Little India is at its best in the weeks before Deepavali, and at its worst for anyone trying to park there. Here’s how to enjoy the lights, the bazaars, and the food without spending the evening circling Serangoon Road.
A festival Built For Walking
Deepavali falls on Sunday, 8 November, this year. Because it lands on a rest day, Monday, 9 November, is a public holiday too, according to the Ministry of Manpower. That gives most of us a long weekend, and a good excuse to head down to Little India.
The district has been decorating Serangoon Road for the festival for decades, and the light-up now runs for around two months. This year, the lights were switched on at a ceremony on Birch Road on 3 October, and they come on nightly from 7pm to midnight. The organiser, the Little India Shopkeepers and Heritage Association, or LISHA, has in past years set itself a target of five million visitors across the season. Those visitors arrive in a district of narrow streets that were laid out long before cars were invented. They were made for people on foot, not for a stream of cars looking for somewhere to park, and they still work best that way. So, the first rule is simple. Treat the car as the way to get near Little India, not into it.
Know The District Before You Drive In
The lights run along Serangoon Road from the Bukit Timah Road end up to Kitchener Road, with the biggest displays clustered near Tekka Market, Veerasamy Road, and the Angullia Mosque. Race Course Road, one block over, usually gets its share of arches too. The festival bazaars sit just off the main road. In recent years the Deepavali Festival Village has run along Campbell Lane, with a second bazaar on Hastings Road, both selling clothes, lamps, garlands and sweets in the evenings.
This year, the Festival Village is open from 10 October until Deepavali day, 8 November, from 7pm each evening. So if you want to shop there, you have only the last few evenings left, and they are also the busiest. Add the Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple, the Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple, Tekka Centre, and the restaurants along Race Course Road and Dunlop Street, and you can see why the pavements fill up. None of this is more than a fifteen-minute walk end to end, which is the point. Plan to park once and stay on foot.
What closes, and when
For most of the season, the roads stay open and the pain is congestion rather than closures. Deepavali eve is different. Ahead of the 2025 festival, the Singapore Police Force warned of heavy vehicle and foot traffic along Serangoon Road, and told motorists to use alternative routes. The pedestrian crossing at Birch Road, in front of the Angullia Mosque, was closed from 4pm on the eve to 4am the next morning, with the Campbell Lane crossing on standby to close if the crowds needed it. Auxiliary police were posted along the affected roads to direct traffic.
Expect the same pattern this year on Saturday 7 November. The police will also enforce a liquor control zone across Little India over the festival weekend, so public drinking is out. If you’re driving, the drink-driving rule is simpler still. Before you set off, check the LTA’s traffic updates and road closures page on OneMotoring, which lists closures and live conditions. And once you are within a few streets of Serangoon Road, follow the marshals rather than the map app.
Where To Leave The Car
If you must drive, decide where you are parking before you set off, because Serangoon Road itself is no place to look for a lot. The easiest option is Tekka Place at 2 Serangoon Road, right at the Bukit Timah Road end of the light-up. Its carpark charges a flat $3 per entry from 6pm–7am, which suits an evening visit, though the 10-minute grace period is short and there’s always a queue on festival nights.
At the other end of the district, the Mustafa Centre car park at 145 Syed Alwi Road charges $1 for every 30 minutes and stays open until 1.30am, which matters if you plan to stay past the last train. In between are the HDB car parks tucked behind shophouses at Rowell Court, Chander Road, Klang Lane and Kerbau Road, among others. These charge standard HDB short-term rates of 60 cents per half hour outside peak times, and some run the night parking scheme that caps the evening at $5. They are also small and fill up early, so if you arrive after dark, don’t circle them hoping for a space. Head straight for one of the options below.
A better bet on busy nights is to park a little further out, around Farrer Park, Jalan Besar or Bugis, and walk in. Ten minutes on foot beats thirty minutes in a queue for a full car park.
The Case For Taking The Train
Little India is one of the easiest places in Singapore to reach without a car — something worth remembering on festival nights. Little India station sits on both the North-East Line and the Downtown Line, and drops you at the Tekka end of Serangoon Road. Farrer Park station on the North-East Line is a short walk from Mustafa and the Kitchener Road end, and Rochor and Jalan Besar on the Downtown Line cover the southern and eastern edges.
Buses along Serangoon Road and Bukit Timah Road include services 23, 48, 56, 57, 66, 67, 131, 166 and 170, according to Tekka Place’s directions page. On Deepavali eve, the operators keep the trains running late. This year, SBS Transit and SMRT will extend train hours and more than 50 bus services on Saturday, 7 November. The last North-South and East-West Line trains leave City Hall at 12.30am. On the North-East Line, the last train from Dhoby Ghaut towards Punggol Coast leaves at 12.40am. On the Downtown Line, the last train from Bugis towards Bukit Panjang leaves at 12.46am. Both pass through Little India.
The MRT stations tend to get into the spirit. In 2025 the walls and stairs of Little India station were decorated for the festival, and the light-up designs appeared on selected trains and buses from 1 October.
Timing The Visit
The lights are the same on a Tuesday as on a Saturday, but the crowds are not. If your aim is to see the arches, take photos, and eat without queuing, go on a weekday in the first half of the season, arriving around 7pm when the lights come on and the bazaars are still quiet. If your aim is the atmosphere, go on a weekend night in the final fortnight and accept that you will move slowly.
Either way, an early dinner on Race Course Road followed by a walk up Serangoon Road works better than the reverse, because the restaurants fill from 8pm. The full stretch of lights, from Tekka to Kitchener Road, is about a 15-minute walk on a quiet night, and longer when the crowds are out. Families with young children or older parents should keep the walk short and start at Tekka, where the pavements are widest and the toilets are close by. And if you’re driving to a temple visit rather than the light-up, the quietest hours are the early morning, before the traffic and long before the lights.
Beyond Serangoon Road
Deepavali season affects roads outside Little India too. In the weeks before the festival, the Sri Mariamman Temple on South Bridge Road holds Theemithi, the fire-walking ceremony. The National Heritage Board’s Roots portal describes how the priest and devotees walk from the Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple on Serangoon Road back to South Bridge Road, a route of about 4km through the city, before the fire-walking itself. Expect rolling road controls along that route on the day, and heavy parking demand around Chinatown.
The long weekend brings its own problem at the border. The Immigration and Checkpoints Authority has already warned of heavy traffic at Woodlands and Tuas from Friday, 6 November to Monday, 9 November. Car travellers waited up to three hours for immigration clearance at peak times in September. So leave early in the morning or late in the evening if you can, and use a QR code from the MyICA app to clear immigration faster. With Monday, 9 November, being a day off this year, a Johor trip needs the same planning as the light-up, and the same check of the traffic cameras before you leave.
Make It An Evening, Not A Mission
The Deepavali light-up rewards people who slow down. The arches look better from the pavement than through a windscreen, the bazaars are for browsing, and the food is the reason half the crowd is there.
A motorist’s job is to get the driving out of the way early. Pick a car park at the edge of the district or skip the car altogether, check the closures on OneMotoring before you go, and give yourself more time than you think you need. Then turn the engine off and walk. The lights will still be on at midnight.
