Recreating Baby Krishna's playful pranks, Goa style

FUN IN THE MUD BEGINS

Marcel turns into a muddy playground today as the Chikhal Kalo festival begins, celebrating Lord Krishna’s joyful antics with devotion and tradition.

GROUNDED DEVOTION

Bare-chested and barefoot, devotees enter the temple grounds at dawn, ready to honour Krishna not with rituals, but with mud, mischief, and unfiltered joy.

PLAYGROUND OF FAITH

The temple courtyard will transform into a mud pit for the festival where tradition is splashed, wrestled and laughed through.

PRANKS AND PLAYS

Boys and men chase slippery mud balls in chendu fali, a game symbolic of Baby Krishna’s playful pranks with his friends in Vrindavan.

KHUSHTI IN THE MUD

Participants lock arms in muddy wrestling matches, not to win, but to relive a ritual passed down through centuries of village life.

HANDS RAISED HIGH

With hands flung to the skies and chants on their lips, participants lose themselves in the rhythm of community, mud and unfiltered joy.

MORE THAN MUD

Chikal Kalo draws in not just devotees but tourists and people of all faiths — all united by the thrill of a tradition that’s as playful as it is profound.

NEXT: Step into Goa's Marcel and get lost in its countryside