Attukal Pongala Festival

Some kindly folk here persuaded me to join them to see the festival. I would normally avoid anywhere crowded and 3 million women with rice is not really my idea of good company for  a Saturday afternoon.  Off we went with a very patient taxi driver.  After about an hour in traffic jams watching busload after busload of ladies pass in the other direction, we feared we may have missed the fun.  We parked somewhere behind the temple and walked.  By the road, the ashes of the rice cooking fires were all around, and unsold cooking pots were piled up.  The atmosphere was festive and the way to the temple entrance was lined with stalls selling the usual pilgrim wares and helium filled zebras and plastic toys.  The Saturday afternoon ceremony seemed to be about little girls getting dressed up with fancy headgear and bringing offerings of small bananas, some grains of rice, sugar cane, and some jasmin flowers.  We were the only white people there and so we were much looked at. Some children, keen to try out their English came and shook our hands and before we knew it, grown ups were shaking our hands too. I felt like the Queen. Here a few photies:

whole groups arrived with the women in front and the men following.  towards the temple entrance drum groups joined the procession and drummed the little girls along

could not figure out why there were all these abandoned shoes quite far from the temple entrance.  I have been searching for a pair of purple sandals, and in the pile I found these ones just my size.  Not quite what I had in mind, but what's a girl to do.

my new sandals

leftover cooking pots