Khumb Mela camp in Haridwar
At 6:30 am we have the tea with milk served somewhere in the camp and after a little while I leave with Emil to shoot in the area. The camps are on a separate side of the city not so close to the center. Babas, sadhus and gurus abound. They have posters all over the streets. This is a trade show in self realization. It is a place for the gurus to congregate, meet new disciples and students who are looking for teachers are coming here exactly for this. It is a matching process that may take years but it works. Most of the posters is of Pilot Baba and Akiko who is staying as usually in his camp. We shot some footage and took pictures of some picturesque babas. We returned to the camp where the plans for the day were not so clear of what will happen and we leave again to visit a temple on the hill dedicated to Chan Devi, a manifestation of Parvati. To visit the temple you take a cable car up the hill and on top you walk up to the temple that has a similar security details like the one we saw near Delhi but here you can take the camera with you but NO Photos! But you can take tons of photos out where the people are a show in itself. The atmosphere is interesting, similar with other temples in Asia, and after we do the parikrama we take the cable car down avoiding to be attacked by monkeys that are all over.
Before arriving at the camp we meet a Hara Krishna group that have in it one Naga Baba, a naked baba. First that we saw. At the camp we missed a yagna, a public offering of fire, but the event will be repeated on Monday when we plan to attend. We eat all of us on leaves that are thrown away after that and we try to stay in the shade because it started to be hot in spite of the cold in the night. At 3pm we leave all of us into the city and we have a surprise that they do not let us to cross the bridge to Har Ki Pauri temple without passport, and latter it was very hard to convince the guy from the internet to use the service with no passport. A lady stopped us for lack of passport and camera permit. I should have taken a journalist visa for India and take a local permit to shoot. But I am not so worry about it so I started to move around the lady who behaved like a …..and somehow I manage to sneak over her on the bridge when she did not look But my friends stayed behind not having the usage to do this kind of things. So they waved me to go and I walked into an absolutely amazing experience, the Har Ki Pauri temple with its ghats where people were taking ablutions in the Ganges. But the compromise I did was to leave my video camera with Sharmaji who came to help us find the place. I started to scout the area to find various ways to get inside and get my friends with me. I returned at the entrance in 10 minutes but I could not find them no matter that I stayed and waited.
Latter it turned out that they waited me but they went to get some water in that interval and they returned at the compound being afraid that I got lost in the crowd, a thing that can happen in a festival with 18 million people. So I walked back to the lady, and when she asked me about the passport I said that I don’t need one and walked by and the gods protected me so she could not say anything… The temple is fascinating and for the first time I faced the rituals and the ablutions. It is a spectacle that it is hard to be described just photographed or recorded. India is by far the best destination for photography and video. If it did not existed should have been invented. The problem here is that you always run in lack of tape, cards and batteries. Any turn of a head brings up a subject. I shoot here about 60 minutes a day of intense subjecting and in Europe about 20 minutes per day. And here you do not know what to skip because you have the feeling that everything is worthwhile to be shot. So I shot the ghats with thousands of people bathing, in spite of the fact that theoretically you cannot shoot but everybody does, till dark. I made my phone calls and I posted on the Internet to the only Internet Cafe in Haridwar, the place where he could not give me time with no passport. After the Internet it was already 7:00 pm and I was worried what happened with my friends so I started to go home. The camps are about 30-45 minutes away from the center. It is a large area of compound surrounded by tin foils fences, with tents on dirt. I crossed the bridge and when I was ready to get on our street I was stopped by a car driven by Rajiv with Emil who were looking for me in Haridwar. They were convinced and are still convinced that I was lost. When I got in the camp everybody was so happy to see me like I was coming from dead. They asked me how I got lost and no matter that I explained everybody that I knew exactly where I am and I was busy in town they still did nor believe. Babagi gave me a yellow card to have with me and all the necessary cell phones and told me to be careful and not get lost again and ask police for help….. No comments! So we ate a little and went to sleep in the princely dirt floor tent where I have my sleeping bag caked in dust and dirt, in the music of the kirtan from the adjacent camps.
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