Chhath Puja
13 November 2026 · movable holiday — We greet the rising sun with gratitude.
Chhath Puja is an ancient Hindu festival honouring the Sun god Surya and Chhathi Maiya. It is most widely observed in Bihar, Jharkhand and eastern Uttar Pradesh in India, and in Nepal. It falls six days after Diwali, on the sixth day of the waxing moon in the month of Kartik, usually in October–November. Because it follows the lunisolar calendar, its date shifts each year. The rite lasts four days. Devotees bathe ritually, prepare simple vegetarian food and keep a strict fast of about 36 hours without food or even water. On the evening of the third day they gather at a river, pond or other body of water and offer gifts to the setting sun. At dawn on the fourth day they greet the rising sun and then break the fast. The bamboo baskets hold fruit, sugarcane and sweets such as thekua. The festival expresses gratitude to the sun for life and health.
Flying across the sky: An ethereal, bluish-silver figure made of luminous dots and fine lines, like a constellation: a woven bamboo basket of fruit gliding above a line of shimmering water, with a small radiant sun of star-points rising behind it
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