Free printable Chowka Bara board

Print a board at home and play the traditional way. Drawn as black and white line art, with kolam flower motifs on the safe houses and a lotus rangoli at the centre, so it looks like a board someone chalked on a courtyard floor rather than a spreadsheet. Two sizes, free, no sign-up, and the PDF fits A4 and US Letter. Light on ink, and children can colour it in before playing.

The 5-house board

The 7-house board

What else you need

• Four tokens per player. Traditionally tamarind seeds, dyed a different colour per player. Dried beans, coins, buttons or bottle caps all work.
• Four cowrie shells. If you don't have them, four coins do the job: heads counts as mouth-up.
• Two to four players.

How to use the board

1. Each player takes one crossed square on an outside edge as their home, and places their four tokens there.
2. Throw the four shells. Count the mouths facing up: 1, 2 or 3 moves you that many squares. All four up scores 4, all four down scores 8, and both earn another throw.
3. Move around the outer ring, then turn inward, and finish on the centre square.
4. Landing exactly on an opponent sends their token home, unless it is standing on a crossed square.
5. First to bring all four tokens to the centre wins.

Full rules, with the scoring table and the advanced pairing rules

Printing tips

• The PDF is laid out for A4 and prints correctly on US Letter with "fit to page" enabled.
• Print at 100% rather than "fit to width" if you want consistent square sizes.
• Thicker paper survives a family game night considerably better. If you have card stock, use it.
• The SVG files scale to any size without going blurry, so use those if you want to print a large board across multiple sheets.