standing by the riverbank and gazing out at the masses at the Sangam in Allahabad, it looked like the greatest gathering on earth. The occasion was the Purna Kumbh Mela which is held after every 12 years here. It paled even the 2001 Mahakumbh,

held once every 144 years, which could not boast of this large congregation of pilgrims. According to government estimates, about a 100 million people were visiting the Sangam over the duration of the mela.

I was looking at the boats at the confluence and rivers of people crossing over towards it, and at the several people on the banks. At one glance I must have beheld about 30 million people, which is more than the population of most Western countries.

Mauni amavasya dayThe day was Mauni Amavasya, February 10, 2013, the

main bathing day, and as the sun rose people began to

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gather at the river. The Naga sadhus were the first to plunge into the intermingling waters of the Ganga, Yamuna, and mythical Saraswati, at the time and date fixed in perpetu-ity by astrology. They were followed by other holy sects and the multitudes. According to the ancient scriptures, the confluence is one of the four spots where drops of the nectar of immortality had fallen from the kumbh, or pitcher that Vishnu was carrying, while flying on his heavenly bird Garuda away from the battle between the demi-gods and demons. Prayag, as Allahabad was known, Haridwar (Ganga), Nasik (Godavari), and Ujjain (Shipra) are the four sacred spots where the mela is held every few years.

Mark Twain’s accountOne of the earliest records of the Kumbh Mela is by Mark

Twain, who after attending it in 1895, wrote in his book, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World, “It

is wonderful, the power of a faith like that, that can make multitudes upon multitudes of the old and weak, and the young and frail enter without hesitation or complaint upon such incredible journeys and endure the resultant miseries without repining. It is done in love, or it is done in fear; I do not know which it is. No matter what the impulse is, the act born of it is beyond imagination, marvelous to our kind of people, the cold whites.”

My group of israelisFar from being the cold whites, my group of 20 Israelis

marveled at the splendour, but soon running out of clichés we just watched silently together. Mauni Amavasya is a day of silent fasting after bathing, and many among the devout were seen maintaining it, even as loudspeakers around us belted out a steady stream of messages on lost or missing pilgrims.

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We had arrived the evening before from Khajuraho, after completing a seven-day tour of Madhya Pradesh. Our group comprised 20 tourists from Israel, their guide Shai, my old friend, and I, their local escort. I had got to know everyone pretty well by this time. Most of them were middle-aged and a few couples were senior citizens. During our visit to Omkareshwar, Satpura, Orcha, and Khajuraho, they had displayed enormous stamina and a healthy curiosity and I was encouraged that they will be able to cope with the rigours of the main event, the Kumbh Mela.

arriving at the campEveryone had been instructed to carry small overnight

bags or back-packs with enough resources for two days, as it was likely that we would undertake a long walk to reach our camp. Sure enough, the traffic was being halted 3 km outside the city and no amount of entreaties to the police could get us through the final barrier. So we gathered every-one and off we went, arriving at our camp 45 minutes later.

It was the evening before the main bathing day and the pilgrims were pouring in. It was fascinating walking among the crowd which was pan-Indian, with the only com-mon language being ‘Har-Har-Gange!’ being periodically shouted out by the walking ‘moksh-seekers’. Cameras were clicking madly and there was much impromptu posing with the pilgrims, who were equally happy to be photographed with the goras, or whites! There was much laughter and good spirit abounded.

The camp turned out to be a well laid out set-up of 165 tents and we were allotted ours. Confusion prevailed as the camp was running a full house that night and every facility and service was under severe pressure. The management was busy solving problems talking into their cell-phones, and then retreating from the complainants until they caught up with them. I looked around and found some young kids transporting luggage and delivering the much advertised ‘running hot water’ in buckets. Seeing that they were with-out any warm clothes I promised to get them some old sweaters and jackets from the group, and a small tip for their services if they took care of our needs. Thereafter, we had a full team of eager-beavers on call, round-the-clock, attend-ing to us. The food was good though we had to requisition and then guard the limited chairs available.

Our first visit to the SangamAfter settling everyone in and then en-

joying a good lunch we headed down for our first visit to the Sangam. Our camp was located on the right bank of the Yamuna, across the river from the Allahabad fort. The Yamuna looked surprisingly clean, probably due to the rivers flowing in from the south that rejuvenate it, after getting battered in the capital city Delhi, and Agra, en route. Away to the right is the Ganga and the confluence, or Sangam, is a wide bay, a kilometer across at its widest point.

We joined the stream of people mov-ing towards the boats anchored on our side. Our camp had organised boats for us while other pilgrims were paying Rs 30-50 for a ride to the Sangam and back. The boats were not allowed to cross over to the other side, but only up to the Sangam which had been demarcated by upright poles in the river, which was only 3-4 feet deep at the bay. The boat ride was precari-ous as there were about 300 boats plying in the area of a few square miles of river and bumping lightly into each other every now and again.

at the sacred spotA little while later we were there, at the

very spot where Vishnu had let fall a drop of the nectar of immortality! People were bathing, offering flowers, and praying while standing in the water. This site is several times more holy during the entire month of the Kumbh, and thousands of ‘Kalpwasis’, or pilgrims who stayed the entire duration, were visible in their camps fronting the sangam.

We satisfied ourselves with photography and just breathing in the atmosphere of the mela made us feel heady. The boatmen hurried us on as no one is allowed to linger here for too long. There were River Police rafts with outboard motors maintaining some sort of order in the mayhem, blasting out the dos and don’ts on megaphones, and telling those who had bathed to make way for oth-ers. We cruised up the Yamuna for a while until sunset. I learnt during my conversation with a boatman that they had oared upstream for five days to get here, and would eventually earn about Rs 20,000 from their five weeks of ferrying. The boatman even showed me his callused hands to underline the effort that they had to put in. Definitely, an extra tip was in order!

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among pilgrim camps and cooking firesOn the riverside we walked along the pilgrim camps

and ours suddenly seemed a lot more comfortable and suddenly everyone was less critical of their own thereafter. Cooking fires were everywhere. Many communal kitchens were also in full swing, providing food to anyone who asked. We noticed poor people, but no sad faces, an aspect pointed out to me by one of the group members. There was police presence and well marked out one-way corridors for crowd control, likely to be tested the next day. We wound our way back to the camp reluctantly. After dinner we decided to turn in early but music coming from a distance through the night, kept many awake awhile. We slept with ‘Sita-Ram, Sita-Ram’ playing in the background.

in the kumbh crowdThe next morning was the day of Mauni Amavasya, and

we were up and ready at sunrise to attempt our journey to the Sangam. We exited the camp and what had been a stream of pilgrims, the day before, had turned into a river of humanity. We asked everyone to stay close, and on entering the flow we were immediately carried forward by it. It was a one-way flow of pilgrims moving forward until a point where we were met with an oncoming flow, and had the choice to turn left towards the river as most were doing. Or take a right and join the flow of those exiting after their ‘snan’ or ritual bath. The decision was taken for us by a sudden surge of the crowd that pushed us to the right and away from the river. As soon as the first few of us had been swept thus, the rest of us were forced to follow. Before we knew it, the ‘river’ of people was carrying us through nar-row lanes and a few in the group were near panic, having never experienced anything like this in their lives. After another 10 minutes of running-with-the-pilgrims, the street widened and I noticed a young man walking alongside us. He smiled and asked, “Hello! Where are you from?” I told him that the ‘goras’ were from Israel and asked him where he belonged to. When he said that he is a local I quickly recruited him as our guide and asked him how we could get back to the river. The shortcut he gave us was about 5 km long and after another two hours we staggered back into the camp, having had an inside view of what a Kumbh crowd was all about. Phew!

Taking a holy dipPost-breakfast four of us decided to take a dip in the

Sangam, and so we all headed back, braving the throngs, though this time we got into a boat to sail across to the Sangam again. The boatmen were placing planks from the deck into the water and we walked in and took our holy dips. Everywhere there were people and though the impression was of complete confusion, there was an order underlying everything. No one was getting aggres-sive with anybody, people were helping one another, and

they were obeying the police. It was a fantastic spectacle and we were a part of it. A little while later we were back at the camp, and a shower and lunch later, we decided to make another attempt at walking to the Sangam to see the various akhadas of the sadhus at about 2.30 pm, when the main bathing would have finished.

Exploring the akhadasThis time we found slightly thinner crowds. The walk

was long as strict one-way rules were being enforced and three hours later we arrived at the main camp at the San-gam. There, pavilions had been set up on the sandbank, each housing particular sects of Hindus. The pavilions were the ‘akhadas’ or camps of different sadhus (ascetics) who had descended from their mountain retreats for the Kumbh. We wandered among the pavilions, watched reli-gious leaders giving discourses, saw tents within housing their own adherents, and stalls with literature highlight-ing their beliefs and accomplishments. Music was blaring everywhere. We found our way to the Juna Akhada, the soldiers of the Naga sadhus, a militant group of mystics. The ash-smeared sadhus, some suspended on swings, or standing on one foot, with body piercings, all had long matted dreadlocks. Some looked fearsome and some completely detached, maybe with some help from the clay pipes or chillums that they were ceremoniously pulling on. They were happy to be photographed and since our group was among the few foreign faces that had ventured into the throngs rather than watching from a boat, we were welcomed almost everywhere. After many blessings and a few declined offers of smoking their chillums, we got to the base of the fort, at Kila Ghat, where helpful policemen arranged boats to take us across and then back to camp.

ConclusionIt was a spectacular two days at the Kumbh. Two days

of witnessing the largest spiritual gathering ever in the his-tory of mankind. We were humbled to have been a small part of the many. As we gathered to leave the banks of the Sangam, the Israelis joined me in shouting out lustily, ‘Har-Har-Gange’!

The author is Ashim Sudan, Kumaon Safaris Pvt Ltd. He can be reached at kumsaf@gmail.com(All names have been changed to keep identities confidential).

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