Posted on 01/27/2019 5:09:12 PM PST by marshmallow
Shivering and blue-lipped but smiling, Niraj Shukla emerged from the Ganges River this week, flanked by his parents and millions of other people, feeling renewed.
"The water is very cold, but once you have a bath – it's sort of a miracle, you know?" said Shukla, a 32-year-old engineer who lives in India's capital New Delhi.
The Shukla family were among the first of what's expected to be 150 million pilgrims all taking a dip in India's holy river through March 4 as part of the Kumbh Mela, a Hindu religious festival billed as the world's largest gathering of human beings at one event.
It happens every 12 years, its dates fixed according to the alignment of the stars and planets. This year is a half-Kumbh – six years since the last one – but it's nevertheless expected to be the biggest so far. The government officials and religious authorities who organize the event estimate that 15 million people showed up on Tuesday, the opening day.
For the 2019 event, some 200 miles of new roads were built to ferry pilgrims from all corners of India. They also come by train, or by boat down the Ganges, carrying their belongings in bundles balanced on their heads. Pilgrims sleep in a vast tent city at the river's edge, where temperatures slide toward freezing at night.
Rich and poor, tourists and ascetic monks, all squat side by side, chanting mantras.
They include naked dreadlocked holy men, Hindu priests draped in orange sarongs and garlands of marigolds, families with infants, foreign backpackers on spiritual journeys – and Shukla and his parents, who hail from the host city, Allahabad.
Shukla returns home whenever his hometown hosts the Kumbh. This is his third.
The bathing spot is at the confluence of three rivers: the.....
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
There's going to be a few folks not happy about the cultural appropriation going on there.
“...They include naked dreadlocked holy men, Hindu priests draped in orange sarongs and garlands of marigolds, families with infants, foreign backpackers on spiritual journeys ...”
Sounds like some sort of democrat function.
omg the trash
India ain’t your place if you hate crowds.
In passing, isn’t the Ganges the most polluted river in the world, and the source of most of the floating plastic in the ocean?
They can bathe in that polluted sludge all they want.
Jeremy Wade did a show on the Ganges and it’s pollution.
One test he performed showed extremely high concentrations of human feces. It also had very high levels of heavy metals, especially mercury.
Go ahead, take a dip.
Nothing as refreshing as a bath in a sewer. . .India is already a cesspool, but to jump in an open sewer is NOT something healthy.
Environmental News Flash. All life in the Ganges River below the dipping sites are dead. Authorities are puzzled. PETA to investigate.
Well when millions of people take only one bath a year, it is going to pollute the bath-tub, n’est pas?
#9. To some this is delivered lunch.
Oops! Did I really write that?
Shark: Hey, I don’t even have to tip the delivery guy. Just ate him too! Life is great even if it is a la carte.
A few early arrivals staking out their spots before the 150 million arrive?
What is one to make of a ‘Holy’ river, (or city or other site) ?
Yeah, that too.
"Thank you for attending. We will now begin."
Maybe they think the river is Holy cow urine. If splashing it on your face is good, diving in must be better.
The enviroweenies should start there.
LOL!!!!!
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