
Day One - Bhogi Festival – A travel day home for many and a big house clean for those already there. And the ritualistic burning of used household items and clothes – reminiscent of a Japanese New Year without the daruma doll on which one paints the third eye to help with resolutions.
Day Two – Surya Pongal- Celebrating abundance and everyone’s favourite grain - today a colourful rice “kolam” sculpture supplants the chalk mandala that has graced every doorstep thru the month of December.

Day Three – Mattu Pongal – Honouring Lord Shiva’s bull Basava who misdelivered his master's fasting message to the earth and was forced to remain here and help mortals produce more food. Colourful cows enjoying their day in the sun.
Day Four – Kaanum Pongal – More people – more traffic – Indians have such a high tolerance for noise and congestion ..

Which leads me to the small exercise I have been working on to establish an estimate of the number of folks on yatra – spiritual pilgrimage – at any one time in India. This calculation is proceeding slowly. Yes we know the total population. And we can gather some data – electronically and by observation – about the number of pilgrimage sites and how densely populated they are. The absolute number is not really important. I am intereted in some relative measure which can among other things help illustrate how vibrant Hinduism is - and to a lesser extent the other local pilrimaged religions including Islam, Buddhism and Jainism. ) The exercise also helps to focus on the activities of pilgrimage – how spiritual is it each yatraeur? Then there is the question of the 3M Hindu gods – is the worshipper's relationship with each equally spiritual^
I invite social modellers and other curious folks to help me with this....