Attukal Pongola, Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum)

Sunday morning was Attukal Pongola, the harvest festival honoring Lakshmi, goddess of wealth.  We didn't know we were heading into this, the largest gathering of women in the world (20 lakh, 2 million!)--the streets were lined with women at their hearths, each lit with the same flame which traveled for what must have been hundreds of miles along the streets from the temple at Attukal, one of the city's suburbs.  Smoke filled our faces on a relatively short walk around town, it was immediately painful.  Every 50 yards or so loudspeakers blasted the priests' Sanskrit prayers and directives, old Bollywood hits, ragas, and police attempts at reuniting seperated pilgrims.  Totally awesome.  We incorrectly guessed that the temple in the picture was where the main event was, which explains why it was relatively easy to stroll around it.
  Today is Holi, the festival of color, during which women beat men and everyone throws bright pigment all over the place--in the north, anyway, here in the south it's apparently more austere, no sign of anything at all.
 Tons o pics of this and other accidental run-ins with rituals and sunrise but the connection is slow, stay in tune...