Holy Trip - Benares and Kumbamela

It was around 2003 timeframe, I first read about Kumbhamela, a gathering where swamis, yogi's, muni's and all cadre of spiritual personalities gather at Triveni Sangam, to take a dip in the holy union of Ganga, Yamuna and the mystical Saraswathi rivers. More than just a gathering, it was more of a meeting for those very high cadre of Saadhu's after a elongated period's of time. As stated in Autobiography of Yogi book, Kumbamela is where Mahavatar Babaji chose to meet his disciple  Sri Yuktheswar Giri and gave him instructions on spreading Yoga to west through his disciple Paramahamsa Yogananda. A rough fact is that there would atleast be one enlightened being in midst of one crore common man attending the gathering, and his presence is what the gathering is all about. Generally those enlightened don't care to come down and meet common man, and this festival gives them a chance to bless the common man. 

After googling through Kumbamela related information, I chose Feb/10 (Mauni Amavasya) to take part in the event. There are around 7 to 8 auspicious dates in to take bath in Triveni during Kumbamela ceremony that stretches for 55 days starting Jan/2013 ending March/2013. I chose 10/Feb based on my convenience, but didnt know that this is holiest day in the full stretch and crowd will gather to their fullest on this day.

Things generally dont go as planned. Sometimes it goes more exciting than planned. Such a thing happened during this trip. That's Mahesh babu volunteering to attend the event. Till now, as I write this blog, I couldnt believe he joined me for this trip. But, if it is his (the almighty) wish, that Mahesh has to take part in this event, there is nothing to get surprised about :). More unexpected, that Mahesh proposed a change in plan to cover Benares during the trip. It was SJV's blogs that impressed me to visit Benares (Kaasi) atleast once. Though Benares was in my list to visit sometime, I initially didnt plan to cover Benares during the kumbamela trip. But through Mahesh's plan my wish to see Benares also got fulfilled.

Feb/7th morning, we started our pilgrimage to Kaasi. Our plan was to go to Kaasi first, stay there for a couple of days and take a train to Allahabad to attend the Kumbamela and then proceed to Lucknow to catch our return flight. Things moved very smooth than planned. Landed in Kaasi (or Benares or Vaaranasi) on 7th evening, we proceeded to check-in at our hotel. (Thanks MSK and his Linga Travels for booking us hotels @ Kaasi). We didnt expect a miracle waiting for us.

After checking in at the hotel (9pm), and taking a quick refreshment, we went out to have our dinner. Though the hotel had restaurant we chose to have our dinner outside. After dinner, it was around 10pm, we decided to walk around (roam through the streets) for sometime before getting to bed. The great Kaasi Viswanath temple was around 1.5kms from the hotel we checked-in. The road we walked was leading to the Kaasi Viswanath temple. Though we knew it, we didn't plan to go into the temple, but just was walking along the way, just to take a look at where the temple is, so that we can walk-in tomorrow without struggling to find the way. We just kept walking (after a full dinner, lassi and sweet pan) and finally reached the entrance of the temple. I was imagining the temple to be something like our Tanjore Temple, as Kaasi Viswanath is such famous deity, but the temple in real was even smaller than Thirumullaivoyal Eshwaran temple. Temple was about to get closed by 10.30pm, and a police guard near the entrance of the temple was asking us to rush into the temple to have a Darshan. He might not have seen someone like us who comes till the entrance of the temple and return back like us. He thought we have come there for a Darshan. The policewala and a shopkeeper nearby was close to yelling at us to get inside. Though we had a choice to return back (in fact Mahesh wanted to, since we didnt even take a bath after a tiresome journey), I personally go with that moment. Incidents around us was pushing to have a darshan and why should we miss it. In fact, thats why we have travelled so long, and why delay further when everything works in our favor. We can anyway come back tomorrow for one more Darshan if needed. 

The shopkeeper literally seized my DSLR to his safe and gave us the pooja set with garland and other stuff. I need to say, Mahesh was completely unhappy with what was going on. I could very well sense that. But things were happening beyond our control. The police closed to "jargandi'ed" us inside temple, and we were near the deity with pooja set in our hands at 10.30pm. For the first couple of minutes, we were searching where the lingam was, and finally found him inside that small room, just few feet away from us close to ground level. The poojari inside snatched some 100Rs to perform pooja and it was a nice darshan. We were atleast near the lingam for 3 to 4 minutes. Then we went around the inside the temple comfortably (and freely) and came out. We never thought he (Shiva), planned to give us a darshan unexpectedly. Mahesh was really frustrated (atleast thats how i felt) about what has happened, and I honestly couldn't convince him. In fact, i too didnt expect that we will enter in the temple, but then things were just happening. We actually thought of having a dip in Ganga before visiting the temple, but things took its own course. Other frustration is about the shopkeepers  who charged us around 300 for Pooja set.

Next day (Feb/8), after refreshing, we decided to visit Sarnath, the place where Buddha delivered his first sermon to his five disciples. Its around 12Kms from the hotel we stayed and we took cycle rickshaw's and share auto's to reach the place. These mode of transport will give us some space to explore the city. After visiting Sarnath, we went to Kaala Bhairav temple, one of the most important aspect of Kaasi. We had a very close darshan, within just a touching distance away from the Bhairavar deity. 

So far, we haven't seen the most important aspect of Kaasi - the Maa Ganga. After visiting Kaala Bhairavar, we moved to the Dasaswamedh Ghat, where Ganga pooja was performed. The first glimpse of Ganga River was - WoW. She was not very fierce (as the Hoogly River I saw once in Dakshineswar - Calcutta). She was soft, wide and moving calmly. Who knows how many secrets this lady was carrying. Ganga pooja was something we shouldnt afford to miss visiting during a kaasi trip. A long-down tradition where we celebrate and worship the river that fertilizes our lands, in-turn helping the human survival. The conch blown during the pooja literally scared me away. The sound and rhythm of conch, and its echo the river reflected - its more than amazing to hear it. Feels like I'm standing before an infinite space.

After watching pooja, we decided to move close to the truth. To Manikarnika ghat where corpse are burnt. I heard a lot about this ghat. One of the holiest place like Harichandra Ghat. Manikarnika ghat is where one of the disciple of  Mahavatar Babaji, the Lahiri Mahasaya was cremated. In fact, it was through Lahiri Mahasaya the wisdom of Pathanjali's yoga was spread into this world during last century. Someone said that this place wont stink despite burning corpse 24/7. Though its a walkable distance from the place where Ganga pooja was performed, we hired a boat (over the Ganges) to go to this Ghat. Like what was heard, the place wasn't stinking even a bit, but bodies were burning all round the clock. We stood  there to watch the burn for some 30 minutes, and it was more than enough a visual for this lifetime. Just next to the ghat is a free-lodge, where people who are in their death bed, and wants to get cremated in this ghat can stay for free. I somewhere read Ramakrishna Paramahamsa visited this ghat and said, "I could see Lord Shiva standing aside every burning corpse and liberating the soul". Such a powerful place, and so is the complete Benares. Its around this cremation ground, the whole city appears to be built. Generally cremation grounds will be located in the corner of a city/town, less accessible to public. But here, death being realized as ultimate truth, the cremation ground is placed in the center of city. 

Next day (Feb/9), before proceeding to Allahabad, we planned to take a dip in Ganges and visit Kaasi Viswanathar and Visalakshi temple. To our surprise, there was almost a 1km length queue waiting to see Kaasi Viswanathar. It would atleast take 3 to 4 hours solid to get a darshan if we have stood in the queue, and definitely not sure we could have seen the deity for even few seconds. We then approached a guy, who asked us 500/- (or 1000?) per head to bypass the queue. I was just thinking of the adhoc, but comfortable darshan we had that mid-night. If we have missed that, we should have waited in this queue for long hours. We planned to skip waiting in this mile long queue (as we already had a darshan), and straightaway headed to Kaasi Visalakshi temple. It  was again a very small temple, not even the size of our street-corner amman temple, but considered one of the auspicious Shakthi Peedams of Hindu culture. (Kaanchi Kaamakshi, Madurai Meenakshi and Kaasi Visalakshi, the three main Shakthi peedams, though there are many more (~50+) in India). After a good darshan, we headed back to hotel to check-out to Allahabad for the mega event - Kumbamela.

Took a train from Benares to Allahabad. Our plan was to check-in our luggage's in railway cloak room and reach Triveni Sangam. Train was already running late by four hours, and we suddenly saw  people getting down the train. We thought we reached Allahabad, and rushed down half-sleep (in fact, the train moved before we got down). Later we realized that we got down at Prayag, a station before Allahabad. Though this station was closer to reach the Triveni Sangam, it was not worth checking in our luggage's. We hence had to take our luggage with us. Soon as we exited the station, we heard that transportation is completely blocked within city (even rickshaws) and one has to only walk to the Triveni Sangam that was around 15kms from the station. What to do? We kept walking with our strolleys, back packs in midst of the wild crowd for around 5 hours. By around 10.30am or so, we reached the Triveni Sangam and had the dip for our life-time. Water was damn cold, and within seconds our body gets frozen allowing us to stand inside comfortably for some more time. By then, I had all my energy sucked-out, and more frustrating - we need to walk back 15kms again to reach Allahabad station. 

After a really tiresome walk, we reached station by 2.00pm, and our train to Lucknow was scheduled to be at 6.00pm. But railways, as usual, couldnt manage the crowd, and the trains were running indefinitely late. Delay of trains was inturn stacking up more and more crowd into the platform, and we couldnt even get a place to stand. We were waiting on Platform-9, and the stampede happened at Platform-6 killing 30+ people. Heavy crowd and noise, we didnt even know such an incident happened in the opposite platform. With our train delayed already by 3hours, and no signs of arrival further, we decided to void the train option and try a bus to Lucknow. We took a rickshaw to bus-stand and adding more frustration was the news that buses was stranded outside the city and to reach there, autos charged 700/-. It was around 11.00pm and we both of us were damn tired and frustrated by the crowd and happenings. We didnt know any concrete plan on how to proceed, for we had a flight to catch at lucknow the next day at 1.00pm. Any delays further can make us slip the flight and that will cost a lot. Finally, Mahesh had a plan - lets check-in to some budget hotel (his plan by default will have a hotel check-in option :)) for the night and take a cab to Lucknow by morning. We queried a local hotel and he wanted 3000/- (in fact after seeing Mahesh he said 4500/-, but seeing me he got down to 3000/-) for few hours of stay. We then asked a rickshaw guy to take us to a nearby budget hotel and after querying a couple of hotels, we found a hotel who charged 1300/- for overnight stay (in fact the room-charge was 3000/-, but Mahesh negotiated it for 1300/-. Good Management skills.). The next big problem is booking a cab to Lucknow. We had no contacts and nothing. Finally googled from mobile and got a list of cab operators in Allahabad. We dialled the first number and to our shock, he asked 12000/- for a drop to lucknow (~450kms from Allahabad). We kept him as last option and then tried one other cab who generously charged 4500/- for a drop to Lucknow. Without next word, we booked the cab by 1.00am, and asked him to pick us at 5am. Just 4 hours of sleep, but a peaceful sleep, for we have completed a big trip, walked 30kms that day without much food, survived a stampede, roamed wild to find a hotel, and could manage to book a cab somehow... 

What else, the cab came, and we were in Lucknow airport on time to catch our return flight to Chennai. The trip started smooth, throwed us some miracles, showed us a glimpse of truth, tested our stamina, filled us with horror, but ended smooth like it started. Varied colors, but every event is worth remembering for years to come. 

Trip Album  - https://picasaweb.google.com/114643271152565647128/Kumbhmela