By 3AM an undercurrent of sound rumbles down the river from the sangam. The sun officially entered Capricorn in the wee hours of the morning, and the ritual bath began. It’s makara sankranti, one of the most auspicious days for ritual bathing. The akhadas (orders of swamis) parade from their compounds on the mela grounds to the sangam to bathe.

The ritual started this morning with the Maha Nirvani Akhada parading in to bathe, and ended with the Udaseen Akhada in the afternoon. Police kept the route clear, as hundreds of thousands of pilgrims lined the route hoping to catch a glimpse of the procession and the saints. Ordinary pilgrims bathed at the other areas of river or walked 10-20 kilometers on foot to reach the sangam, as the crowd and closed roads made the sangam difficult to reach.

The crowd is enormous. It’s impossible to estimate how many people are here, since we don’t own a frame of reference big enough to measure. There is no comparison except the sea or ocean. From a slight rise in the road, as far as the eye can see, a sea of people laps the edges of the horizon. People stream across the pontoon bridges, swell the narrow streets, and file across the elevated Shastri bridge like ants. All the banks of the river and its sand bars are lined thousands deep. There are people behind us, in the foreground, in the background, in the peripheral vision, and straight ahead--thousands of eddies within an endless ocean. The crowd itself is an organism, an entity with an identity independent of the individual.

The feeling is so palpable, even the stumps are permeated with the collective consciousness of the crowd. Collectively it inhales and exhales. Collectively it is calm or moody or frenzied. Like a storm at sea, a disturbance can arise and quickly spread, or die out, its energy absorbed by a greater mass. But there is no escaping it, just as a drop cannot be independent of the ocean. Today the crowd is peaceful and reverent. There is intention, and inner direction, purpose and movement. This is something each person has resolved to do for himself, but collectively the steady flow of people is carried along by something bigger than limited individual resolution.

The only push is getting out of the compound at the beginning of the procession. We must squeeze through a gate, and everyone is anxious to get out and moving. It’s a bit like the subway in rush hours. Once in the street, the akhada’s security and the mela police keep the crowds back, and organize the procession to keep those who are marching, in formation that allows us to cross the narrow pontoon bridge without being crushed. A few pilgrims break through swarm and past the police to touch the tractor-drawn chariots of the Mahatmas. The excitement grows as we near the sangam. “Ganga Maiya Ki Jai!”

The sangam itself is not too crowded. The chariots are easily parked, and the mahatmas walk into the water like everyone else. The men strip and plunge into the water. The women are more modest and manage to undress, completely submerge, and dress again without ever completely undressing. The water is soft and viscous with silt, swirling the soil of India around our legs.

In spite of the filth dumped into it and the millions who have already gone in today, the water is as pure as the moment it fell from the locks of Lord Siva and left the pristine glaciers in the Himalayas. All tiredness and fatigue is immediately gone. Refreshed and elated, we dry off, change clothes, and return to the chariots. It’s over in a few minutes. The parade formation dissipates, mission accomplished, and the pilgrims return to their compound singing as they walk, “Hara, Hara, Mahadeva…”