Kumbh is held when Jupiter enters Aquarius and the Sun enters Aries. This planetary alignment occurs once in every 12 years and is deeply rooted to Hindu mythology. Maha Kumbh is celebrated once in 144 years and demonstrates part of its rich heritage, fostering a sense of community and devotion.
The idea to visit this world’s largest spiritual gathering came to my mind towards the end of December’24 and I was waiting for someone to approach me in this regard.. Slowly, the idea took roots within our housing society and later the planning also crystallized within no time.
Nine of us came forward and booked a Tempo Traveller with 20 seats. The idea was to use the additional space for sleeping. We also had two drivers.
We started from Airoli exactly at 7am on 31st January and reached Prayagraj around 11am on 1st February. Though the journey was continuous, we didn’t feel exhausted due to the extra space we had in the vehicle to rest..and also, we made several halts.
To our surprise, it appeared to us that the temporarily arranged Kumbh town was waiting for us. There was absolutely no crowd. We could walk freely and moved into a private kutir where we booked our rooms for a day. Since the roads were empty, we immediately went to the Sangam area and took several holi dips. The water was clean considering more than 40 crore people have already visited and taken shahi snan at this place. We came out of the area and couldn’t believe ourselves that we had our snan so fast. We had the entire day for further activities like visiting the sadhus at akhadas across the river. Since there was lot of time, we came back to our kutir and slept till 5pm. Later, we arranged a few motorcycles and went to the other side of the river using the newly constructed bridge across Yamuna. The akhadas were well organized and the Sadhus were busy giving blessings to all types of devotees from across the globe. Since there was representation from all major akhadas, it is difficult to reach everywhere. We must have easily missed some akhadas. We also came across one of the akhadas where training was given to fresh recruits. However, we reached back kutir around midnight and had full satisfaction of completing our Prayagraj trip. I heard someone in the group saying looking at his watch
“today we walked 13.5 kms.”
The next morning, we went for boating and some of us took a dip right at triveni sangam, the spot where all the three sacred rivers meet. This was a marvelous experience for us as the water was very clean and the area was not overcrowded. The local administration was in full control of the situation. The NDRF, Police, CRPF, STP were all on their toes waiting to get into action. We could also see horse mounted police moving around in batches.
With well kept toilets at all important junctions, even if the area was crowded, visitors could stay in the crowd with a free mind. However, it is a temporary town put up at the banks of sacred rivers and there is fine dust all around the area even after spraying water continuously on the roads. Asthmatic patients are likely to have slight difficulty due to this pollution. Barring this, minute details are taken into consideration at all levels/places. One of our members slightly slipped and fell. Before we could help him, one police SI came from nowhere and helped him stand on his feet. This is the kind of vigil demonstrated by the administration at kumbh.
At the time of writing these few lines, we are in tempo traveller and moving towards Airoli. Yesterday we had visited Vishwanath temple at Varanasi and the darshan was time consuming. It takes around 5 to 6 hrs for darshan. We also had the opportunity to see Gyan Vapi masjid as it is in the same compound almost attached to Viswanath temple. The Hanuman ghadi, which is under the mosque was also open to public for darshan. From Varanasi, we visited Ram temple at Ayodhya. It was constructed in such a way that atleast 1000 people can take darshan at a time. On a normal day, it should not take more than 30 minutes for darshan. The common belief that it takes 4 to 5 hrs for darshan sounds a bit too much. From Ayodhya, we will go straight to Airoli and we are expected to reach back home around afternoon on 5th February’24.
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One thought on “Our trip to Prayagraj & the shahi dip at Kumbh-Sreekumar Menon”
Heartiest Congratulations and very well written