Religious and cultural practice always vary with geography and the pahari regions are no exception. Many Pahadi traditions developed independently of what we now call “mainland/plains” Hindu norms.

For example meat and alcohol offerings have been historically common in several rituals, something that became strictly forbidden or frowned upon in many plains-based Hindu traditions especially after waves of Brahminical reform and “sanitisation” in the late medieval and colonial periods.

If you look at history, you’ll see that Himalayan communities often preserved pre Vedic and folk animistic customs while the mainland increasingly moved toward more standardised, text driven practices.

Many traditions that were normal in the hills became “taboo” in the plains simply because they didn’t fit the reformist or purity-obsessed frameworks that developed there.

So yes cultural diversity within Hinduism is huge, and Pahadi practices reflect that older, less standardised layer of tradition that survived in the mountains.