Uttarayan 2028: Date, Rituals & Significance

Krishna Chaturthi runs 14 Jan, 23:17 → 15 Jan, 20:11.

The day is a solar parva like Makar Sankranti elsewhere — a bath, dana of til-gur and khichdi, and prayer to Surya — but its public life is the sky. Undhiyu (a mixed winter-vegetable dish), jalebi, til-chikki and chevdo are eaten on the terrace all day; at night people fly lantern-kites (tukkal). The next day, 14 or 15 January, is Vasi Uttarayan, kept the same way.

Ahmedabad's International Kite Festival, held since 1989, draws fliers from dozens of countries to the Sabarmati riverfront. The festival also carries a note of caution — sharp manja injures birds and people, and cities now enforce timing and thread rules.

Makar Sankranti marks the end of the inauspicious Dhanurmasa and the start of Uttarayana, the Sun's six-month northward journey, regarded as the deva half of the year and the doorway spoken of in the Gita and by Bhishma. Kite-flying in Gujarat is a way of greeting the returning sun from the open sky, and has grown into the festival's whole identity.

Source: Gujarat cultural history — kite-flying and the Uttarayan terrace festival

Kite-flying reached Gujarat through Persian and Central Asian contact and was patronised by the nawabs and later the city elites of Ahmedabad and Surat; by the twentieth century Uttarayan had become the mass terrace festival it is now, with a manja and firecracker industry around it and, since 1989, the state's International Kite Festival.

• Gujarat cultural history — kite-flying and the Uttarayan terrace festival
• Wikipedia — Makar Sankranti

1. From dawn families are on the rooftops flying kites; when a rival's string is cut the shout is 'Kai po che!', and the sky over Ahmedabad and Surat stays full until dark.
2. The manja (glass-coated kite string) and kites are bought in the week before at the kite markets; the International Kite Festival is held in Ahmedabad.
3. At night paper lanterns (tukkal) are sent up on kite strings. Many give grass to cows and alms to the poor for the Sun's turn north.

• Gujarat and Rajasthan. All-day kite-flying from the terraces, undhiyu and til-chikki, tukkal lantern-kites at night, and Vasi Uttarayan the next day.
• Across India. The same day is Makar Sankranti (North), Pongal (Tamil Nadu), Maghi (Punjab) and Bhogali Bihu (Assam).

• Undhiyu — The winter vegetable casserole of yam, beans and muthiya, eaten with puri.
• Jalebi — Bought fresh by the kilo for the rooftop.
• Chikki and til ladoo — Sesame, peanut and jaggery brittle and balls for the long day outdoors.

Uttarayan falls on Saturday, 15 January 2028. Gujarat's kite festival; Makar Sankranti.

at sunrise

Uttarayan is Makara Sankranti — the Sun's entry into sidereal Capricorn (Lahiri) — now on 14 January, with the following day kept as Vasi (stale) Uttarayan. The word 'uttarayana' properly names the Sun's northward course, which the sidereal Sankranti now marks about three weeks after the actual December solstice.

Fixed to a solar ingress — the Gregorian date barely moves (a day either way as the ingress instant drifts against the civil day).