Rampur’s Lavi Fair: Storytelling through 300 years of Himalayan trade and tradition

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A cultural presentation at Lavi Fair, Rampur Bushahr, Shimla district, Himachal Pradesh. | Photo Credit: Nitika Kuthiala

What Disneyland is to children today, Lavi Fair in Rampur Bushahr, in Himachal Pradesh’s Shimla district, was to my family in the 1980s.

I recall wandering through the fair as an eight-year-old, watching an old man smoking a chillum beside heaps of black sheep fleece and stacks of white woollen pattus (traditional garments of Kinnaur and Kullu women).

Mother and her friends carefully chose shawls for their daughters’ and future daughters-in-law’s trousseaux.

Years later, I received a beautiful black sheep wool and pashmina shawl for my wedding.

Wool finds pride of place at the fair.

The name Lavi is linked to “Loe”, a sheet of woollen cloth and the practice of shearing sheep.

For a few weeks, Rampur, on the banks of the Sutlej river, comes alive with the fair (November 11-14 this year, with trading grounds open through the month), offering a sensory map of the Himalaya.

Colourful textiles, yak wool, pashmina, dry fruits, agricultural produce, Kinnauri apples, indigenous crafts and precious stones fill the marketplace.

Among its most captivating sights are the magnificent Chamurthi horses, the hardy “ships of the cold desert”.

Kinnauri weaves on sale at Lavi Fair. | Photo Credit: Nitika Kuthiala

At the Lavi Fair in Rampur Bushahr, Shimla district. | Photo Credit: Nitika Kuthiala

Jewellery on sale at Lavi Fair. | Photo Credit: Nitika Kuthiala

Traders once travelled from Tibet, Nepal, Central Asia and Afghanistan.

Tradition traces the fair’s origins to a 17th-century treaty between Raja Kehri Singh of Bushahr and Tibet, establishing it as a meeting point for traders, pilgrims and storytellers along the Silk Route.

Though trans-Himalayan trade declined after Tibet’s occupation in 1959, the fair survived on the Buddhist circuit and was accorded international status by the Himachal Pradesh government.

Pratibha Singh, a member of the Rampur Bushahr royal family which founded the fair and continues to honour the tradition, recalls its legacy of pashmina and Kinnauri shawls, some woven over years, alongside trans-Himalayan textiles and local produce.

The GI-tagged Kinnauri shawl, with bright geometric motifs, speaks its own language of colour: white for water, yellow for earth, red for fire, green for air, and blue for sky.

On my last visit, a group of elderly women from South India told me they discovered the fair through a fellow traveller whose husband was a biker in the 1990s.

A friend from Odisha recalls how in the 90s, his ophthalmologist-father’s eye camps in Rampur led to lifelong friendships and an annual habit of sourcing Kinnauri apples and dry fruits.

Kinnauri apples on sale at Lavi Fair. | Photo Credit: Nitika Kuthiala

Traders at Lavi Fair accept payments via UPI now. | Photo Credit: Nitika Kuthiala

For Ami Chand Gautam, a Lavi trader since the 1980s, the fair tells a story of changing prices and livelihoods.

He remembers when “chilgoza, the rare pine nut gathered in Kinnaur’s upper reaches, sold for just ₹4-₹5 per kg, almost the price of rice then.

Today, it fetches ₹14,000-15,000 per kg,” he says.

“Who could have imagined that?” quips Gautam, for whom Lavi is more than a marketplace, where mountain wealth (wool, pashmina, livestock and dry fruits) was once exchanged for plains produce (salt, jaggery, grains, cloth, etc.).

Traders now accept online payments and use courier services.

Artisans showcasing their craft at Lavi Fair. | Photo Credit: Nitika Kuthiala

Food produce on sale. | Photo Credit: Nitika Kuthiala