Today's Rahu Kaal: when it starts and ends

What is Rahu Kaal?

Rahu Kaal is one of eight equal divisions of the day, fixed by the weekday, and traditionally avoided for starting new auspicious work (beginning travel, a new venture, a house-warming).

It changes every day because sunrise and sunset shift with city and season, so knowing the correct Rahu Kaal time needs your city's actual sunrise-sunset, not a fixed clock time.

Yamaganda and Gulika Kaal are two more periods fixed the same way, by dividing the day into eight parts, traditionally considered less favourable.

How to read the times

• Rahu Kaal is worked out from the sunrise and sunset of the city you pick, so the time changes when the city does.
• By tradition you avoid starting something new in this window. Work already in progress is not meant to stop.
• Yamaganda and Gulika Kaal are two more windows that tradition treats as less favourable.

Common misreadings of Rahu Kaal

A common mix-up is treating 'Rahu Kaal' as if it names where the planet Rahu currently sits in the sky. It doesn't: Rahu Kaal is purely a division of daylight hours by weekday, unrelated to Rahu's actual longitude or transit position. The name refers to this period being 'ruled' by Rahu within this specific time-keeping scheme, not to any planetary calculation.

A second misreading assumes Rahu Kaal falls at the same clock time everywhere. It's derived from the local sunrise and sunset for a specific city, so the same weekday gives a different Rahu Kaal window in Delhi than in Mumbai, and a different one again for a diaspora reader checking it from New York or London.

A third misreading treats Rahu Kaal as a blanket ban on doing anything during that window. Classical practice specifically avoids starting new, deliberately chosen undertakings then (travel, a new venture, a house-warming); it was never meant to pause routine work, office hours, or something already in progress.