Athnova CareIndia time difference with the places NRIs live
India keeps one time zone, IST (UTC+5:30), all year. The difference with your city changes only when your city changes its clocks.
| Where you live | India is ahead by | With daylight saving |
|---|---|---|
| IST to EST — New York | 10 hours 30 minutes | 9 hours 30 minutes |
| IST to CST — Chicago | 11 hours 30 minutes | 10 hours 30 minutes |
| IST to MST — Denver | 12 hours 30 minutes | 11 hours 30 minutes |
| IST to PST — California | 13 hours 30 minutes | 12 hours 30 minutes |
| IST to GMT — London | 5 hours 30 minutes | 4 hours 30 minutes |
| IST to CET — Germany | 4 hours 30 minutes | 3 hours 30 minutes |
| IST to GST — Dubai | 1 hour 30 minutes | No change |
| IST to AST — Saudi Arabia | 2 hours 30 minutes | No change |
| IST to SGT — Singapore | 2 hours 30 minutes | No change |
| IST to AEST — Sydney | 4 hours 30 minutes | 5 hours 30 minutes |
| IST to NZST — Auckland | 6 hours 30 minutes | 7 hours 30 minutes |
Each page has the hour-by-hour table, the dates the clocks change and the hours when you and your parents are both awake. Somewhere else? The call-time planner covers 35 places →
Why the difference changes twice a year
India does not use daylight saving time, and the whole country — from Gujarat to Assam — runs on IST, five and a half hours ahead of UTC. The USA, Canada, the UK, Europe, south-east Australia and New Zealand move their clocks forward in their spring and back in their autumn, so for half the year India is an hour “closer”. The Gulf, Singapore and Malaysia do not change their clocks, so their difference with India never moves.
The USA and Europe change on different weekends: for two or three weeks in March, and one week around the start of November, the gap between London and New York — and between each of them and India — is an hour off what you are used to. Calls planned for those weeks are the ones that get missed.
A routine that survives the time difference
- Fix one regular call at a time that suits both of you, and put it in the calendar as a repeating event in your own time zone.
- Agree what happens when a call is missed: who tries next, and after how long a neighbour is asked to knock.
- Keep the emergency card and two local contacts up to date — at 3 a.m. your time, they are the ones who can reach the house. Ambulance and emergency numbers in India →
- A short daily check-in your parent answers with one tap closes the gap on the days you cannot call. How the daily check-in works →