Like the western Christmas season, is by far the longest, most auspicious and most joyous time of year, celebrated countrywide by all castes and creeds during the bright lunar fortnight ending on the day of the full moon in late September of early October. Families are reunited, blessings, gifts and glad tidings are exchanged, public parades, ancient processions and traditional pageants are held, and the all-powerful goddess Durga, in all her various manifestations and names and forms, is widely acclaimed with innumerable pujas, ritual holy bathing, profuse offerings and thousands of animal sacrifices, so that her many idols are drenched for days in blood.

The festivities of these two weeks glorify the ultimate and inevitable triumph of virtue over the forces of evil, commemorating a great victory of the gods over the wicked demons and devils who harassed mankind in ancient times. The Ramayana story is retold of the righteous king Rama, deified by Hindu mythology as an incarnation of lord Visnu, or again as God himself, who after epic struggles slaughtered Ravana, the fiendish king of the demon hordes from Lanka, a legendary country believed by many to have been Ceylon. Some say Lord Rama was successful in his battle with the demon only when he evoked the Shakti or supreme energy vested in Goddess Durga, the Divine Mother of the Universe. Others have it that Ramas saintly wife Sita, having been kidnapped by the demon Ravana, assumed the form of the Terrible Destructress, Goddess kali – otherwise known as Durga – and destroyed this thousand-headed king of the demons.

Greatly celebrated during Dashain, again glorifying the triumph of Good over evil, is Goddess Durgas slaying of the terrible demon mahisasura, who roamed the earth, terrorizing the populace in the guise of a ferocious water buffalo. Other accounts reveal how Lord Rama, having sworn to kill the evil mahisasura of the underworld, enlisted the divine energy of goddess taleju still another of Durgas many forms promising to take her to his Indian capital of Ayodhya and erect there are temple in her honour. It seems that Goddess Durga, as Taleju, was king Ramas ancestral family deity, eventually taken as clan goddess of the Nepalese malla kings. She is to this day the Divine protectress of Nepal and her rulers, her temples standing adjacent to all the old royal palaces. No matter how the story is told, victory is celebrated during Dashain fortnight with great rejoicing, and goddess Durga is adored throughout the land as the Divine Mother Goddess who liberated the suffering people from the miseries of Evil.

In preparation for Dashain every home is ceremonially cleansed with cowdung, decorated, painted and freshened for the visitation of Goddess Durga and the long-awaited return of distant and nearby family members. Footpaths and roads are congested with homebound travelers trekking overland, crowding into bullock carts, buses, trucks, automobiles and, in recent years, the airplane. Bazaars and shops are filled with holiday buyers seeking new clothing, gifts, luxuries, and tremendous supplies of temple offerings for the gods, as well as foodstuffs for days of family feasting. For weeks in advance droves of sheep, goats, ducks, chickens and water buffalo are herded into the valley from the southern terai flatlands and outlying hills in preparation for the great slaughter. These are sold by villagers who return to their homes laden with the city produce necessary for Dashain.