The Varkari walk to Pandharpur is organised around sound and around a standing social argument, and both are older than the procession that now carries them.
Abhangas on the road
Walkers travel in dindis, organised companies each with its flag and discipline, singing the abhangas of Tukaram, Dnyaneshwar, Namdev, Janabai and Chokhamela in call and response for the whole distance, so the road is audible before it is visible. Two palkhis, palanquins carrying the silver sandals of Dnyaneshwar from Alandi and of Tukaram from Dehu, head the columns and gather dozens of smaller processions on the way. A vari is the journey and a varkari is one who makes it, and the vow is to walk every year for life.
Old walk, newer procession
The poet-saints whose songs the walkers sing include women and people from castes barred from the temple they are walking toward, and they wrote in Marathi rather than Sanskrit, which is why the movement is understood by its own adherents as a standing objection to Brahminical order rather than an expression of it. The walking is documented from at least the thirteenth century; the palkhi procession that now makes it recognisable was arranged in its present form only in the 1830s. The devotion is medieval, and the choreography around it is not.