Devotees take part in a holy bath as part of the grand Kumbh, which happens once every 12 years.Credit: Getty Images
A river of saffron is surging towards the city of Allahabad (now called Prayagraj). It arrives in an unstoppable torrent, inundating the temporary metropolis taking shape along an embankment. Marigold-petalled waves lap the tents, slosh the alleyways, flood the thoroughfares, hasten across the riverbanks and cascade into the channel where the Yamuna, the Ganges and the mythical Saraswati rivers collide. This confluence, known as Triveni Sangam, is India’s holiest Hindu bathing site.
Ash-smeared sadhus (holy people) gather for the festival.Credit: Getty Images
Only now can I discern the individual droplets making up this riverine flow: millions upon millions of human bodies swaddled in robes dyed saffron, ivory and scarlet, or clothed in nothing but a heavy coat of white ash. They sink into the holy waters, arise in bursts of glittering spray, cup the lifeblood in their hands and hold it up to the sun in prayerful salutation. I watch the spectacle from the banks, feet rooted to the tremoring sand, body swaying like a reed as the human flow ripples and foams around me.
It’s 2013, and I’ve joined the world’s largest public gathering: the Maha (“Great”) Kumbh Mela, a Hindu pilgrimage held at Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh every 12 years. Fast-forward a dozen years and the 2025 Maha Kumbh Mela is now under way at Prayagraj. It’s a particularly auspicious occurrence: marking the completion of 12 Kumbh Mela cycles, the once-in-144-years mela is expected to attract 400 million visitors over 45 days.
Pilgrims throw marigold garlands in the river. Credit: Getty Images
Smaller Kumbh Melas are held in the intervening years in Haridwar, Nashik and Ujjain – cities which, like Prayagraj, are said to have been splashed with the nectar of immortality as it fell from the kumbh (pitcher) during a battle between gods and demons. But even those “small” festivals are gargantuan. Attendance numbers are impossible to pinpoint; suffice to say, they’re unfathomable.
For kalpwasi (pilgrims), the event affords a shot at spiritual purification. For urban planning authorities, it presents an organisational nightmare, and for curious travellers, it distils a vibrant, tangled, clamorous country to its unadulterated essence.
Memories of my own secular pilgrimage evoke order rather than chaos, deference where I’d expected incivility. Granted, the 2013 event attracted a comparatively paltry 100 million pilgrims – enough, nonetheless, for Harvard University to study the phenomenon. Now, footage of the latest Kumbh is sweeping me back to Prayagraj, where my guide, Aman Choudhary, stops at a roadside stall to buy me a Hindu prayer shawl.
At dawn, pilgrims fan out into the river for their sun salutations.Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
“I am preparing you for the Kumbh Mela,” he says, mantling my shoulders with the saffron and vermillion fabric. “This colour attracts intellect. Wear it always when you are there, so that you are one with the universe.”
I leave my pop-up camp after dinner – vegetarian, no alcohol, in accordance with Hindu precepts – and join the melee. This morning, 10 million pilgrims took their first dip in waters now burnished with streetlight; tonight they festoon the campgrounds, their chatter filling the air like a sky-sized swarm of bees. Crowd crushes, tragically, are not uncommon. But while the magnitude of this gathering is theoretically suffocating, it feels uncommonly serene. In its wake I flow, past families gathered around aromatically bubbling pots, past ashrams haloed with ganja-smoke and sodium gloom.
Thousands of devotees bathe in holy rivers at India’s Maha Kumbh Mela festival.Credit: Getty Images
Alcohol is forbidden, but marijuana is routine. Perhaps this accounts for the mellow crowds? The human walls are pliable and accommodating; I pass through them like water, and on the other side meet dreadlocked gurus offering words of wisdom, yogis luminous with enlightenment, a naga sadhus (naked holy man) selling blessings for a few rupees, and an ascetic who, in a salutation to world peace, has held his now-atrophied arm aloft for more than half a century.
The congregation disperses at dawn as pilgrims fan out into the river for their sun salutations. A bearded sadhu from Kashmir asks me to bless him by placing a prayer shawl across his shoulders and posing for a photograph. I’m blessed in turn by a Brahmin stationed on a boat above the Sangam; he dips his finger into red puja powder and smears it on my forehead.
Pop-up tent cities emerge for pilgrims attending the gathering.Credit: Getty Images
Back onshore, the river of humanity again subsumes me: money-changers, professional beggars, healthcare representatives dispensing polio drops, sanitation workers showering the tent city with lime and chlorine. Public service announcements blast from overhead speakers: “Take care of your belongings; don’t go in too deep.” There is immense order to this intensely jumbled morass.
I’m bereft when it comes time to leave. I haven’t achieved enlightenment, and nirvana is a long way off. But the shawl has done its job: I’m at one with the universe. Divine intervention? I’ve survived the world’s largest gathering and have momentarily inverted my individualist philosophy. These are my new precepts: surrender to the flow, don’t fight the riptide, trust the river to carry you along on its inexorable journey. Twelve years later, I’m still a work in progress.
The details
The Classic Safari Company arranges bespoke tours with tented accommodation and guided tours at the Kumbh Mela and other festivals. See classicsafaricompany.com.au
The writer was a guest of The Classic Safari Company.