I've got gas

The day after recovering from my nasty and surreal sweating illness was the first day of the Hindu festival of Thaipusam. It's a bit of an odd festival, to an outsider, make no mistake.

It falls on the birthday of Lord Muragan (1st Feb) - who I believe is one of the cheif dieties in the religion with many, many deities. From my ignorant lack of knowledge I have managed to glean these facts about the festival.

I get the feeling that all the devotees have prayed to Muragan to relieve or fix some problem or other (haemorroids, broken legs, scrofula, painful wisdom teeth etc) and when their prayers have been answered then they have their end of the bargain to uphold. Their end of the bargain is a pilgrimage to a Muragan shrine, to leave offerings of thanks to the Lord (mostly in the form of milk and fruit). They make this pilgrimage each year, in accordance to the amount of years they promised to devolte to Lord Muragan in return for their cure.

That's as far as I can gather a basic overview of the festival.

Peoples devotions tend to be kind of painful, a penance as thanks.
Most devotees are barefoot and make a several mile walk, the ladies tended to carry heavy pots of milk on their heads (although men can quite merrily do this too), whilst the men tend to go for slightly more extreme forms of self harm.
Before the festival they will go on a very strict vegetarian diet for several days, then they are put into a heavy trance before they don their pain inducing parafernalia.
A lot of people put thin spears through their cheeks or tongue, others carry heavy Kavaldi (which weigh around 60KG or more) which are very ornately decorated with images and peacock feathers...















Other people favour hanging all sorts of heavy fruit from their body on hooks. I saw people covered in oranges (one guy had more than 50 hanging from the flesh on his back on rather mean looking thin barbs), limes and even a few guys with coconuts (yes the large and very heavy fresh versions with all the outer skin still on)....
thusly.....



Ouch you mighty say.







Thaipusam festivals are held all over the place, but Malaysia tends to favour Batu Caves (just north of KL) as the place to go - however there are lots of other big festivals all over the country. To get up to the temples inside Batu Caves you need to walk up nearly 300 steps. This isn't an easy task in the heat at the best of times, but when you've got a huge heavy Kavaldi on your shoulders, bare feet, spikes in your face and hooks in your body then you'd be very glad to be in a trance I think.





This is Lord Muragan at his finest - all shiny and golden at a very respectable 80 feet high. Guarding the 280something steps up to the cave temple entrance.

devotions can range from the tuneful....

to the useful (this guys hands are free to stroke any passing kittens, for example)

and through to the just plain sick....





(the chains are all attached view hooks to the body by the way. didn't spot that? look closer)









A white guy bearing Kavaldi is a rare sight it would seem. But no less bizarre.








This man is heading for his job interview, as a cocktail waiter in a new Mexican themed bar.





All joking aside, one thing these devotees are is devoted. No doubts from me.

All in all it was a thoughroughly head spinning day for me. And I always thought Hinduism was one of the more sane religions on the planet.