Attukal Pongala

March 10, 2023

Considered one of the largest women’s gatherings in the world, around 15 lakh women participated in the annual Attukal Pongala festival of Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.
The festival includes offering Pongala, a sweet delicacy made of rice to the deity of Attukal Bhagavathy Temple in Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram.
The highlight of the ten-day festival is the mass offering that takes place on the ninth day. Women from across the state make it to the capital in huge numbers.
In 2009, the ritual had made it to the Guinness Book of World Records for being the largest religious gathering of women on a single day when over 2.5 million people took part in it.
Attukal Temple is called the “Women’s Sabarimala” as only women perform rituals, while it is predominantly men who undertake the pilgrimage to the hill shrine of Lord Ayyappa at Sabarimala.