AMBUBACH MELA 2009....GUWAHATI

Ambubachi mela is the most important festival of the Kamakhya-Temple(situated atop Nilachal-hill).This year the mela starts from 22June and ends on 25June.It is believed that the goddess of the temple DEVI-KAMAKHYA(SHAKTI) goes through her annual cycle of menstruation during this time.The doors of temple are closed for three days...no farming,no daily worship or any other religious activities are observed during these days.O n the fourth day after the whole temple is purified ..the temple is reopened.It is mainly a TANTRIC-FESTIVAL.This mela attracts lots of media,forgeiners,curious-visitors because of a very,very huge presence of tantrics,sadhus,sanyasis,sadhavis,aghor-babasfrom India,neighbouring countries and abroad too.Some of the sadhus and tantrics appear before general mass only during these four days.This year more than eight to nine lakhs visitors are expected.
I had never seen this mela before because my husband and many other local people have always discouraged me to do so.......i always wondered why......until today.
(We visit Kamakhya always as it is one of the very important shakti-peeths.......all the dignitaries,v.i.ps,movie-stars,politicians even many royalties visit this temple quite often.....and it is a very wonderful experience.) This evening we visited the temple and .......the crowd was phenomenal,it was hard to find a parking spot.Once we managed to park our car ...we had no idea where to go as the whole place looked very different because of many new stalls etc.
There were people and people everywhere ....it was hard to stand on one place for more than five sec....trust me....clicking pic was like impossible .....most of my pics are shaky because of the constant push from the crowd.....after good fifteen min. we decided to give up the idea of going to the main temple premises as it was tooooo crowded and suffocating.I saw many media folks,forgieners struggling too.
The crowd was mostly of bengali people...this mela is very popular amongst bengalis.We saw many interesting looking sadhus,tantrics (from tommorow our newspapers are going to give them good coverage).Finding our car back was another good experience......