What is Rahu Kaal, and why is it avoided?
Rahu Kaal (राहु काल) is the eighth of the daylight span that the weekday assigns to Rahu, the Moon's north node. Divide the interval from local sunrise to local sunset into eight equal parts and one of them belongs to Rahu; on a typical Indian day that part runs about ninety minutes. What the tradition actually asks is narrow: do not begin something new inside it, such as a journey, a purchase, a signing, a ceremony or a first meeting. Work already under way is not paused, and routine activity is not restricted. It is a scheduling convention for auspicious beginnings, and the classical texts attach no penalty to setting it aside. If the window sits awkwardly in your day, the tradition's own answer is to start a little before it or a little after, not to give up the day.
How is Rahu Kaal calculated for today?
Three inputs decide it: your local sunrise, your local sunset, and the weekday. Divide sunrise-to-sunset into eight equal parts, number them one to eight, then take the part the weekday owns: the 8th on Sunday, 2nd on Monday, 7th on Tuesday, 5th on Wednesday, 6th on Thursday, 4th on Friday and 3rd on Saturday. Two consequences fall straight out of that list. Rahu never takes the first part, so Rahu Kaal never begins at sunrise on any weekday. And Sunday's is the eighth part, so on Sunday it ends exactly at sunset. Nothing in the rule depends on where the planets actually are, which is why the window can be published a year ahead, but all of it depends on the sunrise used, and sunrise is local.
Why is Rahu Kaal a different time in Delhi and Chennai?
Because the whole calculation is anchored to local sunrise, and sunrise is a local event. On Thursday 10 September 2026 the sixth eighth of the day (Thursday's Rahu Kaal) ran from 1:51 to 3:25 pm in Delhi, 1:37 to 3:09 pm in Chennai, 2:07 to 3:40 pm in Mumbai and 1:06 to 2:39 pm in Kolkata. Kolkata and Mumbai are more than an hour apart on that one date, in one country, on one clock. Most of the spread comes from longitude, since India keeps a single clock across roughly thirty degrees of it; the rest comes from latitude, which sets how long the day is and therefore how long each eighth runs. A national "today's Rahu Kaal" figure is right for one meridian and wrong everywhere else, so enter your own city above.
When does Rahu Kaal fall on Wednesday, Thursday or Saturday?
Each part is a fixed fraction of the daylight, so the weekday tells you roughly where in the day to look before you know any clock time at all. The seven fall into three groups: two weekdays put the window in the morning, two hang it on solar midday, and three push it into the afternoon or later. Those positions never move. What moves is their length and their clock time, and both of those come from the sunrise and sunset of the exact day and place you ask about, which is why the table above is cut from your own city rather than published nationally.
Monday and Saturday: the morning windows
Monday takes the second part, so its window opens shortly after sunrise and is generally over before mid-morning; on a twelve-hour Indian day it lands somewhere around half past seven to nine. Saturday takes the third part, a quarter to three-eighths of the way through the day, so mid-morning proper. These two are the earliest of the seven, and they are the pair most likely to collide with the start of a working day or the opening of a shop.
Friday and Wednesday: the two that meet at solar midday
Solar midday is the exact midpoint between sunrise and sunset, and therefore the boundary between the fourth and fifth eighths. Friday takes the fourth, which ends exactly at solar midday, and Wednesday takes the fifth, which begins exactly at solar midday. The two windows are back to back across that boundary and never overlap. Note that solar midday is not 12:00 on the clock; in most of India it falls some way either side of it, because one timezone is stretched across about thirty degrees of longitude.
Thursday, Tuesday and Sunday: afternoon into sunset
Thursday takes the sixth part, mid-afternoon; Tuesday the seventh, late afternoon; and Sunday the eighth, the last stretch of daylight before sunset. Sunday's is the only one of the seven that ends exactly at sunset, since the eighth part is the last one there is. These three are the group most likely to sit across an evening departure, an evening ceremony, or the closing hours of a business, and Sunday's in particular leaves no daylight after it to fall back on.
Which sunrise does the Rahu Kaal timing depend on?
Sunrise has more than one definition, and the choice shifts every window on this page. We use the ordinary one, the sunrise almanacs and most online panchangs show: the moment the upper edge of the Sun clears the horizon, with atmospheric refraction included. Some printed panchangs use the older classical definition instead, the moment the Sun's geometric centre reaches the true horizon with no refraction, which in India comes about three to four minutes later and sets three to four minutes earlier. That makes the classical day some seven minutes shorter, each eighth about a minute shorter, and its Rahu Kaal a minute or two earlier. A difference of that size between two sources is the convention, not an error, which is why we state ours rather than leave you to guess.
What are Yamaganda and Gulika Kalam?
Two further eighths of the same daylight span, cut at the same boundaries and assigned to different agents. Neither is a competitor to Rahu Kaal; they are the other two windows a panchang prints beside it, and each weekday owns one of each. Two edge cases follow from the numbers: Thursday's Yamaganda and Saturday's Gulika are both the first part, so they open at sunrise itself. All three windows are shown together above, because avoiding Rahu Kaal and then starting inside Gulika defeats the exercise.
Yamaganda Kalam: the window assigned to Yama
Yamaganda takes the 5th part on Sunday, then the 4th, 3rd, 2nd and 1st through Thursday, and the 7th and 6th on Friday and Saturday; it is avoided for beginnings much as Rahu Kaal is. Read across the week that is a straight countdown from Sunday to Thursday, which then wraps to the end of the day for the remaining two. Thursday's is the first part, so on Thursdays it opens at sunrise and is finished before the Rahu Kaal window has begun.
Gulika Kalam: the window assigned to Gulika
Gulika Kalam belongs to Gulika, a shadowy sub-planet of Saturn, and simply counts downwards: the 7th part on Sunday through to the 1st on Saturday, one step earlier each weekday with no wrap at all. Tradition reads it differently from the other two: rather than something to avoid outright, it is held to make whatever starts inside it recur, which is why some households deliberately choose it for a repeat purchase or a renewal and avoid it for anything they would not want repeated.
Which Choghadiya falls inside Rahu Kaal?
Both systems cut the same daylight into the same eight parts at the same boundaries, so Rahu Kaal always coincides with exactly one Choghadiya period, never half of one. Running the weekday rotations against the Rahu order gives a fixed answer for every day: Sunday's Rahu Kaal is Udveg, Monday's is Kaal, Tuesday's is Shubh, Wednesday's is Rog, Thursday's is Amrit, Friday's is Kaal and Saturday's is Rog. On five of the seven days the overlap costs nothing, because the covered period was one to pass over anyway. Only Tuesday and Thursday put a genuinely good window inside Rahu Kaal, and the ordinary practice is to skip that one and take the next. Our Choghadiya page marks both sets.
What can you actually do during Rahu Kaal?
Almost everything. Rahu Kaal concerns the start of an auspicious or consequential undertaking and nothing else. Eating, working, studying, continuing a journey already begun, sitting an exam that was scheduled for you, going to hospital, answering an emergency: none of these are held back, and the tradition has never asked anyone to sit still for ninety minutes. Many households treat the window as time for routine work, cleaning, reading or japa. Some observe it for small decisions too; others keep it only for weddings and property. Both are normal, and neither is a stricter reading than the other. We publish the window as information, not as a rule you are obliged to keep.
Does Rahu Kaal apply at night, or to tomorrow?
The classical rule divides daylight only (sunrise to sunset), so the window shown here is a daytime one and by that rule there is none after dark. Some regional almanacs extend the same eightfold division to the night span, sunset to the next sunrise, and print a separate night figure; it is a later refinement rather than the standard, so we do not fold it into the daytime answer. For tomorrow, change the date in the form above rather than shifting today's window by a fixed amount. Tomorrow is a different weekday, so it takes a different one of the eight parts, and sunrise will have moved as well.
How this is calculated
Nirayana rashis with the Lahiri (Chitrapaksha) ayanamsha and whole-sign bhavas, computed to arc-second accuracy. Sunrise and sunset are the ones almanacs show, the Sun's upper edge with refraction, so the daily windows agree with the calendars you compare them with. More on our method.