Attukal Pongala 2024 Date

Attukal Pongala is a famous Malayalam festival celebrated annually at Attukal Bhagavathy Temple. It is a 10 days event commencing on the Karthigai star of the Malayalam month of Makaram or Kumbham and closing with the sacrificial offering known as Kuruthitharpanam at night. On the ninth day of the festival the world famous Attukal Pongala Mahotsavam takes place.

The ritual of Attukal Pongala in 2009 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.

Lakhs of women are expected to line up on the streets of Kerala’s capital to perform the annual Attukal Pongala festival, in which devotees offer pongala, a gruel made of rice, jaggery, ghee and coconut, to the presiding deity.

The proceeding of the pongala offering usually begin at 10.30am, with the chief priest of the temple lighting the stove with fire brought from the temple’s sanctum sanctorum. The ceremony ends with the sprinkling of holy water by temple priests. The Chooralkuthu ritual, attended by boys aged between 10 and 12, is also held and a procession bearing the deity leave the Attukal Temple for the Sastha Temple at nearby Manacaud. Usually, women from Kerala and neighbouring Tamil Nadu throng the temple, often called Sabarimala of women, in large numbers for the festival.

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.

When is Attukal Pongala 2024?