting happens.
  • Kojagrat Purnima — day fifteen, full moon, and the close of the festival.

If you are invited to receive tika, you are being welcomed into someone’s family for the afternoon. Bring something sweet, and expect to be fed more than you planned.

Tihar: five days of lights, and one for the dogs

Tihar arrives about two weeks after Dashain. It is a festival of lights, related to Diwali but distinctly Nepalese, and it is the warmer and more visually beautiful of the two. Oil lamps and candles go along windowsills and doorsteps. Rangoli patterns are laid at the entrance in coloured powder and flower petals. Groups of young people go door to door singing deusi and bhailo, and are given money, sweets and sel roti in return.

What makes Tihar unusual is that three of its five days honour animals.

  • Kaag Tihar — the crow, messenger of bad news, is fed on the roof to keep grief away from the house.
  • Kukur Tihar — the dog. Dogs are garlanded with marigolds, marked with tika and fed well. The photographs that circulate every year of solemn, flower-wreathed street dogs come from this day.
  • Gai Tihar and Laxmi Puja — the cow in the morning; in the evening the house is cleaned and lit to welcome Laxmi, goddess of wealth.
  • Goru Tihar — the ox. Newar families instead observe Mha Puja on this day, a ritual of self-respect that also marks the Nepal Sambat new year.
  • Bhai Tika — the final day. Sisters give their brothers a tika of seven colours and a garland of globe amaranth, and brothers give gifts in return. Siblings separated by distance often do this over video call.

How it actually looks in Britain

The shape of both festivals changes here, mostly because of the working week. Almost nobody can take ten days off, so the community observance is condensed into whichever weekend falls closest to the main day. Families keep the home rituals on the correct date and hold the big gathering on the Saturday.

That gathering is usually a hired hall: a community centre, a school hall, a leisure centre function room. Local Nepalese associations and Gurkha welfare groups organise them, and they are far larger than most people outside the community realise — several hundred people, a stage, madal drums, and dancing that runs until the hall booking ends. Hindu and Buddhist temples serving Nepalese congregations hold their own puja alongside.

The concentration of these events in certain towns is not accidental. Aldershot and Farnborough have among the largest Nepalese populations in the UK because of the Gurkha regiments long based in the area, and the 2009 settlement rights that allowed retired Gurkhas and their families to settle here. Where the regiments were, the community followed, and with it the grocers, the restaurants and the festival calendar.

What gets eaten

Sel roti is the one thing you will see at both festivals without exception — a ring of sweetened, slightly fermented rice-flour batter, poured by hand into hot oil and fried until deep gold. Crisp outside, chewy inside, and made in enormous quantities. Families who would not otherwise fry anything all year will make sel roti for Tihar.

Beyond that: goat curry, which for many households is the definitive Dashain meal — and if you have only met it on a restaurant thali, the festival version is richer and slower-cooked; alu tama, the tangy potato and bamboo-shoot curry; sinki and gundruk, both fermented and both tasting unmistakably of the hills; and endless tea. Nepalese grocers order in heavily before both festivals, and the specialist items — jimbu, timur, dried bamboo shoot, good ghee, marigold garlands — go quickly. If you need something specific, ask a week early.

If you are new to all this

Two things worth knowing. Community festival events in the UK are generally open — they are advertised locally and you do not need an invitation, though it is polite to ask first. And if you are invited to a family home for Dashain, the correct response to being handed food is to accept it.

If you are Nepalese and newly arrived, you are probably closer to a celebration than you think. The community in Britain is small enough that someone within driving distance is cooking for a hundred people this month.

Header photo: Gaurav Dhwaj Khadka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Looking for Nepalese groceries or a restaurant near you?

Khaja Khoj lists Nepalese-owned restaurants, grocers and services across the UK — including the shops that stock jimbu, timur and dried bamboo shoot.

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