MADHYA PRADESH - Vast crowds of Hindu pilgrims in India began bathing in sacred waters on Monday as the Kumbh Mela festival opened, with organisers expecting 400 million people -- the largest gathering of humanity.
The millennia-old Kumbh Mela, a show of religious piety and ritual bathing -- and a logistical challenge of staggering proportions -- is held at the site where the Ganges, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati rivers meet.
Saffron-robed monks and naked ash-smeared ascetics roamed the crowds offering blessings to devotees, many of whom had walked for weeks to reach the site.
"The world's largest spiritual and cultural gathering is starting," said Hindu monk and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in a statement, welcoming devotees to the festival to "experience unity in diversity, to meditate, and take a holy bath at the confluence of faith and modernity".
Organisers say the scale of the Kumbh Mela is that of a temporary country -- with numbers expected to total around the combined populations of the United States and Canada.
"Some 350 to 400 million devotees are going to visit the mela, so you can imagine the scale of preparations," festival spokesman Vivek Chaturvedi said ahead of the opening.
Hindu monks carrying huge flags of their respective sects began marching towards the river on Sunday evening.
Tractors turned into chariots for life-size idols of Hindu gods rolled by behind them, accompanied by elephants, as pilgrims exulted in the beat of drums and honking horns.
The festival is rooted in Hindu mythology, a battle between deities and demons for control of a pitcher containing the nectar of immortality.
Organising authorities are calling it the great or "Maha" Kumbh Mela.