Atla Taddi 2026

About Atla Taddi

Atla Taddi is a Telugu women's vrat for the goddess Gauri, kept in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana on the third night after Ashwayuja Purnima. In 2026 it falls on Wednesday, 28 October 2026. Women put gorintaku on their hands the evening before, fast from before sunrise, swing and sing through the day, and break the fast after moonrise with small atlu, or dosas.

The name tells you most of the day. Atlu are small dosas, and taddi or tadde is the Telugu form of tadiya, the third lunar day. So Atla Taddi is the third day on which you make atlu. In parts of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana people also call it Uyyala Panduga, the swing festival, or Gorintaku Panduga, the henna festival, after the two things girls look forward to most. Priests and puja guides call it Chandrodaya Gauri Vratam, the Gauri vow kept after moonrise.

Drik Panchang describes the atlu as wheat rotis or puris. In most Telugu kitchens they are dosas of rice and urad dal batter, which is what "attu" means in everyday Telugu. Families make whichever their mothers made.

How the date is set

Atla Taddi falls on Ashwayuja Bahula Tadiya: the third day of the waning fortnight of Ashwayuja, counted three nights after the full moon of Sharad Purnima. Telugu calendars are amanta, so the month ends at the new moon. North Indian purnimanta calendars call the same fortnight Kartik, which is why Karwa Chauth appears to fall in a different month even though it is the very next lunar day, the fourth.

Most years Atla Taddi comes the day before Karwa Chauth. When a tithi is short, panchangs can put both on the same date, and Telugu almanacs sometimes differ from each other by a day. Families go by their own panchangam. Moonrise matters because the fast ends with it. The moon usually rises a few minutes earlier in coastal Andhra than in Hyderabad, because the coast lies further east, so check the time for your own town.

It is not a government holiday. Neither Andhra Pradesh nor Telangana lists it, even among the optional holidays for 2026, so most women who keep it go to work or college that day.

From gorintaku to moonrise

The festival really starts the day before, which some calendars mark as Atla Taddi Bhogi.

1. Day before · Bhogi
   Gorintaku and getting ready

   Women and girls apply gorintaku, henna ground from fresh leaves, to their palms and feet in the evening. Doorways get garlands. Puja items are gathered: turmeric, kumkum, chamanti flowers, betel leaves, fruit, thread for the tora.

2. Before sunrise
   The pre-dawn meal

   A head bath, then rice cooked the night before, eaten with curd and gongura pachadi. It has to be finished before the sun comes up, because nothing more is eaten or drunk until the moon.

3. Through the day
   Swings, songs and the fast

   Swings go up on trees and in courtyards. Girls go out in groups, singing the Atla Taddi rhymes and taking turns on the uyyala. In some villages women bathe in a river or pond and float lamps on the water.

4. Evening
   Gauri puja

   Gauri and Ganesha, shaped from turmeric, sit on a kalasham. Women tie a tora, a thread with eleven knots, on the wrist, recite the Gauri ashtottaram or Lalita Sahasranamam and hear the vrata katha.

5. After moonrise
   Atlu, vayanam, the first meal

   Women look at the moon, offer atlu to Gauri and give vayanam to other married women. They take akshintalu, blessed rice, from them, and only then eat.

The katha has two strands, and households tell one or both. In one, the sage Narada tells Gauri, who wants Shiva as her husband, to keep this vow, and she does. In the other, a princess grows faint from fasting, her brothers show her a false moon in a mirror, she eats too early and her marriage goes wrong until she keeps the vow properly the next year. North Indian readers will recognise that story from Karwa Chauth, where the sister is called Veeravati.

A woman who takes up the vow traditionally keeps it for ten years and then closes it with an udyapana, at which, in one puja guide's account, ten married women each receive ten atlu. The counts differ by family and by source: some give ten atlu to each guest, some eleven, and one Andhra account has women making twenty-one. None of these is wrong. Ask the person keeping it what her family does.

Food, and what changes by region

The plate after moonrise is simple: atlu with a chutney, kudumulu or undrallu (steamed rice-flour balls that also go into the puja) and, in many homes, pala thalikalu, rice-flour strands cooked in milk and jaggery. In the Visakhapatnam and Vizianagaram districts, women often break the fast with timmanam, a rice and coconut payasam. Pootarekulu, the paper-thin rice sweet filled with jaggery, shows up on some plates as well.

The festival is mainly kept by Telugu women, married and unmarried. Married women pray for their husband's health and long life; girls pray for a good husband, and for many of them the day is mostly about henna, swings and staying out with friends. Telugu families in Bengaluru, Chennai and the United States keep it too, usually a day before their North Indian neighbours fast for Karwa Chauth.

In Telangana it comes about ten days after Bathukamma ends, the other women's festival for Gauri, and less than two weeks before Diwali.

Writing to someone keeping the fast

Atlu

Small dosas; the offering and the first food after the fast

Tadiya / Taddi

The third lunar day of a fortnight

Bahula

The waning fortnight, after the full moon

Gorintaku

Henna made from fresh leaves, applied the evening before

Uyyala

A swing, tied to a tree or a beam for the day

Vayanam

The gift of atlu, fruit and betel leaves given to married women after the puja

Muttaiduva

A married woman whose husband is living; the traditional receiver of vayanam

Akshintalu

Rice mixed with turmeric, given as a blessing

Tora

The eleven-knot thread tied on the wrist during the puja

Udyapana

The closing rite after a vow has been kept for its set number of years

How to wish someone on Atla Taddi

An Atla Taddi wish works best when it notices the day itself: the gorintaku and how dark it turned, the swing, the atlu, the long wait for the moon. Someone keeping it has had no food or water since before dawn, so keep the message short, offer help, and send a second one after moonrise. "Atla Taddi subhakankshalu" is the Telugu greeting. With a widowed or divorced friend, wish her for the day and the women around her, not for a husband's long life.

Write a few lines in your own words, pick a design and share it as one link on WhatsApp, Instagram or anywhere else. They open an animated card made just for them, with no app and no sign-up.

Language tip: English, Telugu.

When is Atla Taddi in each year?

Atla Taddi is set by the Hindu lunisolar calendar, so it falls on a different date each year. In 2027 it falls 10 days earlier than in 2026.

Frequently asked questions