Kumbha Haridwar the divine congregation' narrates the unusual experiences of the author Bondaiah Adepu during the Kumbh of 2010 at Haridwar. This well illustrated book provides glimses of the Kumbh held during the months of March and April 2010. The mass of the humanity that gathers at the world's largest congregation on the auspicious Shaahi Snan days overwhelms the uninitiated first time visitor. The book is a quest to discover the enduring vitality of human faith demonstrated by the common people.
The book contains the rarest photographs which show the frozen moments of human endeavour to merge with the Almighty. "In my own city of Allahabad or in Haridwar I would go to the great bathing festivals, the Kumbh Mela, and see hundreds of thousands ofpeople come, as their forebears has come for thousands ofyearsfrom all over India, to bathe in the Ganges. I would remember descriptions of these festivals written thirteen hundred years ago by Chinese pilgrims and others, and even then these melas were ancient and lost in an unknown antiquity. What was the tremendousfaith, I wondered, that has drawn our people for untold generations to this famous river oflndia?
