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

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”.

Touch of royalty

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.

From barter to digital payments

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.

The food reflects the fair’s evolving palate. Last year, I saw steaming siddu, kodra (millet) roti, moodie (millet trail mix), momo, and desi mithai being sold alongsidechow mein, golgappa, chaat, and dosa.

According to Rampur sub-divisional magistrate Harsh Amarendra Singh, “Lavi generates approx. ₹2.5 crore annually through plot and stall instalments, against an overall expenditure of nearly ₹2 crore. About 70% of the expenditure is allocated to local artists and cultural programmes. The government’s efforts aim to strengthen the fair’s identity as one of India’s most distinctive cultural and artisan mountain fairs.”

Atma Ram Kedarta, a retired officer who’s seen the fair since his childhood in the 1950s and later headed its cultural committee, remembers how “cultural evenings became one of Lavi’s biggest attractions”. However, he says, “The government should ensure local artists are paid a fair and decent fee. There is a significant gap between what is paid to Himachali artists and performers from outside.”

I realised Lavi’s heartbeat is its women as I watched them run stalls, negotiate deals, manage businesses, and lead cultural traditions. Self-help groups have further empowered small-scale women entrepreneurs.

Custodians of tradition

The fair helped traders from the lower hills and northern plains settle in Rampur. “Nearly 75% of Rampur’s businessmen are migrants who settled generations ago,” says Kedarta. Harbans Kumar came from Punjab in the 1950s, recognising its business potential. Today, his grandson Sarthak continues the family trade. Calling himself “more Pahari than Punjabi”, he grew up “speaking the local language and dancing the folk Nati” and says, “Himachal isn’t just where my family trades, this is my home.”

“A fair is always for the children,” quips Anupam Kashyap, deputy commissioner of Shimla. The administration has introduced essay competition in schools, with prizes of ₹10,000-25,000, encouraging children to “speak to local elders, their grandparents, traders, travellers and community members, to learn about Lavi’s lived history”. “The next generation will be the keeper of Lavi’s grand past, the flagbearer of its present, and the custodian of its future,” Kashyap concludes.

The Noida-based writer is a chef and culinary researcher.