SACRED RIVER GANGES

Southland Times, Issue 20949, 5 December 1929, Page 10

SACRED RIVER GANGES

COMING GREAT PILGRIMAGE. Calcutta, November 16. Two and a-half million pilgrims will assemble next January and February to bathe in the sacred waters of the Ganges and the Jumma, and preparations are already being made to receive them. Thousands of them unable to pay the railway fares have already begun the long trek to their destination underneath the towering walls of Allahabad Fort. There is a big fair connected -with the pilgrimage every year, but every 12 years there is a super-fair, owing to the courses of the stars making the waters specially sacred. Pilgrims come from Karachi, Kashmir, Assam, Malabar and Ceylon. The majority of the 2,500,000 pilgrims are illiterate, unable to read any of the signs for their guidance. They speak 100 ■languages. Fifteen hundred special police have begun to assemble. They will patrol the roads for 60 miles leading into Allahabad. They will look out for every form of crook and swindler, who regard the fair as the paradise of their dreams. The river will be extensively patrolled bypolice, boatmen, and expert swimmers. . For the first time the camp will be lit ■by electricßy.