Sabarimala Ayyappa Temple continued to witness heavy rush as devotees from different parts of south India undertook their pilgrimage to the temple. Pilgrims had to wait for hours together inside the thickly packed iron barricades on the New Year day on Wednesday to reach the temple premises.
The queue of pilgrims extended up to Sabaripeedhom on the trekking path, 2.5 km away from Sannidhanam, in the morning.
A majority of the pilgrims were from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka.
Other routes
The flow of pilgrims to Sannidhanam through the Karimala and Pullumedu routes too has gone up.
The Ayyappa Seva Sanghom camps at Karimala and Valiyanavattom were providing free food and medicated drinking water to the pilgrims.
TDB sources told The Hindu that the revenue collection at Sabarimala during the just-concluded Mandalam pilgrim season was ₹163 crore.
30 lakh pilgrims
As per the digital head count registered at the police aid-post at Sabarimala, 30,59,000 pilgrims had visited the Ayyappa temple during the 41-day Mandalam festival season. This might even go up to 45 lakh persons, the sources said.
