The Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage

Mazu is the goddess of the sea and the most widely worshipped deity in Taiwan, and once a year a palanquin carrying her image leaves Jenn Lann Temple in Dajia and walks south through Changhua and Yunlin to a temple in Chiayi, then back again, over nine days and roughly three hundred kilometres. Tens of thousands walk the whole route and far more join for a stretch of it. What makes it unusual is the roadside: households and businesses along the way set out tables and hand over food, water, medicine and floor space to sleep on, free, to anyone walking. Firecrackers and drum troupes move with the palanquin, and people kneel in the road to let it pass over them.

What you actually see

• The palanquin - the carved sedan chair carrying the image, moved at walking pace.
• Kneeling in the road - people lying down for the palanquin to be carried over them.
• The roadside tables - free food, water and beds offered to walkers the whole way.
• The drum and gong troupes - performing groups travelling with the procession.

When to go

The dates are set each year by divination at the temple and fall in the third lunar month, usually somewhere in March or April, so they move. Check the temple's announced schedule well ahead. Accommodation along the route is taken months in advance, so most people either walk and sleep rough or join for a single day.

Honest expectations

This is an act of devotion, not a display, and it is exhausting, loud and dirty. Firecrackers go off at close range for hours and hearing protection is sensible. Nights are spent on temple floors or in the open. Walking a full day in the crowd means heat, blisters and no privacy.

Nearby

The route passes through Changhua, Xiluo and Beigang, each with a major temple of its own.