What is Sadhugram?

The akhadas, and everyone who comes with them. Each akhada brings its khalsas. A खालसा khalsa is a band of sadhus that comes under an akhada as a group. With the akhadas come the mahamandaleshwars. A महामण्डलेश्वर mahamandaleshwar is one of the senior heads of an akhada, and the mahamandaleshwars are given land along with the akhadas. Then there are the sadhus and mahants who come on their own. A महंत mahant is the head of an akhada or of a math.

Then there are the people who come to serve. Many people come to a Kumbh to serve rather than to bathe, running free kitchens for the sadhus and the pilgrims and giving their time to the health and cleaning work. The charitable trusts and social institutions that come for that are given the plots that are left once the akhadas have theirs.

It is at Tapovan, the forest on the Godavari a little below Panchavati, where the Kapila comes in and joins the river. When the Simhastha comes, most of the sadhus who arrive at Nashik make their camp here, in the forest. Tapovan is the place itself, and the story Nashik puts there.

For the Kumbh of 2015 about three hundred acres at Tapovan were taken on rent and laid out as a town of tents, in about fifteen hundred plots of roughly three hundred, six hundred and a thousand square metres. The akhadas and the khalsas were given their plots first, and the akhadas were placed along the procession path, the road they would take down to the river. What was left went to the charitable and social institutions, on the lower ground to the south.

For this Kumbh the authority has marked out about 1,468 acres for the camp at Nashik, and says that figure may change. The plots are to be the same sizes as in 2015. The road out of the camp to Ramkund is the shahi route, and the peshwai has that road turn by turn.

It is much smaller. In 2015 the camp there was about seventeen acres in about seventy plots, with two hundred and eighty toilets and as many bathrooms built for it. The akhadas, the khalsas and the charitable institutions were given plots in the same way as at Nashik.

For this Kumbh the authority has marked out about 688 acres, and says that figure may change too. People come into Trimbakeshwar by the roads from Jawhar, from Nashik, from Ghoti and from Talwandi, so the plan puts the sleeping areas on the north side of the town, away from the main flow of people and vehicles, and the watch towers and the offices on the south side, near the ghats.

Everything a small town has, put up in a few months and run for the length of the Kumbh. In 2015 that was roads inside the camp, electricity, water, drains, a security post, ration shops, a media centre, a hospital, toilets and bathrooms, and parking.

For this Kumbh the list is longer. A police post and a fire station. A dispensary, a hospital and first-aid posts. Cameras, loudspeakers and drones watching the crowd, and a lost-and-found run from a control room. Drinking water and water machines, a substation for the electricity, toilets and handwash stands. Ration shops, banks and cash machines, a milk centre, a shopping centre, food stalls and community kitchens. A post office, mobile towers, and a media centre with camps for the press. Big pandals for gatherings, one of them for ten thousand people, and exhibition halls. That is the authority’s own list for this Kumbh, and it says the list may change.

The camp is laid out on a grid that bends around the rivers, the streams and the shape of the ground, and the main services sit at the crossings so that they are easy to reach from anywhere. The crowded parts have no vehicles in them at all, and the traffic is kept to the edges. The Simhastha falls in the rains. The tents go up on platforms raised about eight inches off the ground, to keep them steady on the soil.

A plot of land, and the services to go with it. Each akhada and each khalsa gets its plot with toilets, a water connection, a sewer connection and a gas pipeline, and a German hangar, which is a large frame tent with a high roof. The authority also plans to give the akhadas and the khalsas tents, tin sheeting and furniture for their stay.

The akhadas have places of their own in the two towns as well, outside the camp, and the authority approves works at those too, up to five crore rupees for each of the main akhadas. What is being built for the Kumbh has those orders, and the water supply to the camp, with the rest.

Sadhugram goes up for the Kumbh and comes down after it. The law that set up the Kumbh authority lets it permit a temporary township for the period it decides, and for two years at most. When that period ends everything is removed except the roads and the pipes and cables under the ground. At Tapovan the ground where the camp stood is a forest and open land again between Simhasthas.

The Kumbh period opens with the flag hoisting at Ramkund and at Kushavarta, and the akhadas raise their own flags over the camp, and the flag hoisting has both.

Between Simhasthas you go to Tapovan for the river and the forest. The Godavari is wide here and the trees come down close to it, and the Kapila comes in from the side. Pilgrims are shown the marked spot by the water where Shurpanakha’s nose was cut, and the temples beside it, and Tapovan has all of that.

In a Simhastha year the same ground is the camp. In 2015 the road that left it for Ramkund, the road the akhadas took on a bathing day, ran from the Lakshmi Narayan temple at the Tapovan end of town out onto the highway and in through the old town to the river, and the peshwai has it turn by turn. The past Kumbhs at Nashik has what the camp was in 2015, and the rest of that Kumbh with it.