Kumbh Mela -The worlds largest human gathering

Then my old friend Lev messaged. He’d landed a commission from a British paper to cover the Maha Kumbh Mela — the once-in-a-lifetime planetary alignment that would draw millions to Prayagraj, at the confluence of the Ganga, Yamuna, and mythical Saraswati. A gathering only possible once every 144 years. According to astrologers and sages, this alignment would awaken something ancient. It was estimated that over 140 million people would pass through the city in a month — all for the chance to bathe at the Triveni Sangam and receive its rare blessing.

Rumours swirled. All the sadhus of India would descend. The Aghoris, the Nagas, the mystics, the frauds, the faithful. Spiritual delirium and political spectacle fused into one. Some travellers in Rishikesh were giddy. Others looked ill at the thought — hundreds of millions packed into one city. Like the entire population of Northern Europe converging on one muddy floodplain. It would be equal parts devotion and logistical nightmare.

For a gora like me, it promised to be... intense.

Of course, I had to go. Reuniting with Lev felt like a reset. I considered riding Tara — it would’ve taken two days — but the thought of navigating that human ocean on a 300kg machine turned my stomach. I booked a bus.

A 19-hour ride turned into 24 hours. No toilets. The driver was wired on beetle nut. He’d stop for seconds, then take off again — laughing as we chased the bus down the road. There were arguments. Fists flew at one point. Not exactly shanti.

By the time we arrived on the outskirts of Prayagraj, I was wrecked and already regretting not bringing Tara. The driver refused to go any further, dumping us ten kilometres out. Another scuffle broke out. I slipped away and began to walk.

Eventually, I fell in with a group of young Indian men — amused by the sight of a lone foreigner dragging his boots toward the Ganga. They folded me into their crew and led me into the crowd.

Lev would arrive the next evening.

That first night, I stayed on the edge of the madness. Found a spot where the closest person was ten metres away — a miracle in itself. I climbed onto a ghat and watched the festival unfold below me.

Hundreds of pontoon bridges stretched across the Ganges like metallic serpents, snaking pilgrims from one side to the other. A moving tide of bodies, rickshaws, decorated camels and elephants. Entire families waiting in line with their food and blankets on their heads, hoping to bathe in the sacred waters, then trek home. Buskers of all kinds had set up their shops in the hope to capitalise on the inflow of 144 million people. Street performers of all sorts walked precariously built tightropes, where girls no older than ten tiptoed across without safety nets — smiling, winking, ignored by the crowds.

The view was biblical. Endless colour. Dust clouds kicked up into the golden sky. A medley of chaos and ritual. Tent cities lined the banks — partitioned by sect. The naked Naga Sadhus in one grid. Aghoris, covered in ash and legend, in another. Hijras — the transgender community feared for their mystical powers — claimed a third. The BJP and Indian Army had mapped it all into a temporary city the size of Manhattan, overseen by Modi’s watchful patriarchal gaze — his grin stretched wide across every billboard.

As I watched, I noticed a Sadhu nearby — wiry, mid-thirties, dark orange robes, black dreadlocks tied atop his head. He sat smoking a beedi, legs crossed, utterly serene.

I scribbled in my notebook, trying to absorb the moment, when a group of young Indian YouTubers descended. Being a foreigner in India always attracted curiosity — here, it was amplified tenfold. Some interactions were warm — smiles, greetings, even reverence. But others were invasive. I called it getting "fromed" — the moment someone asked “From?” and immediately dragged you into a selfie.

This one was pushy. He wanted a video for his Instagram. I tried to brush him off politely. The Sadhu saw it all — and with a quiet authority, waved the influencer away.

He sat beside me, relit his beedi, and smiled — bemused, kind. I thanked him, smiling back.

We watched the river in silence.

After a moment, I asked his name. He shook his head and raised a hand. At first I thought he was telling me to be quiet. Then he chuckled, reached into his bag, and pulled out a small notebook. In broken but graceful English, he wrote: “I no speak, 3 years, my name Ran.” He had taken a vow of silence three years ago. He looked up at me smiling, his golden-brown eyes full of kindness and curiosity.

He’d been silent for three years. A musician, once. Then something broke — or maybe awakened — and he walked away from it all. Renounced the world.

We spent the next hour communicating by scribbled notes. I spoke. He scribbled back. Then, wordlessly, he stood and gestured for me to follow.

We weaved through the crowd to a small tea stall. Shared chai. Curious eyes followed us — a towering foreigner walking side by side with a holy man.

Noticing my discomfort, he wrote one last note. A kind farewell. A warning: beware the priests — many were not what they seemed. He would bathe at dawn and return to the hills.

We clasped hands. Nothing asked. Nothing taken. Just a moment of grace in a sea of madness.

I returned to my hotel feeling strangely light. Elated. Serene. How was it that sometimes the people that say the least are those that mark us the most?

Old Friends, New Roads

Lev arrived the next day — the first face from my old life in over six months. I was relieved. Grateful. He looked tired but excited to be there. He had been going through the mill — I didn’t know the full extent of it, but I could feel it in his energy. He needed the break. Rishikesh would be the place. But first, we had to survive the chaos of the Mela.

I was glad to see him. He’d been a stalwart friend through the darkest years of my addiction and spiraling mental health. He knew what I’d been through, and stayed when others walked. There was a time I didn’t think I deserved friends like him. Maybe I still don’t.

Even so, he showed up. And that meant something. A part of me worried that seeing him might trigger regret — remind me of what I’d left behind, of the self-imposed exile I was living — the truth was bitter sweet, I missed our friends that I had exiled myself from, out of shame mostly, but didn’t miss the routine life of being in London, its expensive parties, overpriced polluted life, shrouded in a veil of understated pretentiousness. I was glad to be away from it but recognised that I was adrift and maybe afraid to go back, ashamed more than anything else.

Lev had built a life out of movement, and I admired him for it. Envied it. But I’d seen the toll, too — the corrosion of ego, the loneliness fame brings, the slow erasure of private life. He had his demons. I had mine.

We met at a party in Ibiza some ten years ago, he was one of Kate’s best friend. Even then, he could tell I was carrying something heavy. He invited me to an ayahuasca retreat — I didn’t even know what that was, but I’d heard it was like twenty years of therapy in a single night, I was game.

We met again at that ceremony — two broken men trying to purge the past out of our systems. And purging we did, 12 hours of screaming, crying, vomiting and in my case grand slamming, followed by a strange serenity. Hidden in the hills of northern Spain we pleaded with ourselves to be free of our pain. Since then, we had become good friends, there’s something bonding about sitting in a room with other people as they expel their inner daemons in a whirlwind of vomit, tears and mania.

To share the road again with him was more than comfort. It was and anchor. Mercy. A quiet lifeline across the chaos. And so the adventure was back in motion again.

Into the Fray Once More, My Friends

Lev had just flown in and was buzzing with energy. His enthusiasm was infectious. That night, we set off into the heart of the Kumbh Mela — walking some twenty kilometres through the dust and din. Despite both being former airborne soldiers, our forty-year-old knees didn’t thank us for it. We’d expected something loosely akin to Burning Man. What we found couldn’t have been further — except in scale and dust.

The next morning, we set out again, more prepared. Lev had an assignment to write an article and shoot content, and I offered to help. But after my encounter with Ran, the silent sadhu, the rest of the festival felt hollow. Bloated. A spectacle of excess disguised as spirituality. At times it seemed fake — a carnival of saints who behaved more like beggars, drunk on fame and fuelled by India’s new-found addiction to selfies. We became part of the attraction — pulled into a photo every few steps.

Still, underneath the chaos, something softer stirred. Millions had come to touch the sacred waters, hoping for blessings, for transformation. A tide of humanity searching for meaning.

We stumbled upon a group of Aghori Sadhus — the feared flesh-eaters. Rumours said they scavenged skulls from cremation sites, cracked them open, and ate what was left inside. Most of them were drunk, half-naked, smoking. One locked eyes with me and invited me into their circle. I ignored a passerby’s warning and sat beside him. He smeared ash on my forehead. For a brief moment, we just stared at each other.

Then chaos. Lev, who had also joined the group, was being pressed for money. One of the sadhus got aggressive when Lev refused. It escalated fast. A crowd formed. We beat a hasty retreat. I resisted the urge to break someone's jaw — a headline like “Two ex-Paras assault holy men at Kumbh Mela” wouldn’t do us any favours.

I was furious. These weren’t saints — just thugs in disguise.

We kept moving. But the layers began peeling back.

We passed a group of Hindu nationalists handing out anti-Muslim pamphlets, their rhetoric dripping with hate. One young man who stopped to “from” us — that now-familiar selfie ritual — asked about my travels. When I said I’d been to Pakistan, a stranger muttered: “We hate Pakistan.”

The very location of the Kumbh — Prayagraj — was political. Once called Allahabad by the Mughals, its renaming marked a revisionist return to a Hindu past. It was a statement. A reclamation. A forgetting.

We reached Sangam — the confluence of the rivers — the holiest point for ritual bathing. It was a human flood. Ash-smeared sadhus wielding swords. Vendors hawking trinkets. The rich, the poor, the sick, the hopeful — all pressing toward the same sacred water.

I nearly tripped over someone sitting cross-legged in the dust. Their face was veiled. They were wailing — a deep, guttural sound. They had no hands. Only leaking stumps where leprosy had taken its toll. As I looked up, I realised we’d entered the leper colony.

Camels, lepers, soldiers, zealots, sinners, saints — all in one place, all searching for something. The poverty was suffocating. But the joy — the joy was defiant. It only took one smile to spark a chorus of “Ram Ram! Sita Ram Ram!”

We walked. We watched. We took it in.

By the end of the day, we were spent. Another twenty kilometres on foot. We’d planned one more night, but the decision came easy: we’d seen enough. Time to retreat to the mountains. To fresh air. To silence.

But first — one last sunrise.

We rose early to see the morning bathers at Sangam. Then we walked the final twenty kilometres to the train station. Our next stop: Agra. Lev had been to India seven times but never seen the Taj Mahal.

Unfortunately we ended up taking the wrong train, missed agra, missed our stop, ended up on a 16 hour train ride to Dehli, the worst place in India. Then had to bus from Dehli to Rishikesh. Igues slev would have to come a 9th time to see the taj….