Festival
Sending Rakhi Abroad: A Timing Guide
· 4 min read
Post by these dates and it arrives before Raksha Bandhan. Country-by-country cut-offs, plus what customs will and will not hold.
Raksha Bandhan moves with the lunar calendar, which means the postal maths changes every year and catches people out annually. Here is how to get it right.
Work backwards from the date, not forwards from today. Our recommended posting cut-offs, counted back from the festival: fourteen days for Australia and New Zealand, twelve for the United States and Canada, ten for the United Kingdom and the European Union, and eight for the UAE and Singapore. Add five days if you are ordering during the fortnight before, because everyone else is too.
Rakhis clear customs easily. They are low-value, non-perishable, and almost universally treated as a gift item. Declare them as such, with an accurate value — a rakhi declared at two hundred dollars invites the scrutiny it deserves.
What does get held is food. Do not post sweets with a rakhi to Australia, the United States or the UAE. Biosecurity will confiscate the parcel, and increasingly the whole parcel rather than just the sweets. Send the rakhi; send the mithai budget as a transfer.
We post rakhis flat, carded, in rigid envelopes that survive sorting machinery. If you are sending to several brothers in several countries, tell us and we will post them separately from here rather than shipping you one bundle to redistribute — it arrives faster and it costs you less.
Questions about a piece?
Message the workshop and someone who has held it will reply, usually the same day.
