Published on: 14/10/2026

Last edited on: 14/10/2026

Ganeshotsav is a 10-day festival celebrated in praise of Lord Ganesha, a Hindu god worshipped for his powers to remove obstacles. His presence is considered auspicious. And hence rituals worshipping him are performed before the start of any new venture for e.g. marriages, housewarming, new business, construction, etc.

During this festival, devotees all over India create pandals (makeshift bamboo encasements) with various themes and sculpt Ganesha’s matching statues. It’s always super fun hopping from pandal to pandal getting repeatedly stunned by devotees’ creativity. This year’s edition of the festival was celebrated from 14th to 23th September 2026, and I was in my hometown for a day to enjoy the festival. To give you an idea of the scale of celebration: I spent 6 hours in a single evening walking through tightly packed lanes in a small radius of 500 m. And that wasn’t enough to cover all the pandals in that area! This is a minuscule part of the city. Imagine the number of pandals whole city would have!!

This photoblog is a collection of few of the pandals I liked where photography was allowed:

Outside a pandal, a Marathi band was performing. Their energy was super infectious. I was almost dancing the whole time. Look at their enthusiasm, endurance (they had already been performing for an hour) and coordination, it was super awesome!!