Lukamari

Also आसपास (aspas). The Nepal Academy dictionary calls it a famous children's game of hiding and finding. In English: hide and seek.

Hide and seek. One player covers their eyes and counts while everybody else hides, then goes looking. A hider who slips up and calls "dhyappa" before the seeker sees them sends the game back to the start.

Who plays
Three to twenty.
What you need
Somewhere to hide, and a handkerchief to cover the seeker's eyes.
Where
Round a house, a field or a village, wherever there is cover.
When
Any time, in any season.

What you need

Nothing but places to hide: the Ministry of Youth and Sports' survey names behind a tree, in the bushes and in a stack of straw. A handkerchief ties over the seeker's eyes for the count.

How it is played

One player seeks

The players agree who seeks first. No source records a rhyme for choosing.

Count while the others hide

The seeker's eyes are tied with a handkerchief, or shut, and the seeker counts aloud from one to a hundred, or to twenty. Everybody else hides nearby.

1, 2, 3 …CountingHiding
The seeker counts aloud while the others hide.

Go looking

The seeker goes looking. Once everybody has been found, the first one found seeks next.

Dhyappa

A hider who reaches the seeker without being seen and says "ढ्याप्पा" (dhyappa) sends the game back to the start. If the seeker sees the hider before the call, it does not count.

ढ्याप्पा!The seeker
Call it first and the game starts again.

The games beside it

The Ministry of Youth and Sports' survey records chor police as a game of its own: ten or more players draw chits, four of them read police and the rest thief, and the police chase the thieves until they have caught them all or time runs out. It also records plain tag, where one player chases inside an agreed boundary and whoever is touched chases next. Onlinekhabar's list calls hide and seek itself chor police or lukidum.

What is on record

  • 2018Nine readers of the Himalayan Times name it among the games of their childhood. One remembers it as best in hilly country, another hiding behind trees.
  • 2018The Ministry of Youth and Sports' survey of traditional games records it as lukamari or aspas, for three to twenty players.
  • 2019Himal Khabar talks to people raised in Kathmandu, Kaski, Bhojpur, Bardiya and Panchthar. One remembers hiding in a hole dug for a water pipe.
  • 2022Onlinekhabar lists it among the local games that are dying.

Where the sources disagree, or say too little

Who seeks after a dhyappa?

The Ministry of Youth and Sports' survey says the same seeker seeks again from the start. Nepali Wikipedia, which cites the survey, says the player who called becomes the seeker. The survey reads as the original.

Is chor police hide and seek?

Onlinekhabar uses chor police as another name for hide and seek. The survey records it as a different game, a chase between police and thieves drawn by chit.

Sources

Every fact on this page comes from one of these. Where a source could not be read, or a claim has none, the text says so.

  1. परम्परागत खेलहरूको प्रोफाइल, Ministry of Youth and Sports, 2075 BS, pages 9, 14 and 20, as archived (in Nepali)
  2. लुकामारी, Nepali Wikipedia (in Nepali)
  3. लुकामारी, Nepal Academy dictionary, as copied to Nepali Wiktionary (in Nepali)
  4. शहरीकरणले खायो रैथाने खेल, Nunuta Rai, Himal Khabar, 13 Mangsir 2076 (in Nepali)
  5. More than just child's play, Nikki Hamal, The Himalayan Times, 25 February 2018
  6. With no inter-generational transformation, Nepal's traditional local games are dying, Sudarshan Aryal and Govinda Raj Nepal, Onlinekhabar, 6 March 2022

Cite this page

Nepali Games (2026). How to play Lukamari, and where it comes from. https://nepali.games/traditional-games/lukamari

Nepali Gamesनेपाली खेलहरू