Today we visited the place where the Yamuna River and Ganges River meet in north India, a city called Allahabad. Allahabad means "City of God". But, this city is also home to the largest
religious gathering in the world -- a Hindu rite called Kumbha Mela.
Every 12 years Hindus travel to this site to bathe in the Sangam ("confluence") between the two rivers. The last occurrence in 2001 drew 70 million people. Seventy million. Seventy million people packed up a tent, got on a train with their family and traveled to Allahabad. They shut down all motorized transportation near the site, because there are too many people. A special train station is created out in the middle of a field to bring everyone in and out.
When we got here today, the Ardha Kumbha Mela ("half", or 6-year Kumbha Mela) had just been completed two days before. There were acres and acres of dusty pavilions, people milling around, tents with meals cooking outside, speakers blaring Hindu music, goods for sale, and policemen wielding semi-automatic weapons. The entire site sits on a flood plane that'll be covered in water in July. This temporary city of 70 million (contained inside the city limits of the permanent city of Allahabad) is erected and torn down in a matter of months.
I'll post pictures when I'm able to. The sign of Hindu music playing as the sun dropped past the horizon behind this massive campsite was an experience unlike any other I've had.
4 comments:
Something you will most likely never forget and can hardly capture in words…what a gift to glimpse into a culture like this.
"The sign of Hindu music playing as the sun dropped past the horizon behind this massive campsite was an experience unlike any other I've had."
This is the WOW to which the above comment is referring.
Glad you are enjoying yourself as you experience the world and its beauty from another angle :)
My prayer for you today…
“We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints— the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel that has come to you. All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God's grace in all its truth. You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our] behalf, and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.
"For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
-Colossians 1:3-14
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