Durga Puja pandal hopping is Kolkata’s defining festival experience, running across five to six days each autumn (exact dates shift yearly based on the lunar calendar, typically falling in late September or October), when the city’s neighbourhoods compete to build the most elaborate temporary pandals housing the goddess’s idol.
North Kolkata is where the tradition runs deepest — Bagbazar Sarbojanin, one of the oldest community Durga Pujas in the city, and the pandals around College Square and Kumartuli (where most of the city’s idols are hand-built) represent the more traditional, heritage-focused side of the festival.
South Kolkata has become known for elaborate, big-budget theme pandals — Ekdalia Evergreen, Deshapriya Park, and New Alipore Suruchi Sangha regularly rebuild their pandals around an entirely new artistic theme each year, drawing crowds specifically to see the current year’s design rather than the idol alone.
A common route covers North Kolkata’s traditional pandals in the early evening, before the crowds peak, then moves south for the elaborate theme pandals later at night, when temperatures drop and the queues, while still long, move somewhat faster than during the day. Ashtami, the eighth day, sees the heaviest crowds of the festival and is generally the hardest day to move efficiently between multiple pandals.
Several central roads close to vehicle traffic during peak pandal-hopping hours, which makes route planning and drop-off points genuinely important — a driver who knows which roads to avoid and where to park saves considerably more time than the walking distance alone would suggest.
Chandrawanshi Tour & Travels’ Durga Puja car rental service and Durga Puja Parikrama tour package are both built around this exact routing challenge — book early, since our fleet fills up quickly every festival season.