Last updated: October 2026 · Method: desk research — the fair dates follow lunar calendars and shift yearly; verify with Rajasthan Tourism’s fair calendar before planning.
The winter months carry the Jodhpur region’s fair calendar — the trading spectacles and melas that turn the desert’s towns into festival grounds. This guide assembles the calendar so travellers can time a trip around the region’s biggest public gatherings.
📷 Image slot, a mela calendar wall or the fair ground’s trading rows at dawn.
The winter fair calendar
- Nagaur Cattle Fair (Jan–Feb): among India’s largest livestock fairs, the guide covers it.
- The Sheetala cluster; the cold-food festival and its sweet-shop season (lunar, ~a week after Holi’s spring window).
- Regional melas; the smaller fairs (Veer Durgadas commemorations, the Marwar Festival’s window) fill the calendar’s edges.
- The Pushkar window; November’s camel fair opens the season at its other end.
The fair-going logic
- The mornings are the trading hours; the evenings are the culture, plan both.
- Book around the dates: the fair towns fill; the Pushkar guide’s warning applies to all of them.
- The photography: the fairs are the year’s best market-photography subjects, the consent rules apply at volume.
Questions worth asking
Which fair for a first-timer?
Nagaur; the closest, the rawest, and the one the day-trip chooser can reach from Jodhpur in a morning.
Related guides
Done the fair circuit? Send the calendar corrections, fair dates shift yearly and this page re-dates by reports.