For the last forty years, the Seto Ghoda of Bhaktapur has lived a life of seclusion, making public appearance once a year on the day of Bijaya Dashami. The rest of the year, the white horse spendsnearly all his time pacing a courtyard and his stable therein, across Bhaktapur’s Taleju Temple.The status of the Seto Ghoda derives importance from the night of Bijaya Dashami, when the horse is decorated and paraded around the Bhakatpur City, during the Seto Ghoda festival, a ritual locals claim has been observed for as long as the Taleju Temple has been in existence (since 1323).

The Mul Naike (head priest) of the temple, Narendra Prasad Joshi, tells me that

hundreds of people come out on the streetsto worship the Seto Ghoda on the all-important night.  The Seto Ghoda’s room looks nothing like a traditional stable: it is a cemented room, with two windows that let in some air and light and a door that the horse has mastered the trick of opening and shutting at will.  When people come up to the stable and hang out outside, the horse senses their presence and opens the door with his snout. He will usually stick his head out of the door to look and if he doesn’t want to be disturbed, he pulls the door shut, Joshi told me.

A short flight of steps lead out of the room, into a brick -paved courtyard, which is the Seto Ghoda’s space to wander.  Blind in his right eye now, from cataracts, and his hide pocked with sores in some places, the Seto Ghoda has obviously seen better days. He was brought to Bhaktapur from Singha Durbar when he was merely a colt by the head priest’s father. The temple actually had to make a formal request to the government to have him brought over to Bhaktapur, to replace the earlier horse when it had gotten too old to perform the annual duties.

The bond between Narendra Joshi and the horse thus goes back a long way: Narendra’s father presided as the Mul Naike of Taleju until he died 36 years ago; Narendra then replaced him; a few years later the Seto Ghoda came over to Bhaktapur, and since then, the horse and he have become a tandem team of sorts.

The white horse is considered the mount of the goddess Telaju Bhawani, one of

the nine dieties   (Navadurga), worshipped during Navaratri, the eve before Bijaya Dashami. Taleju is also known as the eldest sister among the Navadurga.

On the day of Bijaya Dashami, three main priests of the Taleju temple representing the Karmacharya, Rajupadhaya and Joshi clans perform tantric rituals, at a specific point in the lunar cycle. The ritual begins with the puja of Taleju and then the remaining eight goddesses.  It is on that night that the horse is taken to from the Durbar Square to the golden gate, the main entry point of Taleju.  Then he is made to walk three times in front of the replica of the Pashupatinath Temple in Bhaktapur Durbar Square. On this day, he is bedecked with ornaments and garlands and his trotting around is a celebration known to the locals as the horse dance.  He forms apart of the procession behind the chariotsof Taleju and Navadurga, as the parade makes its procession through the convoluted alleyways of Bhaktapur.

For the horse’s upkeep, the Guthi Sansthan of Bhaktapur has been providing Rs 10,000 a month, and twice a day the army personnel stationed in the barracks near the temple take turns feeding it peas and gram soaked in water and molasses and molasses mixed with flour.The Seto Ghoda is getting older, and Narendra Joshi thinks there might not be too many years left in him. Earlier, the stable keepers used to live on a plot of land that had been allotted for the horse by the Guthi Sansthan. But today the Guthi has taken back the land and the army personnel are thus actually just filling in.  

The Seto Ghoda festival is an important festival for the people of Bhaktapur. The current Seto Ghoda has done its duty, and as I talked to Narendra Joshi, I understand that the man and horse have developed a bond of the deepest kind.

“I don’t know what will happen when the horse dies. We’ll have to find a new horse but I don’t know if we’ll get the funds to procure a new mount for Taleju Bhawani. Times are difficult,” he says.He sounds pragmatic about how such changes come about, but there’s a strange tone in the way he says these words. As if he can not say that no other horse will do—since he has been with the horse for so long.But then he ends with, “The new horse will not be a replacement. It will be someone else.”