AP PHOTOS: Pilgrims make offerings to Hindu deities at a biennial festival in southern India

SURYAPET, India (AP) — Chants of “Om Linga, Om Linga” resonated as barefoot Hindu pilgrims, many balancing offering-filled baskets and clay pitchers on their heads, climbed more than 100 steps to a hilltop shrine in southern India.

One family led a goat wearing a marigold garland around its neck. A burly man carrying two young children in his arms gripped a live chicken in his free hand while another man carried a goat across his shoulders.

The animals were offered as sacrifices to Lingamanthula Swamy, believed to be a form of Lord Shiva, and his sister Choudamma, in return for prosperity and protection.

A box in which idols of Lingamanthula, his sister, and other deities are stored was brought to the Lingamanthula Swamy temple during the pilgrimage and opened ceremoniously in front of the devotees.

Their pilgrimage, known as the Peddagattu Jatara, takes place every two years. During the five-day festival that ended Thursday, tens of thousands visited the temple in Suryapet, in the southern state of Telangana.

Women wore bright clothes and flowers in their braided hair. Tumeric, an Indian cooking staple but also essential in Hindu rituals, was made into a paste and smeared on the temple steps and walls, as well as the foreheads of the goats before they were sacrificed.

The pilgrimage is believed to have originated in the 16th century — before the temple was built on the huge rock that gave the pilgrimage its name Peddagattu, or “large rock” in the local Telugu language.

At the central shrine, clay pitchers filled with bonam — rice cooked with the coarse sugar known as jaggery — were offered. Devotees walked clockwise around the shrine, under the dappled light filtering from bamboo canopies shielding them from the blazing sun. Some played drums, danced and enacted scenes from Hindu epics. Others chanted prayers and walked reverently with folded palms.

A woman wearing a holy mark on her forehead went into a trance shouting and swaying violently. The words out of her mouth were guttural and slurred but the pious surrounded her and asked for blessings.

Devotees, who arrived from faraway places, cooked their sacrificed animals on open fires outside their tents on the grounds surrounding the temple. The food was then shared among family and friends with much merriment and cheer.