Every Navratri, Rajesh Hadiya, a 30-year-old software engineer in Pune, found himself asking the same question: where are the garbas near me? The Gujarati garba lover never found the answer easily, and the search frustrated him year after year.
This October, he decided to stop searching and start building. On 10 October, 2026, the night before Navratri began, he put a free website online that places garba and dandiya nights across India on a single map.
From a yearly frustration to a two-day build
Hadiya has more than eight years of experience with Android and mobile apps and runs a developer community called DroidTribe. He reasoned that a problem this familiar could not belong to him alone.
“If I have this problem, many others must have it too,” he told DeshGujarat.
He built the first version of Nearby Navratri in two days with Claude, an AI tool, and has added garbas and features every day since.
The project runs on free tools and Cloudflare’s free hosting, which leaves the domain name as his main expense. He told Mumbai Mirror that it has cost him only a few hundred rupees.
Why a festival of nine nights needs a map
Gujarat Tourism calls Navratri in the state a nine-night dance festival, perhaps the longest in the world. Garba, the circle dance at its heart, joined UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage in December 2023 as the 15th element from India.
UNESCO describes garba as a devotional dance for Shakti, the feminine energy worshipped during Navratri. Dandiya adds colourful sticks, and Nearby Navratri lists both kinds of night.
Nearby Navratri brings garba and dandiya events across 35 Indian cities onto a single free map, helping people find venues, timings, entry fees and booking links. Photograph: (Nearbynavratri)
With so many nights on offer, finding the right one takes effort. Some nights sell passes on third party platforms, while free society temple garbas often sell nothing online, according to the site.
How the map works
The site opens in a phone browser, with no app to download and no login, and its map runs on OpenStreetMap data. A visitor can tap “Show garbas near me” to see the closest nights first, with distances and directions, and the site says it never stores their location.
Each listing gives the venue, dates, timings, starting pass price, and a link to the organiser’s page for booking. Passes start at Rs 49, and filters narrow the map to free entry or to passes under Rs 500 or Rs 1,000.
Many listings name the nearest metro station, and another filter hides nights whose listings say no stag entry.
Readers can explore the map at nearbynavratri.in. The map spans 35 cities, from Ahmedabad, Surat and Vadodara to Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Delhi NCR and Chennai, and it reaches smaller centres such as Bhuj, Navsari and Vapi.
Room for the smaller garbas
Hadiya said smaller events are a priority as he keeps expanding the map. Free neighbourhood and society nights, such as the Vokla Faliya Garbi in Old Bhuj and the Busa Society Sheri Garba in Bharuch, sit beside ticketed AC dome nights in Ahmedabad.
From ticketed dance nights to free neighbourhood celebrations, Nearby Navratri lists events of different sizes, making it easier for people to discover garbas beyond the big venues.
In the Mumbai region alone, Mumbai Mirror counted 43 events, including the free GM Navratri Mahotsav in Mira Road and a free garba night at VIBGYOR High in Belapur.
Organisers and visitors can add an event for free, including society nights that sell no tickets online, by sharing a ticket or Instagram link and the venue’s map pin. The site says it usually reviews each submission within a few hours.
One person behind the listings
Hadiya runs the site alone. He checks each submission against organisers’ published prices and timings, accepts society garbas only if they admit the public and updates changes himself, according to Mumbai Mirror.
The site collects listings from public event pages and organiser submissions. It says it has no affiliation with any organiser or ticketing platform and asks visitors to confirm details before they travel, because dates and prices can change. It also says it refreshes listings through the festival and removes events that end or are cancelled.
What the response shows
By 14 October, four days after launch, the site had 9,114 users, Mumbai Mirror reported. Hadiya said almost half of the Google searches that bring people to it ask for nearby dandiya nights, and about a third of visitors click through to a booking page.
Navratri closes on Monday, 19 October, with Dussehra on 20 October. Mumbai Mirror reports that, if things go as planned, the map will return every year, so a festival built on knowing where to go may soon have a guide for every season.
