Nalakhar Tshechu
- Kind
- Sacred observance
- Venue
- Ngang Lhakhang
- District
- Bumthang
- Region
- Central Bhutan
- Tentative
- Tentative
When it happens
Nalakhar Tshechu is a three-day festival held on the fifteenth to seventeenth days of the tenth month of the Bhutanese lunar calendar.
The three main days are usually preceded by a rehearsal day.
Where it happens
The festival is held at Ngang Lhakhang, a private village temple in Ngang village, in the Choekhor valley of Bumthang.
The temple stands next door to a noble house still presided over by descendants of its founder.
History
Lam Namkha Samdrup is recorded as the founder of Ngang Lhakhang.
According to tradition, Namkha Samdrup himself carved the two yak masks still danced in the festival. He is said to have wanted his Shinje dance to be distinguished from other bull-headed Shinje dances, and to have found the horns on a nearby slope known today as Horn Mountain.
The zhey performed here is often described as a survival from the time of the Zhabdrung, and the Bhutanese zhey tradition as traced to a tribute song performed for him in 1616.
Rituals
The festival is a rabney (consecration festival).
Its distinguishing element is the zhey, performed by dancers from Samthang Dung, a nearby village. They sit apart from the other performers and sing a cappella. One zhey work runs across four separate dances and is described as taking roughly two hours. Zhey dancers are often described as wearing a headdress called thoe, meant to mark the dancer as no ordinary person.
Sachak Namchak (“to break open both the ground and the sky”) is the festival’s local version of Shinje Yab Yum. Two dancers in yak masks perform it as a male and female pair of wrathful deities. A monkey carrying an incense burner opens it.
Beh is performed before honoured guests by dancers in red sheepskin headgear called Razha.
Being there
Unlike a tshechu at a dzong (fortress), Nalakhar Tshechu is run and sponsored by eight villages of the Choekhor valley around a private family temple. Its centrepiece is the zhey rather than a state cham (masked dance) programme.
A six-hour hike runs from Ngang Lhakhang to Tahung.