A first-timer's guide to pandal hopping

Pick a neighbourhood, not a list of famous names. This is the single biggest thing. Eight pujas in one para is a lovely evening on foot; five famous pujas scattered across the city is a night spent in a stationary car.

Pick your day before you pick your pujas. Chaturthi to Shashthi is for looking at pandals. Ashtami and Navami are for the crowd. Mornings, on any day, are for covering ground. You cannot have all three at once and choosing is the plan.

Decide how you are getting between clusters. Metro if the cluster is on the line, walking if it is close, cab only if you have accepted it will be slow. Then commit — improvising transport at eleven at night on Ashtami is how evenings die.

You will do fewer pujas than you planned. On a peak night, allow twenty to forty minutes each including the queue and the walk. Six is a full evening. Ten is a good one. Fifteen means you did not stop to look at anything.

Queues are managed with barricades and a one-way walking direction, often for several blocks around a big puja. Once you are in a line you are in it; there is no stepping out and rejoining, and the volunteers holding the rope are not going to make an exception.

Eat as you go. The street food during Pujo is a genuine part of the festival and stopping for it is not a detour.

Shoes off where everyone else's shoes are off. Do not cross a barrier or a rope. Do not stand in front of the idol taking photographs while a rite is happening. Do not use flash at the idol. Move when the volunteers ask you to move — they are managing several thousand people an hour and they are volunteers.

Put something in the subscription box. The whole thing is paid for by the neighbourhood, and it is free to you because of that.

Add pujas to your route as you browse. The Route Planner orders your stops and draws the walk between the ones whose positions are confirmed, so the sequencing is done before you leave the house.

Where a puja has no confirmed position this site says so and gives it no pin and no distance. That is a gap in the data rather than a judgement — you can still save it, find it by name and ask locally.