Diwali in India: the festival of lights
I landed in Jaipur a couple of days before the new moon, and the whole city already felt like it was holding its breath. Markets stacked high with little clay lamps — diyas, thumb-sized bowls of terracotta — and tinsel garlands, and pyramids of sweets in colours I didn't have names for. Strings of bulbs climbed every balcony. Someone explained to me that Diwali, or Deepavali, is the festival of lights: the victory of light over darkness, of knowing over not-knowing. By the time the main night came, I understood that wasn't a slogan. It was a city deciding, all at once, to glow.
I want to be honest from the start: I came thinking of Diwali as a single evening, a sort of Indian fireworks night. It isn't. It unfolds over roughly five days, each with its own texture — Dhanteras, when people buy something metal or gold for luck; the great central night of Lakshmi Puja, when families pray to the goddess of prosperity and light every lamp they own; and later Bhai Dooj, celebrating the bond between brothers and sisters. And it isn't only a Hindu festival — Jains, Sikhs and some Buddhists mark these days too, each tradition carrying its own meaning into the same lights.
A doorstep, a flame, a pattern in coloured powder
The detail that undid me was the smallest one: the rangoli. On the morning of the main day, the woman who ran my guesthouse knelt at her threshold and, freehand, poured coloured powder into a vast geometric flower — petals, swirls, dots, all from pinches of pigment between her fingers. It takes patience and a steady hand, and by evening it might be half scuffed away by visitors' feet, and that's the point: you make something beautiful, you welcome people across it, you make it again tomorrow. Beside it she set a row of diyas, each a wick floating in mustard oil, and lit them one by one at dusk.
That dusk is something I won't forget. Light doesn't arrive in a sweep here — it gathers. One lamp, then a balcony, then a whole street, then the rooftops, until the dark between buildings is stitched with hundreds of small steady flames. Children pressed sweets into my hands — mithai, fudgy and rose-scented and almost too sweet — because giving them is half the festival. Lakshmi, I was told, visits homes that are clean and bright and open, so every door stood lit and ajar, waiting for prosperity to wander in.
« Light doesn't arrive in a sweep here — it gathers. One lamp, then a balcony, then a whole street. »
I'll be straight about the practical side, because the night caught me out. I leaned on data constantly — to check when the evening puja would start, to find my way back through lanes that all look identical once they're packed, to send my family a photo of a thousand lamps. And on Diwali night itself, in the illuminated bazaars, the network simply gives up: tens of thousands of phones in one glittering crowd, all uploading at once, and the bars drop to nothing. The offline map I'd saved that afternoon and a screenshot of my guesthouse's address were what actually got me home — not the live signal, which had quietly died around me.
The fireworks, honestly
I'd be painting a half-picture if I left out the crackers. As the lamps are lit, the sky fills with fireworks — joyful, deafening, relentless, going well past midnight. For many families they're inseparable from the celebration, and standing on a rooftop watching the horizon flash, I felt the pull of it. But I'd be dishonest not to mention the other side: in big cities, and Delhi above all, the smoke from millions of crackers settles into an already heavy autumn haze, and the air the next morning can be genuinely hard to breathe. It's a live conversation in India itself — greener celebrations, quieter years in some places, family debates on the rooftop. I'm not here to lecture anyone on their own festival; I just want to tell you what I saw, smoke and light together.
Where the lights are loveliest
Diwali is everywhere — every town, every village, every balcony — and that ordinariness is part of its beauty. But a few places are extraordinary for it. Jaipur, where I was, lights up its bazaars and gates so completely that the old city looks gilded. Varanasi, along the Ganges, layers Diwali into its river rituals and, days later, the lamp-floating of Dev Deepavali. Amritsar, sacred to Sikhs, sees the Golden Temple doubled in still water and ringed with light. Wherever you stand, the same instinct repeats: push back the dark, together, with whatever small flame you have.
📶 Léa's tip
For Diwali, plan around the crowd, not the signal. On the main night the illuminated bazaars swallow the network whole — tens of thousands of phones in one place — so download an offline map and save your accommodation's address and the puja times while you're still on wifi, before you wade in. India is well outside the EU, so roam-like-at-home doesn't apply here — a local eSIM keeps you connected in the crowd. Check your phone's compatibility in 30 seconds here and find your plan on the destinations page (outside the EU, so roam-like-at-home doesn't apply here — a local eSIM keeps you connected in the crowd; for a separate European leg, an EU/EEA plan works).
What I take away
I came for a spectacle and left with something quieter. Diwali isn't really about the fireworks, loud as they are; it's about the diya — one small, deliberate flame set on a doorstep, multiplied by millions of hands deciding the same thing on the same night. The rangoli scuffed and remade, the sweets pressed on a stranger, the door left open and bright for whatever good might come. I think of light differently now. Not as something you switch on, but as something you place, by hand, in the dark — and then share.
— Léa, in Jaipur, with sugar on my fingers and lamplight in my eyes.