Kataragama is Sri Lanka’s most spiritually charged pilgrimage town, where the intensity of devotion on display is unlike anything else. The Kataragama Devalaya, dedicated to the god Skanda-Murugan, is venerated by Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims alike, a union of faiths around a single sacred site. The Esala Perahera festival, held each July and August, is one of Sri Lanka’s most astonishing spectacles: nights of processions, fire-walking, body-piercing rituals and the drums that draw enormous crowds of pilgrims in states of devotion.
