The Light the Whole Mountain Waits For

At dusk on one evening a year, everyone on the mountain turns and faces the same direction.

Hundreds of thousands of people, packed onto a forest hillside, and all of them looking the same way at once.

They are looking at Ponnambalamedu, a peak across the forest from Sabarimala. They are waiting for a light to appear on the top of it.

Nobody talks much in the last minutes. Then it comes - and the whole hillside sees it at the same instant, and the sound that goes up can be heard from a long way off.

Three times it appears. Then it is gone, and it will not come again for a year.

The night it happens

It falls on Makara Sankranti, the solstice observance that marks the sun's move into Capricorn. The moment is called Makaravilakku, and for the pilgrims gathered there it is Ayyappa's own blessing, made visible, confirming the journey each of them has just finished.

The numbers are hard to take in. Makaravilakku draws one of the largest annual religious gatherings on earth.