Ganesh Chaturthi is a Hindu festival. It lasts for ten days. On the tenth day Ganesha idols are carried in a public procession with chanting and music. The idols are then immersed in idols. Thousands of idols would have been immersed in Chennai. I would say that easily millions would be immersed across India.
It has been a big of an environmental disaster, but there are now regulations to try to control the impact. We saw large piles of clay ganesh statues piled up on the beach that had earlier been immersed. I believe they try to collect the pieces and keep them out of the ocean as much as possible. There are also only certain places where the immersion is allowed. You can see in the videos below that it is policed quite heavily..
It has been a big of an environmental disaster, but there are now regulations to try to control the impact. We saw large piles of clay ganesh statues piled up on the beach that had earlier been immersed. I believe they try to collect the pieces and keep them out of the ocean as much as possible. There are also only certain places where the immersion is allowed. You can see in the videos below that it is policed quite heavily..
The Ganesha statues being brought down to the beach. The trucks just kept arriving bringing idols from different temples around the city.
The immersion of the idols.
It was a very interesting experience to see this in person. Ethan accompanied me. Everybody else was uninterested. Ethan actually wasn't overly interested, but didn't want me going on my own.
We drove past this beach a couple of weeks later and it looked like it had been cleaned up.
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