Thousands flock to festival of Chariots at Durban’s North Beach

Thousands of visitors, holidaymakers and devotees have flocked to the annual Festival of Chariots at North Beach in Durban.

The four-day festival honouring the Hindu deity Krishna takes place over the Easter weekend and offers family fun, food stalls and markets.

The beachfront is bursting with colour, including the distinctive saffron dress of Krishna devotees.

Yoshan Baboolall, the CEO of Food for Life South Africa, says they have served 75 000 free meals since the start of the festival.

“25 000 meals on a daily basis – aiming to reach 100 000 meals by Monday evening. Absolutely energetic, the festival has been awesome. The lines when we started at 10h30 didn’t stop until 10h30 at night. I would say it’s the love, the love of the cooking, the love of the Lord and obviously when you come out, everyone serves with love. Everybody is welcome; everybody can take as much as they want, and they can come back into the line as many times as they want. So nobody goes hungry when they are at the Festival of Chariots.”