“Swamje!” goes the call. “Saranam Ayyappa!” the jubilant pilgrims respond en masse. ‘I am coming, Lord Ayyappa’ is the rough translation, and I was, indeed coming. This is despite not knowing who Lord Ayyappa was until a few days ago... It's the middle of the night, and I am stuffed into a small back room of a modest Hindu home in the city of Pathanamthitta, wearing a newly bought black shirt and mundu, happily shouting ‘Saranam Ayyappa’ at the top of my voice in the company of total strangers, wondering vaguely what I had gotten myself into. This is the house of brothers Vishnu and Vimu and their extended family who had kindly taken me under their wing as they prepare to embark on the yearly pilgrimage to the ancient temple complex of Sabarimala, in the forested Keralan foothills near the border with Tamil Nadu. If you have been in South India in January, you will have seen the pilgrims. Dressed all in black, chatting conspiratorially on street corners and at railway stations. A secret smile on their lips. For my own part, I had grown weary of Kerala’s tourist scene, and yearned for something else. Even for a glimpse, perhaps, of that elusive thing we call ‘The Sacred’. Sabarimala sees the largest volume of pilgrims in the world, more even than the Hajj, and I was (apparently) the only Westerner that had ever done it. A leap into the unknown. So here I was. Clutching a black cloth bag containing an assortment of offerings for the temple deities. Some rice, three coconuts, ghee, turmeric and something resembling popcorn. Round my neck, a rosary with a pendant of Lord Ayyappa riding a tiger. Incense and oil lamps burned around me, and as the chanting continued, I am directed to pour the water from each of my coconuts and fill the cavity with ghee. This represents the emptying out of worldly desires and the filling up with spiritual aspirations. We file outside bearing flaming torches and smash the first of our three coconuts on the threshold of the home. Splat. Ghee on my feet. So begins our pilgrimage. Next was an arduous bus journey in the dead of night snaking along precarious mountain pathways, feeling like the in-between state between death and rebirth. During this time I harboured secret longings for beer and beaches, but I put such thoughts to one side. Pilgrims are forbidden from partaking in intoxicants, meat or intercourse in the run up to the festival, or superstition has it they will be eaten by a tiger, of which there are some remaining in those forested hills. At dawn, we reached the foot of the holy mountain. We bathed in the river, and began our long ascent to the sacred temple precinct nestled at the summit. The same route once forged by the young prince, turned ascetic Ayyappa himself. Pilgrims thronged the route in their thousands. All chanting the name of the Lord. Often we are overtaken by the elderly and infirm being born aloft by younger men. As I climb higher and higher, the pristine jungle clad mountains stretch out in all directions. I was elated. Eventually we reached the sacred stairway (somewhat resembling a gold escalator) that marked the entrance to the temple complex. Here we smashed the second of our three coconuts. “Saranam Ayyappa!” According to mythology, the temple is built on the site where the young Ayyappa meditated after slaying the Buffalo Demoness, and in so doing finally realised his own essential nature as a union of Vishnu, Shiva and Shakti : The Ultimate Reality. Within the enclosure was that classic Indian blend of Sacred and Profane: In addition to the ancient stone temples and happy worshippers were copious quantities of concrete, plastic, advertising billboards and sound systems pumping out ear-bursting Tamil pop. The Sacred came in the way people treated one another, as if each and every human there, myself included, were themselves an incarnation of the Godhead. Perhaps we are. I smashed my third and final coconut and made my descent; soaking wet, covered in turmeric and grinning ear to ear; a slightly different person to the one that went up. “Suranam Ayyappa!”