This was my second visit to Worthing for Birdman, it’s hard to believe a year has passed since my previous visit. I prefer to attend on the second day, Sunday, for the Kingfisher Class as this is when crazy, fantastic people dress up and jump for charity. Unfortunately this year one brave soul was injured and needed hospital treatment.
Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ, is a Catholic celebration held in May or June every year. A “moveable” feast, the exact date is determined by when Easter falls in that year.
On a beautiful early Summer day we drove to the whitewashed mountain village of Zahara de la Sierra. a compact little place of originaly Moorish houses sitting beneath the old Nasrid’s castle on the hill above. After Holy mass in the 18c village church, the Sacred Host, secured in a silver monstrance and carried by the parish priest, is processed through the streets proceeded by young girls in their white communion dresses scattering rose petals on the grass covered streets.
The annual Feria and Fiesta in Marbella starts on a serious note with the Romeria de San Bernabe. It’s not the greatest show on earth but typical of many such events held throughout Spain.
Every three years the Hindu people of India flock in their millions to participate in the Kumbh Mela and to bathe in one of the sacred rivers at four holy locations. It is said that a dip during the Kumbh Mela takes humans out of the circle of life and death and into a state known as Mosksha. 2010 was the turn of Haridwar, in Uttar Pradesh state (220 kilometers from Delhi), where the River Ganges rushes from the foothills of the Himalayas onto the plains and the first geographic opportunity for mass bathing – and a mass bathing it really is! This year an estimated 70 million souls took part during the 3 months of the festival, with 15-17 million bathing in and around Haridwar on the holiest day, Shahi Shan, Wednesday 14th April. This is largest religious festival on the planet, 15 million is about twice the population of Switzerland.
It was a bitingly cold winters day in 2008 when we visited Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration and extermination camps. I had a pretty good idea of what to expect but not how the ensuing visit would make me feel or the memories that would stay with me.
We entered Auschwitz 1 under the infamous arch and were greeted with the words “ARBEIT MACHT FREI”, (work sets you free). As foreboding as Auschwitz 1 is with it’s fences and barbed wire, sentry towers and blocks of brick built prison buildings it did not prepare me for my visit to Auschwitz 2 – Birkenau.
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© 2010 Tony Smith’s Festival and Travel Photography
