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Kumbh Festival

Kumbh Mela is a mass Hindu pilgrimage in which Hindus gather at the Sangam, meeting place, of the rivers Ganges,Yamuna and mythical Sarasvati, at Prayag where bathing for purification from sin is considered especially auspicious. The festival is billed as the "biggest gathering on Earth"; in 2001 more than 40 million gathered on the busiest of its 55 days.
The Ardh (half) Kumbh Mela is celebrated every six years at Haridwar and Allahabad, the Purna (complete) Kumbh takes place every twelve years, at four places Allahabad,Haridwar, Ujjain, and Nashik.The Mela alternates between Nasik, Allahabad, Ujjain and Haridwar every three years.According to the Mela Administration's estimates, around 70 million people participated in the 45-day Ardh Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, in 2007.The last "Kumbh Mela " held in 2010 in Haridwar estimated by the authorities to attract between 30 and 70 million people. The current Maha Kumbh Mela began on 14 January, 2013 at Allahabad (Prayag).  According to expectations more than 100 million people will attend the 2013 Kumbha mela.
The next Kumbh will be held at Ujjain (MP) on the bank of river Shipra in 2016. The Kumbh at Ujjain is also called "Simhastha".
The major event of the festival is ritual bathing at the banks of the river in whichever town it is being held that is, Ganga in Haridwar, Godavari in Nasik,  Kshipra in Ujjain and Sangam (confluence of Ganga, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati) in Prayag (Allahabad). Nasik has registered maximum visitor to 75 million. 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 is the most sacred of all the pilgrimages.


Thousands of holy men and women attend, and the auspiciousness of the festival is in part attributable to this. The sadhus are seen clad in saffron sheets with ashes and powder dabbed on their skin as per the requirements of ancient traditions. Some, called naga sanyasis, may not wear any clothes even in severe winter.
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.”
The literal meaning of Kumbh is a pitcher, but its elemental meaning is something else. Even as a symbol of pitcher, Kumbh is synonymous with holy activities as in daily life a pitcher (or kalash) is an integral part of all sacred activities in Hindu culture, and this pitcher is a symbol of Kumbh.Holy scriptures say that in a pitcher, its mouth (opening) symbolizes the presence of Vishnu, its neck that of Rudra, the base of Brahama, all goddesses in the center and the entire oceans in the interior, thus encompassing all the four Vedas. This itself establishes the significance of the Kumbh as symbolized by the pitcher.
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