Dan sent over these amazing photos a couple of days ago so I asked him for more information on them. This is what he had to say..

“My grandparents lived around the far east during and after WWII and my father used to visit them. He took these in Malaysia in the 1950’s as a young boy, during the festival he had a very strange run in with a Sadhu who told him a one-legged god watched over him, it kind of weirded him out as his grandfather (who helped raise him) lost his leg in WWI. He’s very straight-laced these days and doesn’t have much time for the whole body modification thing, although as a young boy he was fascinated!

Recently I’ve found more photos of the festival, and my grandmother has informed me that she used to go to as many religious festivals as possible because she loved them, also, that she has loads more photos of Thaipusam, plus others in Thailand and Sri Lanka..”

His grandfather was right (well, as a young boy he was anyway), it is fascinating! Another photo after the break, and hopefully Dan will get busy scanning some more photos for me soon.. Hint hint.

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This beautifully peaceful Kavadi scene was captured by Vin at the 2008 Thaipusam festival, it makes me ache a little because apart from a few Aboriginal festivals I was taken to as a child, there’s a lot of things I’ve yet to experience..

I refuse to make any fruity jokes, there’s a time and a place..

You’ll understand what I mean after you’ve watched this beautiful clip of Alexandre performing a Kavadi bearing in Brazil.

[Editor's note: we've added a kavadi category to ModBlog and of course there are also the kavadi photo galleries and kavadi stories, which include the story of this kavadi bearing, on BME]