Talk to a person
Rakhi, mithai and a handwritten card, hand-delivered for Janai Purnima on 28 August.
$52.00
$42.00
$52.00
$68.00
Choose each item yourself and we'll pack it together, with a handwritten card in the box.
The full moon of Shrawan — Janai Purnima, when the sacred thread is changed, and Rakshya Bandhan, when a sister ties one on her brother's wrist.
The whole festival is one small object. A sister ties a thread — the rakhi — around her brother's wrist, feeds him something sweet, and he gives her something back and undertakes to look out for her. It takes about a minute. There is no feast that lasts five days and no fifteen-day window to arrive inside, which is what makes it the hardest of the Nepali festivals to be absent for.
It is also the one where sending something is closest to the real thing. At Dashain a parcel stands in for a person at the tika. Here the parcel can carry the actual thread, and someone at the other end can tie it. That is not a substitute for being in the room. It is the ritual happening anyway.
They are not the same festival, and it is worth knowing which one you are sending for. On Janai Purnima, Brahmin and Chhetri men change the janai they wear across the chest, and a priest ties a yellow doro around the wrist of everyone who comes — men and women, whatever their caste. It is worn until Laxmi Puja at Tihar, and then tied to the tail of a cow.
Rakshya Bandhan is the sibling half, and in Nepal it has grown steadily over the last couple of decades — partly through Indian television, partly because families have spread out and needed a day that is explicitly about the people you grew up with. Many households do both before lunch.
The other thing that happens on this day is kwati: a soup of nine sprouted beans, eaten because the monsoon is ending and everyone is expected to need the strength. If you want the parcel to land as Nepali rather than generic, that is the detail to include.
From a sister to a brother: the rakhi itself, and mithai. Those two things are the festival, and a box that contains them and nothing else is a complete gift rather than a cheap one. Dry fruit, nuts and chocolate scale it up for an older brother or one with a family of his own to share it around.
From a brother to a sister: the return gift is not an afterthought, it is half the ritual. Flowers, chocolates, something for herself. Historically it was money pressed into her hand, and a gift that is obviously chosen rather than obviously bought does more work here than it does at any other festival.
For nieces and nephews, a bright cartoon rakhi and a handful of chocolates is exactly right and beats anything more expensive.
Rakshya Bandhan is a single morning, not a season. The ritual is done before lunch in most houses, so a parcel that arrives in the afternoon has arrived after the thing it was for. Choose the morning slot and order before the cut-off shown above.
Unlike Dashain, Kathmandu does not empty for this one — shops stay open, staff are in town and the roads work normally. That is why the deadline here sits closer to the day than the Dashain deadline does. It is a short festival with a hard edge rather than a long one with a rush in front of it.
If you are reading this after the cut-off, send it anyway and pick the next date. A rakhi that arrives on the Saturday still gets tied.
We hand-deliver across Kathmandu Valley — Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur — and to Pokhara, Chitwan and Biratnagar. You choose the date and a morning, afternoon or evening slot, and we photograph the handover and email you the picture.
If the address you need is outside those areas, message us before you order. We can often arrange it, but we would rather answer the question than take an order we cannot keep.
Can the rakhi arrive in time to actually be tied on the day?
Yes, if you order before the cut-off above and choose the morning slot. The ritual happens in the morning, so those deliveries go out first.
Is this Raksha Bandhan or Janai Purnima?
Both — they fall on the same full moon of Shrawan. Janai Purnima is the sacred thread and the yellow doro; Rakshya Bandhan is the rakhi a sister ties on her brother. Most families in Nepal mark both on the same morning, and we have gifts for either.
My brother is not in Kathmandu. Can you still reach him?
Pokhara, Chitwan and Biratnagar are covered with a longer lead time, so order earlier for those. Anywhere else, message us before ordering and we will tell you honestly whether we can make the morning.
I want to send the return gift to my sister instead. Do you have those?
Yes — the return gift is half the festival and there are gifts here built for it. Filter by price or look for the ones described as return gifts.
Can you write the card in Nepali?
Yes. Type the message in Nepali in the message box and we copy it onto the card by hand, exactly as you wrote it.
