Sheetala Ashtami 2027: Basoda Date, Saptami and Satam

Sheetala Ashtami (शीतला अष्टमी), kept across Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana under the name Basoda (बसोड़ा), falls in 2027 on Tuesday 30 March, the eighth day after Holi. Households that keep the Saptami instead mark it on Monday 29 March. Both days are clean this year: each tithi holds exactly one sunrise, in every city this page tests, so neither date needs a choice between two mornings. Gujarat’s Shitala Satam is a separate date in August, worked out further down.

When the Saptami and Ashtami Run

Neither tithi is in the site’s festival table, so both spans come from its tithi code, which is checked on every build against the opening and closing instants of 86 festival-table rows and agrees with all of them to within 1 min.

• Krishna Saptami: 15:05 on Sunday 28 March to 17:11 on Monday 29 March
• Krishna Ashtami: 17:11 on Monday 29 March to 19:40 on Tuesday 30 March

The Saptami opens in the afternoon, after the 28 March sunrise has already gone to the Shashthi, so its first dawn is 29 March (New Delhi sunrise 06:15). The Ashtami takes over at 17:11 that same Monday, a little over an hour before the 18:37 sunset, and is still current at the 06:14 sunrise of 30 March. It ends at 19:40, after that evening’s 18:37 sunset. A calendar that dates the observance by the sunrise tithi therefore has one candidate for each: 29 March for the Saptami, 30 March for the Ashtami.

Why “Eight Days After Holi” Works

Holi in 2027 is Monday 22 March, and the daily panchang has Purnima at that sunrise. The purnimanta calendars used across the north begin Chaitra with the dark fortnight that follows that full moon, which is why the festival is called Chaitra Krishna Ashtami there. Calendars that end the month at the new moon, as in Gujarat and Maharashtra, give the same fortnight to Phalguna instead; the tithi and the date are unchanged. Counting from Holi’s date, the Ashtami sunrise lands eight days on, which is where the familiar “eighth day after Holi” comes from. The fortnight closes with the Amavasya sunrise of Tuesday 6 April. The month as a whole is laid out on the Chaitra month 2027 page, and the Holi date itself has a Holi 2027 page. Two more Chaitra observances kept in Rajasthan have pages of their own: the Dasha Mata vrat and Gangaur.

Ten Cities, Read at Their Own Sunrise

A tithi begins and ends at the same instant everywhere in India; sunrise does not. Each cell below is the tithi current at that city’s own sunrise, worked out with the solar function behind the city panchang pages, for the four mornings around the festival.

Every row reads the same. On 30 March the earliest dawn on the list is Lucknow’s at 05:59 and the latest is Jodhpur’s at 06:31, and even at the latest of them the Ashtami still has more than 13 hours to run. No city here gives its almanac a reason to move either day.

Basoda: Cooked the Day Before

The name comes from बासी, food kept from an earlier day. Rajasthani custom, shared by households in Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, has the family cook everything for the festival on the day before and light no stove on the day itself. Sweet rice made with jaggery and puris are common on the plate, though the menu is a family matter. In the morning the women of the house take a share of that food to the Sheetala shrine as the offering, and the household eats from what remains, cold, through the day. For Ashtami households the cooking day is Monday 29 March; by the tithi reckoning above, that evening already belongs to the Ashtami, since it opens before sunset. Saptami households shift the whole sequence a day earlier and cook on Sunday 28 March.

This page describes the custom as families keep it and makes no claim about what the worship or the cold meal does for anyone who keeps it.

Sheetala Mata in Temple Images

In the iconographic tradition of north India, Sheetala is shown seated on a donkey, holding a broom in one hand and a pot (kalash) in the other. Her name is built on शीतल, “cool”. The calendar decides the tithi; which of the two days a household keeps, and the form its puja takes, is handed down within the family.

Shitala Satam in Gujarat: Tuesday 24 August

Gujarati calendar custom puts Shitala Satam on the Krishna Saptami of Shravana, counting months amanta, which is the Saptami just before Janmashtami. It comes at the end of a short run: Randhan Chhath, the cooking day, on the Shashthi, then Shitala Satam, when the cold food is eaten, then Janmashtami. Read by sunrise tithi, as everywhere on this page:

• Randhan Chhath (Krishna Shashthi at sunrise): Monday 23 August
• Shitala Satam (Krishna Saptami at sunrise): Tuesday 24 August; the Saptami runs from 20:53 on 23 August to 20:25 on 24 August
• Krishna Ashtami at sunrise: Wednesday 25 August

Ahmedabad and Surat give the same three tithis at their own sunrises as New Delhi does. The Ashtami opens at 20:25 on the evening of 24 August, which is why the festival table, reading the tithi at midnight, also puts Janmashtami 2027 on 24 August. The table’s Ashtami span and the site’s computed one agree to within 1 min. The rest of that month is on the August 2027 vrat and tyohar list.

Sheetala Ashtami 2027 at a Glance

• Sheetala Ashtami / Basoda: Tuesday 30 March, by sunrise tithi, in every city tested
• Sheetala Saptami: Monday 29 March
• Krishna Ashtami span: 17:11 on 29 March to 19:40 on 30 March
• Sunrise and sunset on 30 March (New Delhi): 06:14 and 18:37
• Shitala Satam (Gujarat): Tuesday 24 August, after Randhan Chhath on Monday 23 August

The other observances of the month are on the March 2027 vrat and tyohar list. For sunrise and sunset in your own town, use the panchang tool; the festival hub indexes the observances in the site’s festival tables.