The Durga Puja is the most important Hindu Festival of West Bengal in India. This audio slideshow features the three main aspects of the festival. The making of the Idols, the adoration and the eventual destruction, known as “Immersion” just four days after the festival starts. Currently being redirected from YouTube you may need to drop the quality if you experience a slow broadband. I will correct this shortly.
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 opportunity for mass bathing! 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.
South Park Street Cemetery was opened in 1767 for the employees and families of the East India Company and early colonials. Tropical illnesses and problems at childbirth were the main causes of death and many of the young wives interred were not long off the ships from England, lured no doubt by the promise of a luxurious lifestyle with a gallant and well heeled young officer. Many tombs are in the shape of massive neo-classical pyramids, pavilions, obelisks and pagodas. Rudyard Kipling wrote after a visit “It is as though we walked down the streets of a small town, so tall are they and so close do they stand”. The names on the tombs are a veritable “who’s who” of the time. There is a descendant of Oliver Cromwell, a great grand-daughter of King Charles II and sons of both Captain Cook and Charles Dickens.
© 2012 Tony Smith’s Festival and Travel Photography
