Planning for the Allahabad Kumbh Mela 2013

About one year from now, millions of people are going to descend upon one city in India for the world's largest gathering of humanity, the Allahabad Kumbh Mela. And I want to be one of those people.

The Kumbh Mela, for those of you not familiar with it, is a religious pilgrimage that occurs once every 12 years in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India. The fair attracts millions of people from all over the world to bathe in the Ganges River where it meets the Yamuna River and a third mythical river. And when I say millions of people, we're not just talking about 2 or 3 million people. The last Allahabad Kumbh Mela in 2001 attracted approximately 60 million people, which is about the same number of people who live in the entire United Kingdom. That's pretty darn big! Allahabad's normal population is just under 1 million people, according to Wikipedia.

The Allahabad Kumbh Mela lasts for several weeks, so not all of those 60-plus million people are there for the entire time, but on the main bathing day, an estimated 40 million people were at the fair.

This festival has been going on for centuries; Huan Tsang, a Chinese traveler who visited India in 629 -645 CE, mentioned it in his writings. But as the world's population has grown, so has the number of people attending the mela. In 1989, "only" about 30 million attended the Allahabad Kumbh Mela. That number about doubled for the 2001 event and will be even larger for the 2013 mela.

I'm hoping to be among those millions. I'm not sure how exactly that is going to happen, as I'm currently unemployed and don't have the money to jet off to India and spend a few weeks jaunting through a foreign country, but I believe that if it's meant to happen, it will. So I'm putting my request out to the universe: I want to go to the Allahabad Kumbh Mela!

For more information, check these links:
Kumbh Mela on Wikipedia
Allahabad Kumbh Mela on Squidoo

Allahabad Kumbh Mela photo by Devin Asch via Wikipedia under GNU License