The festival of Uttarayan is a uniquely Gujarati phenomenon when the skies over most cities of the state fill with kites from before dawn until well after dark. The event commemorates Makar Sankranti or Uttarayan, the days in the Hindu calendar when winter begins to give way to summer. On what is often a bright, sunny day with brisk breezes to hoist the kites aloft, practically all normal business is stopped across the state, and everyone comes to the roofs and highways to fly kites and compete with their neighbours. Kites of different shapes and sizes are flown, and the main competition is to cut the strings of surrounding kite-flyers and bring their kites down. The kites are fastened to a spool of manja, a particular kite-string coated with a glue-glass combination to be as sharp as possible for cutting competitor kite strings.

Beginning in November, production of kites and kite supplies can be observed on the streets of Ahmedabad in preparation for Uttarayan, and nowhere more so than in Patang Bazar, the distinctive kite market that arises in the old city. It is available 24 hours a day for all kite enthusiasts to stock up for the event throughout the week preceding the festival. The International Kite Festival 2023 has begun on 8 January in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The festival, which is being organised after a gap of two years, was inaugurated by Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel. The previous edition was held in 2020 with 153 participants from 43 countries.

The festival is being organised by Gujarat Tourism on the G20 theme of ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’. Since 1989, Ahmedabad has held the International Kite Festival as part of the official Uttarayan festival, inviting expert kite builders and pilots from all over the world to display their unique designs and dazzle the spectators with extremely strange kites. In previous years, master kite makers from Malaysia brought their wau-balang kites, llayang-llayang from Indonesia, kite innovators from the United States brought giant banner kites, and Japanese rokkaku fighting kites shared the skies with Italian sculptural kites, Chinese flying dragons, and the latest high-tech kites.

Parents who normally find their children hard to get out of bed for school will find them setting the alarm for 5 am on 14th Jan., to get up and start flying kites in the ideal pre-dawn wind. The atmosphere is wonderfully festive, as whole families gather on the rooftop, special foods like laddu, undhiyu or surti jamun are prepared for eating over the course of the day, and friends and neighbours visit each other for group kite-flying fun. Often people look out for which of their friends has the optimum terrace for kite flying and many will congregate there.  At night, kite fighters send up bright white kites to be seen in the darkness, and skilled flyers will send aloft their tukkals with strings of brightly lit lanterns in a long line leading back down to the rooftop. From early morning to late at night, uttarayan provides lots of fun and beautiful sights to remember for a long time.