San Francisco Bay Area Hindu Festival and Temple Guide

Temples

The South Bay has a dense cluster of Hindu temples. The Balaji Temple in San Jose, founded in 2006, and the Shiv Durga Temple in Santa Clara, opened in 2012, are two community temples listed on MyPujaWorld; Fremont, Sunnyvale, Livermore and other towns have many more, serving North Indian, South Indian, Gujarati and Bengali traditions.

Festival season

• Ganesh Chaturthi — temple pujas and community visarjan events.
• Navratri — garba nights, often in large event centres, and golu displays in Tamil and Telugu homes.
• Durga Puja — several Bengali associations across the Bay.
• Diwali — temple celebrations and community melas through October and November.

Shopping for puja items

Indian grocery stores in Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Jose and Fremont stock diyas, kumkum, camphor, incense and festival sweets; stock runs low in the week before Diwali, so shop early.

See live listings: temples in the Bay Area.

Visiting the temples

The Balaji Temple in San Jose and the Shiv Durga Temple in Santa Clara are both busy at weekends and on festival days. Parking is limited, so carpool where you can, and check each temple's announcements for festival puja times.

A community of newcomers

Many Bay Area families arrived recently for work in technology, and temples and associations are often where newcomers first find community. Language associations — Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati — run festival events alongside the temples, and many offer children's classes in language, music and dance.

Timings for the Pacific coast

Because the panchang is calculated for local sunrise, festival dates in California can differ by a day from India. Use the Bay Area panchang to check tithi times before a vrat or puja.