Rupal Village located near to Ghandhinagar about 40 Km from Ahmedabad. This village celebrates unique festival on the ninth day of the great festival Navratri ( Indian Festival of Praying 9 different Godess and Dandiya Dance ).On the night of ninth day, a "Rath" of Mata Vardayini is taken out from the middle of the villlage and reach to the main temple in about 4 hours. This year the festival celebrated on 27th Sept. 2009.
People of the village say that, This festival has been started by the "Pandavs" since the time of Mahabharat. People come to the village and do prayer for their family and mainly their small children.
The "Palli" is a made from the wood of tree "khijada" on the same day itself. Its a wooden frame of about 8-9 feet height with stand to lift it. Holy fire (Akand Jyoth) kept at 5 places on the frame, one at the top and other at the four corners of the Palli.
People of village take out the Palli from the middle of the village and palli stops at 27 spots in the village. Each spot is having tons of Pure Ghee or Clarified Butter kept ready to pour on the "Palli" Rath. This tons of Pure Ghee is donated by the millions of people who come to this small village to visit the Palli and take blassings of Mata Vardayini.
This year about 700, 000 people visited a small village to have a gimps of the palli. When you see from the top of any home, you do not see anything other then heads of the people. Now each person who visit the village, put some amount of Pure Ghee on the drums kept on each spot.I bet, no person has ever seen or imagined the amount of ghee collected at one place and poured on the Palli in just few minutes.
This year about more then 600,000 kg of Ghee poured on the Palli. You can see the Ghee collected in the oil drums in this picture. To believe it, you need to visit it personally.
After the Palli leave from one place, you can see the small river of Ghee flowing from that place. To leave that spot, you need to walk out from that small river of Ghee. Even after a months of the festival, smell of Pure Ghee comes out of the streets of the village.People visits every year and day by day the popularity of the festival is increasing and more and more people visits the place.
Its great experience of the life to see the festival. Do visit once in you life and receive the blassing from the Mata Vardayini.
Jay Vardayini Mata.
