Majuli Raas Mahotsav

The Raas Mahotsav is the cultural and spiritual highlight of the year on Majuli, the great river island, celebrated around Kartik Purnima in November. Across the island's satras (neo-Vaishnavite monasteries), the life of Lord Krishna — especially the Raas Lila, his divine dance with the gopis — is staged in elaborate all-night performances of drama, dance, music and masks (bhaona), a tradition dating to the 15th-century saint Sankardeva.

For a few days Majuli fills with pilgrims and visitors, and the satras become theatres of devotion, offering a rare and moving glimpse of one of India's most distinctive living religious cultures.