Sometimes you just find yourself in the right place at the right time to witness something incredible. We were staying in the Dreamyard Hostel in Udaipur’s Old Town. One day as we were walking around, we noticed barriers going up on the roads, police in freshly pressed and polished uniforms and locals carrying metal frames everywhere.

More clued in travellers may have already known this, but we had wandered into the Islamic celebration of Muharram.

Bear with us as we attempt to explain something we had to look up. Please let us know in the comments if you know more, as we are definitely not experts!

Muharram is effectively the start of the Islamic New Year and is the second holiest month of the Islamic Calendar coming in only after Ramadan.

In Udaipur, the beginning of Muharram is marked with mass processions through the streets, with multi storey towers, beautifully decorated and lit from the inside carried by the crowds of men.

A tower is carried by the crowd through the old town of Udaipur during Muharram.

Our hostel recommended finding a rooftop to watch the procession from. So as evening fell, we headed next door to the Charcoal restaurant. With great sunset views over the beautiful lake and more importantly for us, top down views of the nearby streets and alleyways that the procession would make its way down.

We were not prepared for the spectacle of this evening.

Thousands of white clad men filled the streets. Some of them charging before the procession cracking whips and striking metal poles on the ground. This display signalled the arrival of one of the towers. The improbably tall towers, made out of the square metal frames we had seen earlier, stacked on top of each other and crowned by an onion dome, were now decorated in vibrant colours and lit from the inside. These towers were carried down the tiny, tight streets of Old Town Udaipur on the shoulders of huge crowds of men. We watched in awe as tower after tower bobbed, listed to the side and were guided through the alleyways far too small to accommodate such gargantuan structures.

A brightly lit multi stage tower is carried through the narrow streets of the old town in Udaipur, India. This is part of the Muharram celebrations.

During a lull in the procession, we nipped back across to the rooftop of our hostel to continue watching the spectacle. Crowds continued to flow past, with green, red and purple towers parading around the narrow streets. From windows overlooking the procession, onlookers threw petals, helped steady the leaning towers or just shouted encouragement down as the towers bobbed down the streets.

Over as suddenly as it started, the square in front of our hostel became a dismantling yard, as one of the enormous towers was stripped down to its component frame and carried back off into the night.

A dome tower is dismantled on the street after the Muharram celebrations in old town, Udaipur.

This is one of the great joys of travel. Through our own ignorance we had found ourselves clueless amongst an incredible celebration. We hadn’t known this was going to be in Udaipur, we hadn’t planned for it, we just happened to be there at the right time. We were so glad that we were!

Tips:

If you are in Udaipur during Muharram, make sure you find a rooftop that overlooks one of the procession routes. Dreamyard hostel is both a great hostel and has a fantastic roof and cafe that overlooks the route, as does the Charcoal by Carlsson Restaurant we mentioned earlier.

This is a religious festival so respect is mandatory.
We were not recommended to watch this from the street as in the past there have been clashes between factions. Also as you can see from the narrative above there were exactly zero women in the procession, and girls in the hostel were strongly advised not to be at street level.
The exact date of Muharram changes yearly based on the Islamic calendar. We were lucky enough to see it in July.