On the fifth day after Holi every year, something happens in Dehradun that most outsiders have never heard of. A massive fair — one of the largest in Uttarakhand — takes over the grounds of the Guru Ram Rai Darbar on Jhanda Bazar, drawing hundreds of thousands of people over five days. Traders come from across the state. Pilgrims arrive from remote hill villages. The city’s character shifts noticeably.

This is Jhanda Mela, and it has been happening here, without interruption, for over 350 years.

The Story Behind the Fair

Guru Ram Rai was the eldest son of Guru Har Rai, the seventh Sikh Guru. Following a dispute over succession — Guru Ram Rai was accused of making a change to a verse of the Granth Sahib to please the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb — he was excommunicated from the mainstream Sikh tradition and settled in Dehradun in the late 17th century, under Aurangzeb’s patronage.

Aurangzeb gifted Ram Rai the land on which the Darbar now stands. Ram Rai built his dera here and gathered a community of followers — the Udasi sect — who continue to maintain the Darbar to this day. The fair began as an annual gathering of followers and has grown, century by century, into the event it is now.

The Jhanda — the flag — is the central symbol of the fair. Each year, a new flag is unfurled at the Darbar in a ceremony that is the emotional climax of the event. Followers believe that witnessing the flag hoisting brings blessings, and many have been making the journey to Dehradun for this purpose, generation after generation, for their entire lives.

What the Fair Looks Like

The grounds around the Darbar are transformed in the days before Jhanda Mela begins. A temporary city of stalls appears overnight — food vendors, cloth merchants, toy sellers, sweet shops, hardware stalls, agricultural equipment dealers, and an entire section given over to livestock trade. The range is extraordinary: you can buy a goat, a hand-embroidered shawl, a pressure cooker, a devotional poster of Guru Ram Rai, fresh gur from the plains, and a wooden cooking spoon all within the same 200-metre stretch.

The food at Jhanda Mela is worth the visit alone. The langar — community kitchen — at the Darbar serves food to all visitors free of charge, around the clock, for the duration of the fair. The dal and roti served here, simple and cooked in enormous quantities, has a quality that is difficult to explain to someone who has not eaten langar food.

Why It Matters to Dehradun

Jhanda Mela predates the city of Dehradun as we know it. The Darbar and its annual fair were here before the British cantonments, before the boarding schools, before the bypass roads and the malls. For the communities of the Doon Valley and the surrounding hills, the Mela is not a tourist event — it is part of the rhythm of the year, as natural and expected as the monsoon.

It also represents something the city’s newer residents and visitors rarely encounter: a living tradition that has not been packaged for consumption. There are no entry fees, no official guides, no Instagram-friendly installations. Just the fair, the flag, and several hundred years of unbroken practice.

Next Holi, count five days forward and mark the date.