Rahu Kaal and Choghadiya: How Today's Timings Are Worked Out

Rahu kaal is one-eighth of the daylight, from your city's sunrise to its sunset, and which eighth it is depends only on the weekday. So "rahu kaal today" has no single answer for India: it is a different clock time in every city, and it shifts a little every day as sunrise and sunset move.

This guide explains the five time-windows you see on every daily panchang (rahu kaal, yamaganda, gulika, abhijit and the choghadiya) the way they are actually computed, with the weekday tables, a worked example from our own engine for Varanasi and Mumbai, and an honest note on how different families use them. For today's times in your city, open the panchang.

The one idea behind all of them: divide the day

Every window in this guide starts from the same step. The Hindu day runs from sunrise to the next sunrise, and it has two halves:

• Day (dinamaan): sunrise to sunset.
• Night (ratrimaan): sunset to the next sunrise.

Each half is then cut into equal parts. Rahu kaal, yamaganda and gulika use eight parts of the day. Choghadiya uses eight parts of the day and eight of the night. Abhijit uses fifteen parts of the day (muhurtas). Nothing here uses fixed clock hours. A "part" is longer in June than in December, and longer in Delhi's summer than in Chennai's, because the daylight is.

That single idea explains almost every question people ask about these timings, including why two apps disagree and why your cousin in another city has a different rahu kaal.

Rahu kaal, yamaganda and gulika: the weekday tables

Split the daylight into eight equal parts and number them 1 to 8 from sunrise. Each weekday assigns one part to each of the three kaals:

These are exactly the tables our engine uses. Two patterns make them easy to remember:

• Rahu kaal runs Monday 2, Saturday 3, Friday 4, Wednesday 5, Thursday 6, Tuesday 7, Sunday 8. The old mnemonic "Mother Saw Father Wearing The Turban Suddenly" gives that weekday order.
• Gulika simply counts down: Sunday 7, Monday 6 … Saturday 1.

On a day with 12 hours of daylight each part is 90 minutes, which is where the familiar "rahu kaal is one and a half hours" comes from. It is only true near the equinoxes. Some pages describe rahu kaal as a single 48-minute muhurta; that is a different unit, and not how the window is defined in any almanac we know of.

What each one is traditionally for

• Rahu kaal is the one people know. The tradition says not to begin something important in it: a journey, a purchase, a signing, a new venture, a griha pravesh. It is most strictly observed in South India and is now printed on almost every panchang.
• Yamaganda (yamagandam) is treated as a second window to keep clear of beginnings, especially for travel. Our muhurat finder cuts it out for purposes such as griha pravesh, vehicle purchase and starting a business, and keeps it for others, following the conservative intersection of the references (see how we calculate).
• Gulika (gulika kaal, gulikai) is where traditions disagree most. Some families avoid it like rahu kaal; others hold that whatever is done in it tends to repeat, so they avoid it only for things they would not want repeated. We show it and do not tell you which view to follow.

Abhijit muhurat and dur muhurat

Split the daylight into fifteen equal muhurtas instead. The 8th of them, the one that straddles local noon, is abhijit. It is widely treated as a good window for starting work when nothing better is available, because it sits around the Sun's highest point of the day.

There is one weekday exception that many sites skip. On Wednesday the 8th day-muhurta is also a dur muhurat (an inauspicious muhurta fixed by weekday), so traditional almanacs do not use abhijit that day. Our panchang still shows the Wednesday window, with a flag saying it is traditionally not used, rather than silently dropping it. You will see this in the worked example below, because 23 September 2026 is a Wednesday.

Dur muhurats fall on other weekdays too (Tuesday has one in the night as well). They are listed on the panchang page alongside the kaals.

Choghadiya: eight windows by day, eight by night

Choghadiya (chaughadiya, "four ghadis") divides the day into eight equal parts and the night into eight equal parts, and gives each part one of seven names:

The names follow a fixed cycle, the same planetary order used for horas:

Udveg → Char → Labh → Amrit → Kaal → Shubh → Rog → Udveg …

The first day choghadiya is the one ruled by the weekday's lord, so the day always starts from a known point:

By day, you walk forward through the cycle one step at a time; eight parts means the eighth choghadiya repeats the first. By night, the sequence starts five steps on from the day's first and then jumps five steps each time (the same as stepping back two), which is why the night list looks shuffled even though it follows a rule.

Choghadiya is especially popular in Gujarat, Rajasthan and among trading families across western India, often for opening accounts, starting a journey or a small purchase, where a full muhurta would be overkill.

A practical note: a good choghadiya can overlap rahu kaal. Families who follow both generally let rahu kaal win, and treat the overlap as unsuitable.

Worked example: Wednesday, 23 September 2026

Here is what our engine returns for one date in two cities. Every time below is copied from our panchang engine, not estimated. Times are in IST and shown to the minute; the API gives seconds.

Sunrise, sunset and the length of one part

Day length is almost identical in the two cities this week, because it is close to the September equinox. What differs is when the day happens: the Sun rises about 40 minutes later in Mumbai, which lies roughly ten degrees of longitude west of Varanasi while both keep the same IST clock.

The kaals and abhijit

Wednesday: rahu kaal is the 5th part, yamaganda the 2nd, gulika the 4th.

You can check the arithmetic yourself for Varanasi: sunrise 05:46:49 plus four parts of 1 h 30 m 51 s gives 11:50:13, the start of the 5th part, which is exactly where the engine puts rahu kaal. Notice also that gulika ends at the very second rahu kaal begins, because on Wednesday they are the 4th and 5th parts back to back.

The day choghadiya

Wednesday's day starts with Labh.

The night choghadiya

Wednesday's night starts with Udveg.

Night parts are slightly shorter than day parts on this date (about 1 h 29 m), because the night from 23 to 24 September is about 13 minutes shorter than the day.

Two things to take from the tables. First, the same pattern holds in both cities: Labh, Amrit, Kaal, Shubh, Rog and so on. Only the clock times move. Second, the shift is not a fixed 40 minutes all year. In winter, northern cities get shorter days than southern ones, so the parts themselves change length and the gap between cities changes with them. That is why a single "rahu kaal for India" table is always wrong for most of the country. The city pages for Varanasi and Mumbai show each day's actual times.

Why two panchangs can differ by a minute or two

If you compare our times with another almanac and find a difference of a minute or two, the usual reason is how "sunrise" is defined. We take sunrise as the moment the upper edge of the Sun touches the true horizon, with standard atmospheric refraction, and no correction for the height of the observer. Some almanacs use the centre of the Sun's disc, or a different refraction value. Because every kaal is built from sunrise and sunset, a one-minute difference in sunrise flows into every window.

A difference of 30 minutes or more usually means one of the two is using the wrong city, a fixed 6 am sunrise, or a generic "India" table. That is worth a second look; a one-minute difference is not.

How traditions actually use these windows

It is worth being plain about this, because the subject attracts more fear than it deserves.

• They are about beginnings. Rahu kaal, yamaganda and the bad choghadiyas are traditionally about when to start something, not about whether anything bad will happen to you during them. Eating, working, travelling that is already under way, study and prayer are not affected in any tradition we know.
• Observance varies by region and family. Rahu kaal is a daily habit for many families in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala, and much less observed in parts of the north. Choghadiya is the everyday tool in Gujarat and Rajasthan. Many households follow neither, and that is a legitimate choice too.
• They are a small part of muhurta. A proper muhurta for a wedding or griha pravesh looks at tithi, nakshatra, yoga, karana, the weekday and the season first; the kaals are only the last cut. If you need a window for a specific purpose, the muhurat finder does all of that and removes rahu kaal automatically.
• When you cannot avoid it, you cannot avoid it. A flight time, an exam, a hospital appointment or a government deadline is not yours to move. No tradition asks you to miss something that matters because of a 90-minute window, and we would not either.

We do not sell remedies for "starting in rahu kaal", and you do not need one.

Try it yourself

Open the panchang and choose your city to see today's rahu kaal, yamaganda, gulika, abhijit and both choghadiya tables, computed for your own sunrise and sunset. Pilgrims and families in two of the cities above can go straight to Varanasi or Mumbai. If you are planning something specific, such as moving house or buying a vehicle, the free muhurat finder returns whole windows that already avoid rahu kaal. And if you are new to the rest of the panchang and the chart it comes from, how to read your kundli is a good next read.