Karamadai Car Festival

Date:  4th March 2015

Car festival is one of the major event in the small village Karamadai in Coimbatore district.

The festival is celebrated in the tamil month masi.

There is an interesting story behind this festival.

 2 days before the car festival the priests from Karamdai go to the nearby hill where bettathu amman lives and ask her to come back to Karamadai. 

The amman will be angry (reason later) and will not come. The priests will pacify her with Jewels and may other things.

The amman (another priest plays the role) will agree to come and they start climbing down.

The amman will come for some distance and again gets angry and go back. They again convince her and come again for some more distance and this continues till night. Finally the amman cool down and reach the Ranganathar temple.

Next day Ranganathar gets married to Amman.

Third day is the car festival. The main event. Both the gods will be kept in this car and from morning to evening people can go up and worship.

In the evening the car will be pulled around the temple main road.

Thousands of people gather for this and the car will be pulled along.

The procession usually starts after 6 but because of few unfortunate incidents in other car festivals government ordered to finish the fuction before dark.

This year it was planned to start at 3:15 but it only started around 5 PM.

After the car was pulled for some distance it started raining so much (never seen before) and the procession was halted for sometime.

Despite rain the crowd remained intact and was in full energy.  

I too have gone for pulling during my school and college days :) but not any more :(. That was real fun with lot of friends.

No place left, the complete street was filled with people. After the festival the next day pandha sevai and neer sevai happens.

On the last day is valamattai. On this day Lord Ranganathar beats Amman with banana leaf (not sure why) and ask her to leave. Amman goes angrily to Betta (hill) and stays there till next year.

Next year again 2 days before the car festival the priests go to bring amman back. This repeats every year.


Beautiful sight at night.

People pushing the gigantic car from behind.

This huge structure needs to be turned in four corners and its really a great coordination between people who pull in front and push from behind.