As I've mentioned along the way, the sangam (coming together of two rivers) at Allahabad is a very holy site, and becomes a major pilgrimage site every twelve years. We heard conflicting accounts as to whether this was 
one of such 12-yearly year but it seems only to be a 6-yearly mela, with only 30 million people expected over the month in question. In the picture above you see over the Yamuna, past some of the many tent cities set up for pilgrims, towards the sangam. If you look closely (this one's worth clicking) you'll see some lighter colored water in the distance: 
that's the Ganges. And where the two waters meet, a beach and some people bathing. If you go much closer, you'll see something like the scene above, though by the time we got there late on 13 February there were only a couple hundred bathers.
Our first real view of the Ganga (the Ganges) was crossing it on our way to Varanasi (Benaras) the following day. Notice the steep banks, from whose heights temples and other building complexes unfurl long staircases down to the water called ghats. When the monsoon swells thee Ganga, the water might well rise to cover most of these ghats, an unthinkable mass of water...
Varanasi, too, lies on terrain like this, the city rising high above the river. To notice it you need to get lost in the old city's maze of little streets (every one with a view of some part of a temple) and suddenly find yourself looking down down down to the river below. This picture's taken from the top of a long staircase near Aurangzeb's mosque. But you don't really notice this on the ghats themselves,
piled high with buildings as they are - the usual view is from the ghats or, even better, from a boat in the river. This was the view from a boat we took at dawn the first full day we 
spent in Varanasi, and I can't not give you a pic of that marvelous sunrise. Sunrises are always impressive (not that I've risen early enough to see that many of them over the years!) but Varanasi's particularly so, since Varanasi rises from the west bank of the Ganges, and on the east there's - nothing, the other world...The next pictures are of the ghats seen at various times of the day and from various points of view - morning, afternoon, evening, and another morning.
The stripes of color in the last one are sarees, stretched out over the massive steps of one of the ghats to dry.I've dozens more pictures but none really captures the strange magic of that shore-city. (Pictures are not permitted, nor could I imagine wanting to take them, of the two burning ghats, where people are burned. I watched - didn't realize it was an hour and a half - one body reduced to ash, as half a dozen others were brought in, dipped in the Ganges, arranged on pyres, etc. No picture could but traduce the unutterable power of that process.) As a taste of the amazing and weird religious stuff that happens all Varanasi, here are some sadhus for you.
In two rows, holding hands, these sadhus (many surprisingly young) are preparing for an early-morning parade to a temple known as the Golden Temple (and off limits to foreigners). 
If some of them appear to be wearing little more than ash and the occasional garland of marigolds, you're not wrong! The stars of the parade were their gurus, seen at right. Sadhus come from all walks of life; some perform tricks of meditation or contortion; some live in caves and forests, some chill out stoned on ganja weed in temples in Varanasi and let pilgrims feed them. Some have religious visions, some are escaping something, others have just opted out of normal social life (I suspect there are among their number ones who would understand themselves as gay in the US), but any one of them may have attained supernatural powers along the way. Better to get out of their way!
To close, a mystery picture. Any guesses what this is?
