Mewar · Arid Northwest
Festivals
| Festival | When | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Gangaur | Chaitra (March–April), eighteen days ending on Chaitra Shukla Tritiya | Women make, dress and feed clay or wooden images of Gauri and Isar for eighteen days and then carry them to water on the last. Udaipur's procession comes down to Gangaur Ghat on Pichola and the images go into the lake from the steps. Unmarried girls fast for a good match, married women for the husband they have. |
| Mewar Festival | Alongside Gangaur, in Chaitra | The tourism-department festival built around the Gangaur immersion at Udaipur, adding a boat procession on Pichola, folk performance and fireworks. It is a modern overlay on a domestic ritual, and the two run in parallel in the same three days. |
| Jal Jhulni Ekadashi | Bhadrapada Shukla Ekadashi (August–September) | The day the deities are taken out to be swung and bathed in water. It is one of the very few occasions on which Shrinathji leaves the Nathdwara haveli, and the procession — with the image, the musicians and a crowd that fills the town — is the single largest event in the Mewar Vaishnav year alongside Annakut. |
| Gavri | Forty days from the day after Raksha Bandhan (August–October) | The Bhil ritual theatre season on the Aravalli slope. A village that has taken it on performs daily for forty days at its own and neighbouring villages, at the cost of a substantial part of the agricultural season — which is why a village generally takes it on only once in several years. |
| Annakut at Nathdwara | The day after Diwali (October–November) | A mountain of cooked rice is heaped before the deity and then released. At Nathdwara the distribution is itself the event, and the town's dairies and sweet shops run their whole year's peak around it. |
| Hariyali Amavasya | Shravan Amavasya (July–August) | A two-day fair in Udaipur marking the first real greening of the hills. The second day is by long custom reserved for women, and the fair is held around Fateh Sagar with the lake at its fullest. |
| Jauhar Mela | Chaitra (usually around the fort's commemorative date) | An annual gathering at Chittorgarh fort at which Rajput organisations commemorate the three sieges and the jauhars that ended them. It is a modern commemorative event, held on a medieval site, and it draws large numbers from across the region. |
| Maharana Pratap Jayanti | Jyeshtha Shukla Tritiya (May–June) | Processions at Udaipur, Haldighati and Chavand marking Pratap's birth, with a ceremonial honouring of horses that ties the day to the memory of Chetak. |
| Shitala Saptami | Chaitra (March–April) | The day the kitchen fire is not lit. Everything eaten is cooked the day before and served cold, which makes it the one festival in the region defined by the food not being hot. |
The festival calendar of Mewar — what is celebrated, when it falls and what happens. (9)