Street procession, Vegetarian Festival Phuket, Thailand

Each year in the 9th lunar month of the Chinese calendar participants demonstrate their devotion through cleansing rituals, from adherence to a specific diet and abstinence from impure or intoxicating acts to feats of endurance and suffering. Here one of the temple gods is processed through the streets and cleansed in a hailstorm of firecrackers to purify and thus direct misfortune away from the community.