My Prayag Maha Kumbh Mela pilgrimage — a once in a lifetime experience - by Guy Hayward

Sunrise has not yet come, and it’s 4.59am, 3rd February 2025, on the last great bathing day of the Prayag Maha Kumbh Mela in North India.

I’m watching hundreds of naked, ash-clad, marigold necklace-wearing highly vital men, some of whom are shaking their weapons. Then the holy war cries of ‘Har Har Mahadev’ sound from their throats and they march forward but as individuals, not in military rhythmic step: this is a different kind of army. These men are naga sadhus, a warrior form of monastic order. Through centuries of physical fighting with fellow lineages of ‘sadhus’, or holy men, these ‘nagas’ have earned their pole position in what is about to become a very long procession with one very clear destination, the confluence of three rivers: Ganges, Yamuna and Saraswati. The climax is nature: a riverbank, not a temple.

As they start moving forward I clamber up onto the top of a truck to get a better view and see that there are almost a thousand of them. They only manage to move a hundred metres before the whistles of the army officials start competing with the ‘Har Hars’ as they attempt to impose order on the procession by pushing back onlookers to the sides of the street, and unpredictably opening and closing gates. I even saw one naga beating a tourist with a stick for taking photos in an unseemly way, their phone got smashed up too. Setting boundaries…

The nagas’ wild energy is intimidating and aggressive, and yet also somehow holy. 

So begins a procession that will last throughout the rest of the day with the naga sadhus joined by huge carnival trucks carrying other groups of babas (spiritual leaders), sadhus and their followers. The sounds of tannoys, whistles, cheering, singing and dancing in the streets accompany smiling pilgrims on their way to salvation.

The Prayag Maha Kumbh Mela

Prayag Maha Kumbh Mela is the largest gathering of humans ever on earth, an estimated and possibly exaggerated 400 million people over the 48 days of the festival.

‍Mela means a gathering in Hindi. I am in a pop-up city that sprawls for 40 square kilometres (4000 hectares). By comparison, the Glastonbury music festival site with 200,000 people covers a little over 3 square km for 4 days of that Festival. The Kumbh Mela takes place every 12 years, when Jupiter enters Aquarius (Kumbh) and the Sun and Moon move into Capricorn.

This year, 2025, Jupiter, Saturn, the Sun, the Moon and the Pushya Nakshatra constellation were seen in a single line on 29th January, an event that occurs only every 144 years making this literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the pilgrims. Which explains why they are even more numerous than a usual mela. The ‘when’ of the pilgrimage is of critical importance.

The alleged 400 million pilgrims also have a shared objective, to bathe in the waters of the River Ganges at Prayagraj (which means King of the Confluences). The confluence as a symbol is a metaphor for unity through the merging of separate entities (rivers) where different realities meet another: the ultimate symbol of a pilgrimage convention.

Mother Ganga (Ganges)

Mother Ganga (Ganges) is considered the holiest river by hindus, who revere her as a goddess who nurtures, purifies sins and grants liberation (moksha). Among the humans, some camps are led by female babas, but my host, Prof Jim Mallinson, tells me most camps are male. Indeed, the only women in the area I was staying in, Terah Bhai Tyagi Khalsa, were those who came to clean, peel veg or help out in other ways, some as devotees seeing it as service.

The feeling of the procession was the most masculine force towards an objective I have ever experienced, and the penetrative release of all those people into ‘the mother’ of the waters felt like it must be the world’s largest metaphysical fertilisation event, all the millions of individuals jostling their way to reach the womb of the Ganga in time. 

The Triveni Sangam (Three Rivers Confluence)

The celebratory atmosphere at the Triveni Sangam (Three Rivers Confluence) was palpable throughout the 3rd February, which was the third and final Shahi Snan (Royal Bath). The belief is that performing the ritual bathing act will cleanse your sins, and have an even stronger purifying effect on these royal bath days when the water is thought to turn into amrit (nectar). Further still, bathing at the precise moment of highest astrological potency is the top prize, and over the centuries there have been bloody battles between various sadhu orders to gain this time slot for bathing. I went in the morning and the evening and the atmosphere was joyful, not solemn, with people splashing each other, despite the tragic stampede of the second royal bath a week before which, intriguingly, no-one I met mentioned.

How, and why, I went on this pilgrimage

Before I went to India, I was asked “How do you get there? Where do you stay? And why do you want to go anyway?” I got there and back from Prayagraj airport on the back of a motorbike without a helmet through chaotic traffic and up the wrong side of the road. I slept on the ground in the simple tent of a group of sadhus whose hacking coughs ensured I got very little sleep.

Why I went was, I think, more interesting.

My decision to go came from a very strong feeling that I simply had to, after my friend Kamya Buch made me aware this was ‘the big one’. I had recently been to the guru Amma’s ashram called Sri Narayani Peedam in Thirumalaikodi, Tamil Nadu, and the Hindu spirituality there increased the amount of love I felt in my life. So naturally I wanted to go to the most concentrated expression of mass Hindu and Indian culture in the world and see how it felt. I was also fortunate to have a unique and experienced host to guide me, Prof Jim Mallinson, after meeting him last year, and by chance he happened to be going on the same dates that I had free in my schedule. Jim had been to several Kumbhs in his life, could speak Hindi, was an honorary mahant (high-ranking sadhu) of his community of babas led by the late guru Prahlad Das. I had also already planned an ayurvedic panchakarma healing week at Sen Wellness Sanctuary in Sri Lanka, and a Village Ways exploration of South India with my parents, so going to the Kumbh seemed like a climactic way to turn this trip into a pilgrimage. The stars were aligned for me too.

The commonality of the pilgrimage experience

10 years ago I co-founded the British Pilgrimage Trust, with a mission to revive the ancient practice of pilgrimage in modern Britain for people of all faiths and none to ‘bring your own beliefs’ and walk the ancestral paths of our land. I have walked two Welsh river pilgrimages myself, and also one to a confluence of three rivers in Hertfordshire.

But here was a river pilgrimage that was the largest event in the world, and I wanted to learn from it.

The Kumbh changed me in ways that I could not have predicted – an inarticulable appreciation for the fact that a culture can work in a completely different way to what I am used to, in many ways that I would instinctively see as ‘wrong’. Everyone I met was happier, smilier, care-free, relaxed, more vital and with a light in their eyes rarely, if ever, seen in the average Westerner. They were kind not just to me as an exotic Western visitor (there were very few white-skinned people and so I was asked for about a hundred selfies), but also to each other. They existed in communities in a much easier way than we do, and with animals too: dogs, cows, camels and elephants. Communalism is part of the essence of Indian culture to the extent that this kind of wildly large event can take place. It’s unimaginable for this many Brits to peacefully coexist in such a dense environment.

Everyone I met was happier, smilier, care-free, relaxed, more vital and with a light in their eyes rarely, if ever, seen in the average Westerner

The sadhus and babas I met initially triggered a conditioned reflex in me to distrust the hyper masculinity that the hierarchies and rule-based way of living reflected. Yet the longer I spent with them the more I got it. Their combined life force was much stronger than anything I have met in the West, holy or non-holy – I felt this on one evening when I stumbled into a feast when a hundred sadhus were just about to eat. The atmosphere in the room was overwhelming. They were the most ‘present’ people I have ever met.

I think of myself as having above-average spiritual development for a Brit, whatever this means, but in the presence of these holy men I realised I am still in the foothills of spirituality.  I have not even started my ascent. Their spirituality is embodied, having little to do with what they believe. 

We in the West focus on what you believe rather than what you do

In the tent next to me, home to the jamat (travelling monastery) I witnessed a group of 50 men who are famous for making a perpetual pilgrimage round India and never settling. After the royal bath, these men took a vow to sit cross-legged in circles of burning manure in the scorching heat of the sun for four months. Their leader, 30 year old Jagannath Das, was a master yogi who had just completed the jamat’s 18-year initiation course. The jamat’s leader and Jagannath’s guru was Prem Das Moni, who has been silent for 38 years. The sadhus’ currencies were their deeds and palpable charisma. In our culture, Jagannath would be a celebrity, in theirs he just sat on a cushion in a tent.

These perpetual pilgrims then started to sit within the circles of burning manure, without seemingly breaking a sweat. I spent hours with them without being able to speak a word of Hindi, and they were at ease with this, understanding that connection goes beyond words. Indeed, they sat together in silence in a large group on their party feast night, saying very little to each other. The average Westerner would feel uncomfortable in these social dynamics, and yet it felt so natural to feel, rather than talk, your way through the day and night.

Visiting the transgender Kinnar Akhada camp was similarly intense– their individual dignity and bravery is powerfully expressed through the extreme physical ordeal they go through to become transgender, how they stand up for who they are within the largely sexually conservative Indian society. They had curated a modest art gallery of their own work, showing images of love.

As someone who is trying to promote and revitalise pilgrimage in Britain, I wanted to know how I could bring what I had experienced back into Britain.

The day I was bathing in the Ganges was the day Druids and Christians were, respectively, celebrating Imbolc and Candlemas. These festivals also honour another shared astrological alignment, the midpoint between winter solstice and spring equinox, and they celebrate another goddess and saint, Bride, who is associated with purifying waters like Mother Ganga. Few people realise that the Glastonbury Festival occurs at the time of Pilton parish’s patronal festival, celebrating John whose feast day is June 24th.

Could the simplest way to create our own ‘Kumbh Mela’ be to redefine Glastonbury Festival as a pilgrimage, with festivalgoers arriving on foot as pilgrims from Wells Cathedral or Glastonbury town to celebrate the joy of music and humanity? Music is, after all, a river of sound that confluences opposing realities and is the West’s favourite way of creating unity, shared experience and presence.

The Indians at the Maha Kumbh Mela know something about the body, soul, earth and cosmos that we in the West do not, and I think it might be because the educational systems of the West are currently not prepared to believe that what the Indians know is possible.

But one thing is sure: whatever they were doing at the Kumbh, I didn’t see a single sun salutation or downward dog pose. To make a first step towards discovering, maybe we should all walk the rivers near where we were born or now live, from source to sea, stopping at the confluences, and setting an intention at the source for what we want from the journey’s flow.