Oh well I did it wrong.... the begining of the procession has come as the lst pix... and this going into the procession after the naga sadhus have done their dance etc... the naga sadhus are the highlight and the begining of the procession....I am writing this ont he 17th and am writing about the 12th.... must bring this up to date... am taking many videoas, so before i can upload anything, i have to make photos from the video... and that takes so much time... plus its cold, and up unde rthe razai rather than be on the comp...
Morings there is such a strong cold breeze outside that you can barely go out till 10.00 or so when it stops... we are on the other side of the mountain so the sun does not come till around 1030... am sitting with jacket, head wool scarf, and socks... oh well
These are sants from the various akhadas... from what I understand there are 8 akhadas which were set up by shankaracharyas, and the naga sadhus are basically the warriers who have no fear of anything... they each carry some weapon, and can belong to any akhada but the maximum are witht he Juna Akhada. Each akhada has its own gurus those who speak and who are the ones who do sadhana and supposedly get enlightened or at least their senses under control. There are no elephants at all in this kumbh... only trucks with the sadhus sitting on top....i guess elephants would be impossiblei nt he rush that is there...
THe crowds at kumbh are increasing each time... and it is a big crush especially witht he ropes keeping us in...and people are squeezing in behind wanting to move... or leave or go to sahi snan place... the place of the bathing has been totally cleared when the sadhus come in for their snan.... we were at the begining of the procession and did not go to the place where the snan was ...the crowds were too much...
various sants....pretty sombre guys they look like...
this is how the procession looked like ...devotees in front with flags you can see the "Chariot" at the back behind the poster,,,, all of them have marriage bands...mentioned earlier... funny to have there trumpets etc with jai bholenath being continuously shouted ....
each group is announced with a banner like this.. this is of Swami Somnath Giriji Maharaj of Juna Akhada...i guess one of the sants above is him...
The next pictures are of the procession of Nana sadhus of the jhuna akhada... this goes on for quite some time there must be thousands of them...one group danced and played witht heir weapons in a wil d fury of shouting and screamin and the effect of them moving so fast, with their sticks moving all around (reminding me of fire dancing at the techno parties except these sadhus were much much better at it)....
wish i could load up the videos...but you can get a feel of the dancing i hope in these pix....
more on the procession in the next blog....
gosh it says saving and publishing may fail.... have to keep this shorter so dont get cut off connectivity...
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