We spent ours at the Maha Kumbh Mela, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumbh_Mela) a once every twelve year mass Hindu pilgrimage where devotees descend on the city of Allahabad to bathe in the Ganges at its confluence with the Yamuna River and the mythical Saraswati River. Billed as the largest mass human gathering on Earth, with estimates as high as 70 to 80 million participants, this is truly an exceptional sight.
The event itself lasts about six weeks. The most
auspicious, and therefore most crowded, bathing day is on February 10th. This year an estimated 30 million people were
in attendance on that day. We met our
friend Dallas, recently arrived from Australia via Kathmandu, in nearby
Varanasi 125km away from the main event on the 14th. The second most auspicious day for bathing
was February 15th. Having
decided as a group that discretion was the better part of valour we entered the
fray as the bulk of the crowds were leaving it, on the 16th.
Having to house so many pilgrims every twelve years, with
smaller but still massive crowds arriving, annually, tri-annually, and every
six years, Allahabad has become quite adept at creating a massive temporary
sister-city for itself during the Kumbh.
This nameless city resembles a sprawling festive refugee camp, connected
by pontoon bridges and dotted with seemingly inflatable Hindu temples poking
their tops a storey or two above the tents below. The place is populated by a mixture of Sadhus
(ascetic Hindu monks), families, support staff, police, healthcare workers, and
even a few tourists, mostly resembling hippies.
It is a marvel that so many people crammed so tightly and so
acutely into such a small area doesn’t lead to a cholera outbreak. Historically, it has in the past. On the most auspicious bathing days, the
sheer volume of people has also led to hundreds of deaths from trampling and crowd
surges. Thousands of people are reported
missing on average each day (Lost and Found at the Kumbh Mela).
The most difficult to reconnect with their families are the toddlers, not
able to communicate but but very capable of wandering on their own. We were told by a few of our hosts in India
that there is a whole genre of Bollywood films dedicated to stories about young
twins separated at the Kumbh meeting later in life. This year only a reported 36 died during a stampede
at the railway station on February 10th, the biggest day of the
festival. As for the cholera, careful
planning, including a mass of very basic but very functional latrines and piped
water seem to do the trick. We can only
imagine the water comes from far away, as though the Ganges is
as ritually as pure as water gets, physically speaking after being filled with 70 million
bathers, it's brown and scary.
We drove three hours there and three and a half back through
a multitude of crowds to visit this sight for a mere hour in the pouring rain. It was well worth it. Submitted for your entertainment and to
fulfill the same psychological need for strange extremes usually filled by The
Guinness Book of World Records or Ripley’s Believe it or Not, below are some
images from our visit to the Maha Kumbh Mela.
Approaching the Maha Khumb Mela
Pilgrims on a Temporary Steel Plank Road
Tent House and Temporary Pontoon Bridge
Temporary Mandir (Hindu Temple)
A Lone Sandal Abandoned in front of a Pontoon Bridge
Plumbing for the Khumbh
Aislinn and Dallas Admire a Midden Heap in front of one of the many Gent's Latrines
Not Pretty but Keeps the Cholera at Bay
Other News
With a tip of the hat to our friend, Josh, who signed off
his most recent e-mail with, “Update the blog already!”, we have decided to
reformat the blog in a way that makes it easier to post on a regular
basis. We’ll be updating one to two
countries at a time every week for the next three or four weeks. Check again next week for Switzerland and
Austria, followed by Turkey, then the Middle East and even Africa, and South Asia. Also with a tip of the hat to
Douglas Adams, “We apologise for the inconvenience.”
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