Choghadiya today

Choghadiya (also chogadiya or chaughadia, “four ghadis”) is a traditional way, popular in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Mumbai and among Gujarati and Marwari families everywhere, to pick a good time to open a shop, sign a deal, start a journey or hold a ceremony. The day (sunrise to sunset) and the night (sunset to the next sunrise) are each split into 8 parts, and each part carries one of 7 names. This free tool works out all 16 for your city on any date from 1900 to 2100, and picks the first one that suits what you plan to do.

A new ledger in Coimbatore

Hitesh runs a textile trading office on Big Bazaar Street in Coimbatore, where many Gujarati families have traded for generations. For the new account books after Diwali he wants a Labh choghadiya, as his father always did, but not one that falls in Rahu kaal or a vela. He picks the date, Coimbatore and Business. The answer gives the first clean Labh or Amrit, and the note under it shows which good choghadiya of the day fall in Rahu kaal or Vaar vela, with the clean one to use instead. The Next 7 days table lets him pick another day if the morning is busy.

The seven choghadiya

How the times are worked out

1. Find sunrise, sunset and the next sunrise for your city. Sunrise is when the top edge of the sun meets the horizon, allowing 0.833° for refraction and the sun’s size; the sun’s position comes from the VSOP87 theory as set out in Jean Meeus’s Astronomical Algorithms (2nd edition, 1998).
2. Divide the day into 8 equal parts and the night into 8 equal parts. In Chennai in October a day part is about 89 minutes and a night part about 92.
3. The day starts with the weekday’s own choghadiya: Sunday Udveg, Monday Amrit, Tuesday Rog, Wednesday Labh, Thursday Shubh, Friday Char, Saturday Kaal. It then follows the fixed order Udveg, Char, Labh, Amrit, Kaal, Shubh, Rog.
4. The night starts with the choghadiya of the fifth weekday counted from today (Sunday night starts with Shubh) and moves five places on each time.
5. Three marks are added, as drikpanchang.com shows them (read 17 October 2026): Vaar vela, one fixed day part per weekday (Sunday 4th, Monday 7th, Tuesday 2nd, Wednesday 5th, Thursday 8th, Friday 3rd, Saturday 6th); Kaal vela, every Kaal by day; and Kaal ratri, every Labh at night. Rahu kaal is one eighth of the day, so it always covers one whole day choghadiya.

A choghadiya that suits your purpose but falls in Rahu kaal or a vela is shown, flagged, and skipped for the answer.

How accurate is it?

We checked the tool against drikpanchang.com in October 2026 for Chennai on each day from 18 to 24 October 2026 and Ahmedabad on 8 November 2026 (Diwali). All 16 names and their order, all vela marks and every start and end time matched, to the minute or within one minute (Drik shows the minute that has started; we round to the nearest minute).

Common mistakes

• Using a table from another city. Ahmedabad’s sunrise in November is about 45 minutes later than Chennai’s, so every choghadiya moves with it.
• Forgetting the night belongs to the date. A choghadiya at 2 am on Tuesday is part of Monday’s night, until Tuesday’s sunrise.
• Taking a good name inside Rahu kaal. Many families skip Amrit, Shubh or Labh when it falls in Rahu kaal or a vela; the answer does that for you.
• Mixing it with Tamil nalla neram. Nalla neram comes from the Gowri panchangam, a different system with its own names.

For the five limbs of the day, see Today’s panchang; for Rahu kaal across a week or a month, see the Rahu kaal tool.