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Next: about 7 to 9 Feb 2027

Losar and the yak dance

The Tibetan New Year, when yak dancers in shaggy costumes perform in villages and monasteries from Tibet to Ladakh and Sikkim.

A tile drawn for this day, not a photograph.

Cattle at Losar and the yak dance

Losar, the Tibetan New Year, is set by the Tibetan lunisolar calendar and usually falls in February or early March. Homes are cleaned, offerings of barley flour and butter are arranged, and families visit monasteries and one another. In many places the festival brings out the yak dance: two dancers inside a costume of dark yak hair, with a carved head and horns, play a yak led by a herder who sings and jokes with it. The dance honours the animal that gives herding families milk, butter, wool, dung for fuel and transport. In Sikkim, Ladakh and Bhutan the dance is also performed at other festivals of the year.

The breeds

YakThe animal of the dance, and of life on the high plateau.DzoThe yak and cattle cross of the lower valleys.
About this page

Written by the EveryCow desk with AI assistance. Background: "Yak dance" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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