From the Yadnya Kasada Festival at the crater of Mount Bromo, July 23, 2013.
On the fourteenth day of the Hindu festival of Yadnya Kasada, the Tenggerese people of Probolinggo, East Java, travel up the mountain in order to make offerings of fruit, rice, vegetables, flowers and sacrifices of livestock to the mountain gods by throwing them into the caldera of the volcano.
The festival began in the 15th century when a princess named Roro Anteng started the principality of Tengger with her husband, Joko Seger. The childless couple asked the mountain gods for help in bearing children and, according to the legend, the gods granted them 24 children on the provision that the 25th must be tossed into the volcano as a sacrifice. The 25th child, Kesuma, was finally sacrificed in this way and the tradition of throwing sacrifices into the volcano to appease the mountain gods continues today.
Mount Bromo is an active volcano and part of the Tengger massif, in East Java, Indonesia. To see more photographs from the festival, check out this feature story on CBS!
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