ALLAHABAD KUMBH MELA 2013, INDIA

At the Sangam

Some of you may be wondering why I am including the trip to the Kumbh Mela in my Spa Diary. Well for those of you who are ignorant, spa means "healing with water". And where do the whole of India go to HEAL WITH WATER???? To the Sangam! Every 12 years the festival of healing with water attracts over 80 million people.

The crowds that we avoided

The largest spiritual gathering in the world, all the great Masters camp by the banks of the river, all the Gods descend from the Heavens during this festival and millions of pilgrims come to the confluence to take the blessings of the water.

The Sangam is the confluence of the three rivers of Ganga, Jamuna and the mythical Saraswati. The merging point of rivers in India are always considered holy because it symbolises the merging of our egos with the Divine Consciousness.

The stream of people continuously walking in with their belongings on their backs or heads was a metaphor for the Holy Riveritself. It never seemed to end.

We stayed in a really nice clean UP Govt campsite with young lads everyready to give us hot water and extra blankets in exchange for a little tip!

Our camp

 We arrived late eveing and wandered around to find most of the Akharas closing down for the day but came upon a beutiful Arti by the waterfront and also some entertainment

Next morning we were up early and excited to take our Holy bath in the river . We went down to the jetty, bought our flowers (offerings), bindis and made sure we had our change of clothes and hurray we were off!

This was a nice way to approach the Sangam. We avoided the crowds, yet were able to see them in the banks and the boatride was very pleasant giving us time to prepare internally for the blessing. We also got a chance to feed the migratory Siberian gulls.

Its a little tricky once you get to the Sangam. Firstly, the touts get you to buy coconuts in order to get blessings and naive as we are, we want to do it the right way UNTIL we feel cheated!! Secondly, the pier is actually made up of several boats joined together where each boat gets a short parking space to conduct the ritual of the dip, so changing into our dry clothes requires a lot of balance!

So finally we are all set to do the dip.

The blue of the Yamuna meeting the green of the Ganges

Destined to do this together

WOW! It was GREAT!

    THE    SACRED    DIP    !!

The dip was quite amazing. So much spiritual vibration around us and with the blessings of all the Masters, with millions of people coming only for the one purpose of cleaning and purifying their souls, it has to be a mega spiritual event in the history of mankind.
With great balance and astuteness we were able to get into out dry clothing and the rest of the day was left to explore the different camps, akkharas, Masters etc. We were all a bit high from our experience. No dope, promise!

Swami Chidananda Saraswati of Parmarth Niketan

Chillin' with the Chillum

How lovely to not care at all!

Goldilocks

I also got quite used to being called Ma Mala by the end of the trip!

On my way back I caught this beautiful reflection in the river!

It was sad to leave Allahabad and the strong spiritual vibration of this temporary city. Here today, gone tomorrow just like life.................!