Kataragama sits within a wider Sri Lankan festival calendar in which the Esala season is the most prominent. The best known of these is the Esala Perahera at Kandy, centred on the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, which draws international attention for its procession of caparisoned elephants. For India, festivals like Kataragama are a reminder of the deep cultural and religious traffic across the Palk Strait, sustained by shared Shaivite and Murugan worship traditions and by the movement of pilgrims between the two countries.