Gangaur is a very famous festival of Rajasthan and is also celebrated in MP and Gujarat. The women worship Gauri on this festival and the festivity around is just incredible. This is a festival of faithfulness, married ladies and harvest. Gauti symbolizes marital happiness and bliss and the women who are unmarried pray this goddess to get a suitable match. The sweet delicacy named Ghewar is very famous during this festival and s prepared and distributed amongst their loved ones to celebrate this festival. The procession starts from City Palace and ends at Talkotra.

Festival Tour

On this festival, the women fast and consume food only once in a day. They also make idols of Gauri and Isar with clay and decorate them as per their will with ornaments and clothes. In earlier days, the rich Rajput families used to make idols out of wood and get them painted by experts also known as ‘Matherans’. The ladies dress up to the ‘T’ and wear the best of traditional clothes with heavy ornaments. They leave no stone unturned and apply mehendi on their feet and hands. They then carry the earthen pots with many holes name ‘ghudilas’ and a lamp inside it is lit and is carried on their heads. Gifts in the form of jiggery, sweets, money are given by the family members to those women who have kept fasts. This is a 10 day long affair and then pots are then broken and thrown in rivers, lakes or even tanks. Also the clay idols are flown into the rivers by the women and mark the end of the festival.

This is not less than affair when the streets are beautifully decked with mostly every woman dressed in the traditional attires and colorful shows are put up on streets.

Significance of Gangaur festival

Goddess Parvati is worshipped during this festival by married and unmarried women who long for the well-being and long life for their husbands and ask for a good match if unmarried.

Main Attraction of Gangaur Festival

The last three days of the festival are the most happening as the Gauri’s are dressed in beautiful cloths and ornaments and the women who have kept their fast dress their dolls as per their will. A procession is taken out during the afternoons where the idols are placed on the top of their head and songs of Gauri and Isar are sung by those women. On the last date, the idols and the pots are then flown into the water and the fast is completed by the women where the festival also comes to an end.

How to Reach

Jaipur is well connected to the rest of India. It is connected to Delhi, Udaipur, Mumbai, Aurangabad, Jodhpur, Varanasi and Calcutta by the means of domestic flights.

All the major parts of India have trains to Jaipur. The famous Shatabdi and the Intercity connects Delhi and Jaipur. This train is a fully air conditioned train and is preferred by most of the people travelling from this part of India.

Buses from Delhi, Gujarat and Mumbai are available for Jaipur and Jaipur is connected well by road to the major cities of India. A comfortable road journey can be expected by those travelling via roadways. It is a cheaper option and regular buses, deluxe buses, government run buses and AC coaches can be found for the passengers as per their convenience. Options of private cars and taxis can also be availed.