Several lakh women devotees turned up to offer pongala -rice cooked with jaggery, ghee, coconut etc - to Kanaki (Goddess Parvathy) of the Attukal Bhagavathy Temple in Thriuvananthapuram on Tuesday.

The ten-day Mahotsavam (festival) culminates in the largest religious gathering of women devotees officially certified by the Guinness Book of World Records too.

The devotees cook the ‘pongala’ in small pots in the open space not just in and around the temple premises, but almost all the roads leading to the temple too are pre-booked for the same.

The rituals are kick-started with the chief priest lighting the makeshift stove with fire stoked from the sanctum sanctorum and then passed on to the devotees. Once the cooked offering is blessed by the spraying of holy water, the women can then disperse to their homes with their respective ‘pongalas’ to share with their near and dear ones.