By Indradyumna Swami
Ever since becoming a devotee of Lord Krishna in 1970, I have been fascinated with the Kumbha Mela festival. This year I decided to join millions of other pilgrims in the journey to the Ardha Kumbha Mela where, from January 15th to March 4th, ISKCON devotees were to follow in Srila Prabhupada’s footsteps by bringing his books, the Holy Names and prasadam to the festival. Kumbha Mela is the largest religious gathering in the world. Estimates anticipated that 120 million pilgrims—nearly double the population of England and France combined—would visit the Mela over seven weeks. The Mela takes place four times within a twelve-year period on the banks of four of India’s most holy rivers: the Godavari River in Nashik, the Shipra River in Ujjain, the Ganges River in Haridwar and the confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna, and Saraswati Rivers in Prayagraj (formerly known as Prayaga ).