Odisha Festivals: Ratha Yatra, Raja Parba, Bali Jatra and Nuakhai

Odisha's festivals follow the farming year and the old sea trade as much as the gods. Four of them tell you a lot about the state: the god coming out to the people, the earth resting, the boats sailing for the islands, and the first rice of the year.

Ratha Yatra

In Ashadha, June or July

Raja Parba

Three days, mid-June

Bali Jatra

Kartika Purnima, Cuttack

Nuakhai

Western Odisha's new rice

At a glance

AshadhaRatha YatraJagannath's chariot festivalMithuna SankrantiRaja ParbaThree days for the earth and for womenKartika PurnimaBali JatraRemembering the sea voyagesBhadravaNuakhaiThe new rice of western Odisha

Ratha Yatra

On the second day of the bright fortnight of Ashadha, Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra leave the Puri temple on three wooden chariots, built new every year, and are pulled by vast crowds to the Gundicha temple. After a week they return in the Bahuda Yatra.

Koraput holds its own Ratha Yatra at Sabara Srikhetra on the same day, with tribal communities taking part in traditional dress. It falls in the monsoon, when the waterfalls are at their fullest.

Raja Parba

Raja is a three-day festival in mid-June, the middle day being Mithuna Sankranti, when the Sun enters Gemini and the monsoon is due. Tradition holds that the earth, like a woman, rests in these days, so nobody ploughs or digs.

• Swings: girls and young women wear new clothes and swing on rope swings hung from trees, singing Raja songs.
• Poda pitha: the cake of the festival, rice and black gram batter with coconut and jaggery, baked slowly until the outside is dark.
• Rest: household work stops for the women of the house, and families visit each other and play games.

Bali Jatra

Bali Jatra is held in Cuttack on the banks of the Mahanadi, starting on Kartika Purnima, the full moon of Kartika. It remembers the sadhabas, the sea merchants of old Kalinga, who sailed from Odisha to Bali, Java and Sumatra in the season after the monsoon.

Today it is a huge open-air fair of food, crafts and rides. Across Odisha that morning, people float small boats made of banana bark, paper or cork, with lamps inside, on rivers and ponds. This is boita bandana, the worship of the boats.

Nuakhai

Nuakhai is the festival of new rice in western Odisha, around Sambalpur and Bargarh. It falls on Bhadrava Shukla Panchami, the fifth day of the bright fortnight of Bhadrava. The first grain of the new crop is offered to the goddess, Samaleswari in Sambalpur and the village deity elsewhere, and then the family eats it together.

Families who live away come home for it, and after the meal younger people touch the feet of their elders. Friends greet each other with Nuakhai juhar, and the evening brings Dalkhai and other folk dances.

Festival dates

Most of these festivals follow the Moon, so their dates move each year. Every date and its rituals are on the Odia calendar, and the festivals worth planning a Koraput trip around are on the Koraput festivals page.