Rath Yatra 2027 रथ यात्रा

Why Rath Yatra is celebrated

Rath Yatra is the chariot festival of Lord Jagannath, a form of Vishnu and Krishna worshipped at the Shree Jagannath temple in Puri, Odisha. Once a year, Jagannath, his elder brother Balabhadra and his sister Subhadra leave the temple and ride in huge wooden chariots along the main street of Puri. In 2026 the festival falls on Thursday, 16 July.

The festival carries a simple message: the Lord comes out to meet his people. Entry inside the Puri temple is limited to Hindus, but on the day of the yatra anyone, of any faith, caste or nationality, can see the deities in the open and help pull the chariot ropes. Devotees believe that a glimpse of Jagannath on his chariot, or a touch of the rope, brings great spiritual merit. Cries of "Jai Jagannath" fill the town.

Many also read the yatra as a picture of the soul's journey, where the body is the chariot and the deity seated in it is the true self. For the people of Odisha, Jagannath is far more than a temple deity. He sits at the centre of their culture, language and calendar.

History and story of Rath Yatra

The worship of Jagannath is old and layered, with strands from tribal tradition, Vaishnavism and Shaivism. The present temple at Puri was built in the twelfth century under King Anantavarman Chodaganga Deva of the Eastern Ganga dynasty. Medieval poems and records describe the chariot festival, and foreign travellers wrote about it with awe. The English word "juggernaut", meaning an unstoppable force, comes from their accounts of these massive chariots.

According to temple tradition, the journey recalls Krishna's trip from Gokul to Mathura, or a visit by the three deities to the home of their aunt. Their destination, the Gundicha temple, is named after Queen Gundicha, wife of the legendary King Indradyumna, who is credited with building the first shrine. The deities stay there for about a week.

The wooden images of the three deities are unusual, with large round eyes and no complete hands or feet. A well known story explains why. The divine craftsman Vishwakarma agreed to carve them only if no one opened the door until he finished. When the impatient queen looked in early, he disappeared and left the images as they were. The images are replaced in a rare ceremony called Nabakalebara, held in years with an extra Ashadha month. The last one took place in 2015.

How Rath Yatra is celebrated

Preparations start months earlier. On Akshaya Tritiya, carpenters begin building three new chariots from fresh timber, and the chariots are taken apart after every festival. Jagannath rides Nandighosa, which has 16 wheels and a red and yellow canopy. Balabhadra's chariot, Taladhwaja, has 14 wheels, and Subhadra's chariot, Darpadalana, has 12.

About two weeks before the yatra, on Snana Purnima, the deities receive a grand bath with 108 pots of water. Tradition says they then fall ill, so they are kept out of public view for roughly a fortnight, a period called Anasara, and are given herbal treatment.

On the festival day, the deities are carried out of the temple in a swaying procession called Pahandi, with cymbals, drums and conch shells. The Gajapati king of Puri then performs Chhera Pahanra. He sweeps the chariot floors with a golden broom and sprinkles sandalwood water, a sign that even a king is only a servant before the Lord. Then thousands of devotees haul the chariots with thick ropes along the Bada Danda, the Grand Road, to the Gundicha temple, about three kilometres away.

On Hera Panchami, the fifth lunar day, Goddess Lakshmi is said to arrive at Gundicha, upset at being left behind. After about nine days, the return journey, Bahuda Yatra, brings the deities back. They appear in gold ornaments for Suna Besha and finally re-enter the main temple in the Niladri Bije ritual, when Jagannath is believed to offer rasagola to win back Lakshmi.

Rath Yatra across India

Puri remains the heart of the festival, but chariot processions take place across India. Ahmedabad holds one of the largest, starting from the Jagannath temple at Jamalpur and drawing lakhs of people. Mahesh, near Serampore in West Bengal, hosts one of the oldest Rath Yatras in the country. ISKCON temples in Kolkata, Delhi and many other cities pull decorated chariots with kirtan, and ISKCON has taken the festival abroad as the Festival of Chariots.

In North India, including Uttarakhand, local temples and devotee groups organise smaller yatras in which a decorated chariot is pulled through the market and prasad is shared with the crowd.