Quick answer: Ghughutiya — also called Kale Kauva or Ghughuti Tyar — is Kumaon's celebration of Makar Sankranti (Uttarayani). In 2027 it falls on 14–15 January: the ghughuts, sweet fried dough shapes, are made and strung into necklaces on the eve, and at dawn children wear them and call the crows to eat — kale kauva kale, ghughuti mala khale.
Ask a Kumaoni living anywhere in the world what they miss most about winter in the hills and there is a fair chance the answer is a fried piece of sweet dough shaped like a bird. Ghughutiya is Kumaon's most beloved children's festival — the one built entirely around a treat, a necklace, and a conversation with crows.
What Ghughutiya Is
Ghughutiya is the Kumaoni observance of Makar Sankranti — the sun's entry into Capricorn and the start of Uttarayana, its six-month northern course. Across India this day is Pongal, Lohri's morrow, Khichdi, Uttarayan; in Kumaon it is Ghughuti Tyar, and its hero is the ghughut.
The timing carries real weight in the hills. Mid-January is the cold trough of the mountain year — fields resting, snow on the high ridges, the shortest days just past. Makar Sankranti is the turn: from this day the sun strengthens, and the slow climb toward spring and Phool Dei begins. The festival celebrates that turn with warmth in its most literal forms — deep-fried sweets, morning fires, and a fair on a riverbank.
Making the Ghughuts
On the eve of Sankranti, kitchens across Kumaon turn out the ghughuts. The dough is simple and rich: wheat flour kneaded with jaggery dissolved in warm milk or water and a good amount of ghee, sometimes scented with fennel. The kneaded dough is shaped by hand — and the shapes are the festival's folk art:
- the ghughuti itself, a plump little bird
- damru — the two-headed drum of Shiva
- dadim ka phool — the pomegranate flower
- knives, swords, baskets and rings, according to the house's tradition and the children's demands
The shapes are deep-fried in ghee or oil to a deep brown, cooled, and then strung onto thread into necklaces — a ghughut maala — usually alternating with pieces of orange or segments of sugarcane. One necklace per child, hung up overnight, not to be eaten before the crows have had theirs.
The shaping of the dough belongs to the same hand-craft instinct as everything in our Aipan pages — a household making its own ritual objects from kitchen materials, the way Aipan is drawn from rice paste. In many homes the morning of Sankranti also gets a fresh threshold Aipan, of the kind described in How to Make Aipan.
The Crow at Dawn
Before sunrise on Sankranti morning, children put on their ghughut necklaces, take a piece in hand, go out to the courtyard or rooftop, and call the crows:
Kale kauva kale, ghughuti mala khale! Black crow, o black crow — come and eat the ghughut necklace!
Other verses follow in Kumaoni, bargaining with the crow: eat the ghughut and bring me a golden necklace; eat the bara and bring me a brother; eat and take my winter's ill-luck with you. The first pieces of every child's maala belong to the crows, set out on the wall or roof or thrown to them. Only after the crows have eaten do the children eat their own — which they do steadily for days, one ghughut at a time off the necklace.
Anyone who has stood in a hill village at dawn on Ghughutiya will confirm the strangest part: the crows come. Generations of mid-January feeding have taught them the date as reliably as the households know it.
Why Crows
The crow in Hindu tradition is the messenger — of Shani, of the ancestors, of news from far away. Feeding crows at the year's turn feeds the carriers of fortune, and the children's verses say exactly that: the crow eats the sweet, and in exchange carries away misfortune and carries in the good year.
The folk story told in Kumaon gives it a local plot: a king of the hills, a loyal crow who saved the royal child from disaster, and a grateful kingdom that promised the crows a feast every year on this day. Versions differ from valley to valley in the way of all Kumaoni stories; the promise at the end is always the same, and Ghughutiya is the keeping of it.
Uttarayani and the Bageshwar Mela
While the children feed crows at home, the region's great public gathering assembles at Bageshwar, where the Saryu and Gomti rivers meet below the ancient Bagnath temple. The Uttarayani mela — held around Makar Sankranti — is one of the oldest and largest fairs of the Kumaon Himalaya: a ritual bath at the confluence in the cold of January, darshan at Bagnath, and days of market, music and reunion that once made it the commercial hub of the hill year, when traders came down from the high Bhotiya valleys with wool, salt and borax.
The mela also holds an honoured place in the region's modern history as a gathering point of the coolie-begar protest movement of 1921, when the fair's crowds turned an obligation system into a bonfire of registers on the Saryu's sands — a story Bageshwar tells every January alongside its older ones.
Smaller Uttarayani fairs are held across Kumaon — at Ranibagh, Hanseshwar, and along the Kali in Champawat — but Bageshwar's is the one that draws the region.
FAQ
When is Ghughutiya in 2027?
Ghughutiya 2027 is celebrated on Makar Sankranti, January 14–15. The ghughuts are made and strung into necklaces on the eve, and the crows are fed at dawn on Sankranti morning. District traditions vary by a day — some observe the crow-feeding on the 14th, others on the 15th.
What are ghughuts made of?
Wheat flour kneaded with jaggery (dissolved in warm milk or water) and ghee, sometimes with fennel. The dough is shaped into birds, drums, pomegranate flowers and other figures, deep-fried until brown, and strung into necklaces with orange segments.
What do children say to the crows on Ghughutiya?
The classic call is "Kale kauva kale, ghughuti mala khale" — black crow, come eat the ghughut necklace. Further verses ask the crow to bring gold, siblings and good fortune in exchange. The crows are fed first; the children eat from their necklaces afterwards.
What is the Uttarayani mela of Bageshwar?
The great Makar Sankranti fair held where the Saryu and Gomti rivers meet at Bageshwar, below the Bagnath temple. It combines a ritual confluence bath, temple darshan and one of the oldest trade fairs of the Kumaon Himalaya, and it was a landmark site of the 1921 coolie-begar protest.
Is Ghughutiya the same as Makar Sankranti?
Ghughutiya is Kumaon's form of Makar Sankranti. The pan-Indian day — the sun entering Capricorn, the start of Uttarayana — is celebrated in the Kumaoni way: ghughut necklaces, crow-feeding at dawn, and the Uttarayani melas.