Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda & Gulika Kaal

What is Rahu Kaal?

Rahu Kaal (also spelt Rahu Kalam) is a roughly 90-minute window that occurs once every day, traditionally treated as inauspicious for starting new or important undertakings — travel, a wedding ceremony, signing documents, launching a business, or a new venture. It falls at a different time each day because it is tied to sunrise and sunset, not to the clock, and it shifts through the day across the week following a fixed weekday sequence explained below.

The belief is calendar-based, not chart-based: Rahu Kaal applies to everyone equally on a given day in a given place, regardless of a person's own birth chart. Ongoing work, routine tasks, and things already in motion are generally considered fine to continue through it — the caution is mainly about beginning something new.

How Rahu Kaal is calculated — step by step

1. Get today's sunrise and sunset for your location. Rahu Kaal is derived purely from daylight hours, so the exact time zone and coordinates matter.
2. Divide the daylight span into 8 equal parts. Each part is roughly 90 minutes on a day close to the equinox, but genuinely varies — a long summer day gives longer parts, a short winter day gives shorter ones.
3. Identify today's weekday. Each day of the week is assigned one specific eighth of the daylight span as its Rahu Kaal (see the sequence below).
4. Read off the clock window for that eighth on today's date, at your location — that is today's Rahu Kaal.
5. Use the calculator above rather than a fixed table: because it depends on your exact sunrise/sunset, the same weekday's Rahu Kaal window looks different in Delhi than in Chennai, and different in June than in December.

The weekday sequence

Which eighth of the daylight span is "Rahu Kaal" is fixed by the day of the week, in this order:

Notice Sunday and Saturday sit toward the later part of the day while Monday sits early — this is why Rahu Kaal seems to "move" through the afternoon as the week goes on. The underlying rule never changes; only the sunrise/sunset times that anchor it do.

Why Rahu Kaal matters

Rahu is one of the two shadow planets (chaya grahas) in Vedic astrology, associated with illusion, sudden disruption and things not going as planned. The tradition holds that a fresh start made during Rahu Kaal inherits some of that unsettled quality, so many households and businesses in India still avoid scheduling muhurats — auspicious beginnings — inside this window. It is one time-based factor among several; astrologers weigh it alongside Choghadiya, Abhijit Muhurat and the day's full Panchang before recommending a timing — no single window makes or breaks an outcome. If you want a reading grounded in your own chart rather than the day's general calendar, you can also check your running dasha.