Quick answer: Nanda Ashtami is observed on the eighth day of the bright fortnight of Bhadrapada. Nanda Ashtami 2026 falls on Saturday, 19 September. Around it, the Nanda Devi melas of Almora and Nainital run for several days, centred on idols of the sister goddesses Nanda and Sunanda made freshly each year from the stem of the banana plant.
Every festival on this site so far has happened at home — at the threshold, in the puja room, at the family hearth. Nanda Ashtami is the one that happens in town. For a few days in September, the courtyard of the Nanda Devi temple in Almora and the grounds above the lake in Nainital fill with the biggest crowds of the Kumaoni year, all of them there for one goddess.
Who Nanda Devi Is
Nanda Devi is the presiding goddess of the Uttarakhand Himalaya — a form of Parvati, and at the same time something more local and more intimate: she is treated as the daughter of the hills. The mountain that carries her name, Nanda Devi, at 7,816 metres the highest peak entirely within India, is understood as her seat and her form at once.
The emotional register of her worship is what makes it distinctive. Nanda is a married daughter, and the festival is her mait — her visit home to her parents' house. The songs sung for her are the songs any Kumaoni family might sing for a daughter arriving home from her husband's village, and the farewell at the festival's end carries the same real ache. This framing — goddess as daughter — runs through everything: the tenderness of the rituals, the tears at the send-off, the sense that the entire region is briefly her parental home.
Nanda Ashtami falls on Bhadrapada Shukla Ashtami, in the closing stretch of the monsoon, when the high meadows she is said to walk are at their greenest.
The Banana-Stem Idols
The most striking feature of the Kumaoni celebration is that the idols are made new every year, and they are made from banana stems (kadali / kela). In Almora, the selection of the banana plants is itself a ritual: chosen plants are brought in procession to the Nanda Devi temple, and over the following day artisans shape the trunks into the figures of Nanda and her sister Sunanda, dressed, ornamented and painted, their faces drawn afresh.
The idols are consecrated in the Brahma muhurta before dawn, worshipped through the festival days, and at the end — like any visiting daughter — the goddesses are given a formal farewell and the idols are immersed. Nothing permanent is kept. The goddess who is a daughter comes home each year, and each year she leaves.
For readers of our Aipan pages, the visual language of the festival will be familiar: the chowki on which the goddesses are seated, the fresh geru ground, the white patterns of the kind decoded in our guide to the Saraswati chowki and Aipan's ritual significance. Nanda Ashtami is the largest public stage on which Kumaon's ritual art appears.
The Melas: Almora and Nainital
The Nanda Devi Mela of Almora is the historic centre of the festival, held at the Nanda Devi temple in the heart of the old bazaar and running for several days around the Ashtami. Its documented history runs back through the Chand kings, who took Nanda as their royal deity — the reason a town goddess and a mountain goddess are one and the same here.
The Nanda Devi Mahotsav of Nainital, centred on the Nanda Devi temple by Naini lake, has grown into the other great gathering, with the same banana-stem idols, days of ritual, and a fairground that takes over the town. Smaller Nanda melas are held across the region — Bhowali, Ranikhet, Kot Bhramari near Bageshwar, and villages throughout the high valleys, each with its own dola and its own songs.
The melas are also markets and reunions — the September gathering where hill families meet, buy, listen to the season's singers, and put the monsoon behind them.
The Dola Procession
On Ashtami day the goddesses travel. The dola — the decorated palanquin carrying Nanda and Sunanda — is lifted and carried through the streets, in Nainital circling the lake town, in Almora moving through the bazaar, with crowds singing the Nanda geet as it passes. The procession is the festival's public heart: the daughter of the hills being shown her home before she is sent back.
The songs sung around the dola — narrative ballads of Nanda's life, her marriage, her longing for her parents' house — are among the oldest continuously sung material in the Kumaoni language, kept alive by the same oral tradition that carries the Holi geet.
Nanda Between Kumaon and Garhwal
Nanda Devi is the rare deity who belongs equally to Kumaon and Garhwal, and her worship binds the two halves of Uttarakhand together. On the Garhwal side, the same September tithi anchors the Nanda cycle that culminates, once every twelve years, in the Nanda Devi Raj Jat — the three-week, roughly 280-kilometre "royal procession" that walks the goddess from her maternal home toward the high Himalaya, often called the Himalayan Mahakumbh.
In Kumaon the register is annual and domestic rather than twelve-yearly and epic, but the story is the same story: the daughter goddess, the visit home, the farewell into the mountains. Standing in the Almora temple courtyard on Ashtami, you are at one node of a web of Nanda worship that stretches across every high valley of the state.
FAQ
When is Nanda Ashtami in 2026?
Nanda Ashtami 2026 falls on Saturday, September 19 — the Shukla Paksha Ashtami (eighth day of the waxing moon) of the month of Bhadrapada. The Nanda Devi melas in Almora and Nainital run for several days around this date.
What is made from banana stems on Nanda Ashtami?
The idols of Nanda Devi and her sister Sunanda. Selected banana plants are brought in procession to the temple, and their stems are shaped, dressed and painted into the two goddesses. The idols are made new each year and immersed at the festival's end.
Where is the Nanda Devi Mela held?
The historic mela is at the Nanda Devi temple in Almora, dating to the era of the Chand kings. The Nanda Devi Mahotsav at Nainital's lakeside temple is the other major gathering, and smaller Nanda melas are held across Kumaon, including at Kot Bhramari near Bageshwar.
Why is Nanda Devi called the daughter of the hills?
Her worship is framed as a married daughter's visit to her parents' home (mait). The songs, rituals and farewell treat the goddess as the region's own daughter returning from her husband's house — which gives the festival its distinctive tenderness and its emotional send-off.
Is Nanda Ashtami the same as the Nanda Devi Raj Jat?
No. Nanda Ashtami is the annual festival. The Nanda Devi Raj Jat is the great pilgrimage procession held once every twelve years on the Garhwal side, which begins from the same Nanda cycle of worship. The annual melas happen every September regardless.