Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, India 2007
Dates of Ardh Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, India, 2007
January 03 to Feb 26, 2007.
Kumbh Mela (कुम्भ मेला) is a Hindu pilgrimage that occurs four times every twelve years and rotates among four locations: Prayag (Allahabad), Haridwar, Ujjain and Nashik. Each twelve-year cycle includes one Maha Kumbh Mela (Great Kumbh Mela) at Prayag, which is attended by millions of people, making it the largest gathering anywhere in the world. It was actually started by King Harshvardhana of Ujjain. He used all his wealth to donate during this mela to poor, learned people of all religions.[citations needed]
After visiting the Kumbh mela of 1895, Mark Twain wrote:
“It is wonderful, the power of a faith like that, that can make multitudes upon multitudes of the old and weak and the young and frail enter without hesitation or complaint upon such incredible journeys and endure the resultant miseries without repining. It is done in love, or it is done in fear; I do not know which it is. No matter what the impulse is, the act born of it is beyond imagination marvelous to our kind of people, the cold whites.
Kumbh Mela is attended by millions of people on every single day. The major event of this festival is a ritual bath at the banks of the rivers on specified sacred dates. Other activities include religious discussions, devotional singing, mass feeding of holy men and women and the poor, and religious assemblies where doctrines are debated and standardized. Kumbh Mela (especially the Maha Kumbh Mela) is the most sacred of all the Hindu pilgrimages. Thousands of holy men and women (monks, saints and sadhus) attend, and the auspiciousness of the festival is in part attributable to this.
http://firozekumbhmela.blogspot.com