Kumbh Mela

S1 E5: Every twelve years, tens of millions of men, women and children gather on the flood plain of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers in Allahabad, India, for the largest gathering of humanity for religious purposes on the planet, and host Bruce Feiler is there. This is the Kumbh Mela, the great Hindu festival where pilgrims come from across India, and around the world, to bathe in the water where two sacred rivers meet. Such mass bathing in the Ganges has been recorded for more than 2500 years and at least 100 million people will attend what Hindu astrologers have declared as the most auspicious Kumbh Mela in 144 years. Host Bruce Feiler travels to the Kumbh with a group of spiritual seekers from across America, first stopping in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi, downstream from Allahabad, to take part in traditional rituals on the Ganges, India’s most sacred river that is worshipped by Hindus as a goddess. Bruce and the pilgrims travel on by bus to the vast Mela tent city built on land that was underwater just months earlier and will be flooded again in just a few months more. Bruce and the American pilgrims settle into camp, surrounded by millions of other pilgrims, holy men, gurus and ash-covered Naga babas, the naked ascetics who are the most visible symbol of the Kumbh Mela. After surviving an out-of-season monsoon that floods much of the Mela camp, Bruce and the American pilgrims meet with some of India’s leading spiritual gurus. They also join millions of fellow pilgrims, Naga babas and sadhu holy men and women who are taking a ‘holy dip’ at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers in a ritual that Hindus believe washes away sins and breaks the endless cycle of reincarnation.