Faces covered in silver and gold jewellery, heads adorned with Styrofoam flowers in vibrant hues, and bodies wrapped in traditional handwoven shawls: natives dressed in bridal finery for the Raulane Festival. A mythical celebration to mark the end of winter and welcome the harvest season, villagers residing in the lap of Himachal Pradesh’s Kinnaur valley and surrounding areas come together to dance, sing and indulge in unfettered merrymaking for a few days.

The festival was happily tucked away from the prying eyes of social media until a few days ago, when snapshots from travel bloggers’ Instagram pages went viral, landing in AI chatbots that turned them into wallpapers and video game backgrounds without due credit. But the power of the internet is such that good hearts can come toget

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