Footloose Worldwide: Sacred Kolayat Full Moon Festival

We had an incredible day at Kolayat for the Kapil Muni Festival (for the Sage Kapi mediatated her to save mankind and he is also a descendant of Brahma) – like Pushkar only much smaller. The festival reaches its crescendo on the day of the full moon in Oct/Nov, this year Nov 2 - when we visited. We went twice, in the morning to see the action and then in the evening for the candle offerings set adrift on the lake.
Attending this festival is like going to Mecca for Muslims. There are hundreds of sadhus (like monks) who are there to offer blessings to the Indian pilgrims … and receive gifts – mostly rice, sweets and money.
During the morning, we joined thousands of Indian pilgrims – walking to the temple. We didn’t wee any other tourists only Indians. We were quite the spectacle. More locals took our picture than we took theirs. Men just wanted to shake my hand or speak a few words of English. Many of the pilgrims come from the villages and they rarely, if ever, see a non-Indian. It was pretty cool to be in the middle of an experience where there are not any other tourists.
The lake is ringed by many ghats (steps down to the lake), where pilgrims come to dip themselves into the lake to wash away all of their sins. As we walked around, we didn’t quite know what to do, how much to offer Sadhus, which temples to visit, whether it was ok to watch men and/or women bathing (usually with underwear on). So we mostly watched. We were blessed at a couple of temples.
It was interesting to compare this to Pushkar. In Pushkar, everyone wanted to sell us something or pose for a picture – for money. In Koyalat, there were no tourist goods to sell, but much more begging. Even the Sadhus asked for 100 rupees vs the 1 or 2 Indians offered.
We came back for Sunset.. when we figured the lakeside blessings would happen. Even though I just fasted for Yom Kippur to cleanse my sins, I still went into the lake, I figured it couldn’t hurt, right? Just after Howard came out of the Lake and we made offerings of floating candles into the lake, the sun set. Suddenly, the activity around the lake quickened! More offerings and what seemed to be spontaneous chanting began. Nothing like moonlight, candles and chanting to create a sacred space! And we were in the center of it all.

The Pilgrims at the lake placing floating candles