Among the many festivals that are celebrated in Andhra Pradesh the Makara Sankranti is one of the important festivals. The words Sankranti means the last day of a month. The Makara Sankranti is celebrated in the end of the month of Paus. Sankranti is a festival of importance for Telugus or Andhra Pradesh residents. The Makara Sankranti is a harvest festival and people in rural Andhra look forward to this festival a lot as it is just after harvest and is a time when they have both time and money on their hand.

The Makara Sankranti is celebrated when the sun passes from Sagittarius to Capricorn & the transition is called Makara Sankranthi. The harvesting of crops begins a month before this festival.

The first day of this festival is called Bhogi. On this day youngsters and children of the family are supposed to wake early, before the sunrise and collect dry twigs, grass and other similar kinds of combustible material and light a bonfire. The women of the house draw muggulu or rangoli on the front yards of the house. The muggulu is a sort of decorative pattern generally drawn with mortar. The women are also supposed to make Gobbemmas which are lumps of cow-dung and place it on the drawings in front of their house. The ash from the bhogi is also used by people, and applied on their foreheads.

On this day it is also customary to partake of the special dish called Pongal. The Pongal is a dish prepared by mixing husked green gram, rice salt and pepper powder and cooking it in a pot.

The second day is the actual Sankranthi day. On this day in the evening men & women visit their neighbors and relatives to offer sesame seeds, sugar & sugarcane pieces.

Kanumu is the third day and is celebrated as a cattle festival. On this day the peasants wake up early to bathe their cattle & paint their horns with bright colors and tie bells around their necks.

The Makara Sankranti is a traditional festival that is celebrated with pomp and ceremony in Hyderabad.