Thaipusam Festival is a big Hindu festival celebrated by the Tamil community to honours Lord Muruga, the son of Shiva. It's a big festival in Singapore and Malaysia.
The festival in 2010 was on Saturday, 30 January, and the prayers and body piercing activities at the temple started as early as 2am in the morning. I arrived at the Sri Srinivasa Perumal temple in Little India at about 3am and it was very packed but very well organized. Devotees and their families would pick a spot (which I believe was pre-arranged to avoid chaos) to prepare their kavadis and offer their prayers. You would then start to witness the body piercing activities with no blood involved at all. Amazing!.
Loud music was everywhere and I have to admit that I felt the ambience of the place was, for the lack of better word, a bit mystical. I saw some people went into a trance, but was not for long usually.
After they're done with the prayers, body piercing and other preparations, they started their journey of faith, walking barefoot to another temple which was about 4 kms away. Some of them carried big kavadis, some of them carried milk pots which were hanged with hooks pierced on their bodies. Most women carried milk pots on their heads.
It was truly a big celebration of faith !
As I can only upload 10 photos here, for more photos, please visit http://www.hendralauw.com/blog/thaipusam-festival-2010/ .