Villagers hold hundreds of snakes aloft as part of an ancient Hindu festival based around the worship of serpents.

Nag Panchami is celebrated by millions across India and Nepal around July and August.

Devotees lift the serpents – which have been collected weeks in advance in preparation for the festival – in the air to negate any bad karma.

Footage shows how hundreds of people from a village near Bhagalpur, Bihar, take part in the tradition.

As part of the festivities, the snakes are released into bodies of water before a priest uses his mouth to fish the reptiles out.

They are then taken to a temple and fed milk before being released back into the wild.

The footage was filmed on August 2.

Nag Panchami, which falls in the month of July or August, is celebrated by thousands of people across the country. During Nag Panchami, snakes are worshiped and offered milk, sweets and flowers.Thousand of local devotees would collect snakes from all over the place and carry them over to a river in a mass procession where they would be initially released into the water and then fished out by a priest who grabs them in his mouth.The snakes are then taken to a nearby temple and fed milk. They are then finally released into the wild again. The devotees hold up snakes in a bid to ward off evil and negate bad karma. Once they reach the local temple, the men queued up to receive blessings from the snakes as the priests chant hymns.These snakes are caught two weeks beforehand in order to be paraded as a part of the festivities. Sometimes, these snakes are pulled out from their snake holes using sticks and kept in pots ahead of the procession.