Most Vedic apps show the same Rahu Kaal for all of India, calculated from a generic IST formula. But Rahu Kaal is 1/8th of the actual daytime from today's sunrise at your location. Bhopal (77.4°E) sunrise is 21 min later than IST meridian, very close to Delhi's timing (77.2°E, 21 min). Bhopal and Delhi have nearly identical Rahu Kaal windows. CosmosPandit uses precision astronomy (Jean Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms) to calculate the exact sunrise at Bhopal's coordinates (23.259900°N, 77.412600°E), giving you the correct Rahu Kaal every day.
Rahu Kaal is the roughly 90-minute window each day ruled by the shadow planet Rahu, traditionally avoided for starting anything new, travel, deals, purchases, or ceremonies. It is the eighth part of the daytime (sunrise to sunset), and which part it falls in is fixed by the weekday, so the clock time shifts daily and by city.
Bhopal, the Lake City, sits near some of India's most sacred sites, the 11th-century Bhojpur Shiva temple with its massive unfinished linga, the ancient Buddhist stupas of Sanchi 46km away, and Pachmarhi's Jatashankar cave temple. For Bhopal's residents, major festivals like Navratri, Mahashivratri and Ganesh Chaturthi all revolve around precise Muhurat timing.
During Rahu Kaal each day, residents of Bhopal are advised to hold off on launching new ventures, signing contracts or business deals, and taking out loans. This window is not favourable for beginning important journeys, so plan your departures outside these hours when possible. Weddings, property registrations, and vehicle purchases are best scheduled well away from this period, as initiating such significant commitments under Rahu's shadow can invite unexpected complications.
If you are already midway through a task, there is no need to stop, as continuing work already in progress is perfectly fine during Rahu Kaal. This time is actually well suited for prayer, chanting, and quiet meditation, and devotees who recite the Rahu mantra or offer blue flowers and sesame seeds as remedies may find it especially powerful. Planning sessions, studying, reading, and routine household chores all carry on without any concern during this window. Think of it as a pause for reflection rather than a full stop to your day.
India uses a single timezone (IST, UTC+5:30) across 30° of longitude. But sunrise follows the sun, not the clock, every 1° of longitude, 4 minutes difference. Kolkata’s sunrise is 80 minutes earlier than Mumbai’s on the same IST day, so Rahu Kaal falls at genuinely different times in each city.
This Rahu Kaal page is just the start. The CosmosPandit app gives every Indian the full Vedic astrology toolkit, in their own language, with timings precise for their city:
Almost identical, Bhopal (77.41°E) and Delhi (77.21°E) differ by only 0.2 degrees in longitude, making sunrise less than 1 minute apart. CosmosPandit still calculates each city precisely.
Yes. Set your city to Bhopal in the CosmosPandit app. The Muhurat screen shows today's best windows for travel, ritual and darshan, with Rahu Kaal marked so you can plan the 46km drive to Sanchi accordingly.
Yes. CosmosPandit is fully available in Hindi, all timings, daily Rashifal and Panchang in Hindi. Download the app and select Hindi from language settings.
Astronomically precise Rahu Kaal timings for 25 major Indian cities.