Instant moksha, Naga sadhu meetups, spirituality... what brought foreigners to Mahakumbh 2025

What is new is the scale of publicity this Mahakumbh is getting. What has also changed is that the new seeker of Indian spirituality is ready for religious tourism.
Naga Sadhus at Mahakumbh
Naga Sadhus at Mahakumbh
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4 min read

What happens when you are open to all kinds of foreign experiences amid circumstances that are exotic to say the least? Doris Hahnloser, from Zurich, a retired manager of a retail multi-brand family-owned boutique, who has been visiting India since 1985, probably has some kind of an answer.

In the Mahakumbh, Prayagraj, for the first time, she tries to soak in all of it—the spectacle, the spirituality, the contradictions. “In India, I have seen the sane and the other side…,” she says delicately. For her, a meeting with the sadhus at the Kumbh—the high-point of the event, along with the Shahi snan— falls in between the two stools. She does not completely understand them but feels “moved” by their life of renunciation; she realises that to them too, her life may seem an aberration, or just plain different. But she has “felt, seen, and been heard”.

From Hahnsloser and Atma Prem Giri Maharaj, a Russia-born seer who came under the spotlight this Kumbh as ‘Muscular Baba’, to the late Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell, whose stay at the Niranjini Akhara camp and becoming ‘Kamala’ has stirred an internet storm, the East-West encounter is a puzzle. It is so for both sides, and this has been visible at the Kumbh. There have been attempts at identification, and there has been disorientation. Water has wanted to mix with oil.

Religious tourism

Orientalism has played no small part in this ‘Eastward ho’. “Edward Pococke to Romain Rolland made India the centre of the world. Rolland asserted that the West has derived its gods and ideas from India; Pokocke explored the theory that Aryans may have originally travelled from India to Greece, colonised it, and influenced its culture,” says Heramb Chaturvedi, retired professor of history, Allahabad University.

What is new is the scale of publicity this Kumbh is getting. Besides what happened serendipitously for many decades, for example, in the sixties, this encounter is now being packaged as religious tourism. And there are many takers. Mahakumbh 2025 has gone viral on individual enterprise and with government push. According to a local daily, “combo packages of R3,500” have been organised under the aegis of the UP state tourism department “to see Naga-Aghori sadhus”.

Powell is also an example of the new seeker from the West who has come to the Kumbh for a new eastern experience. Many foreigners are on a spiritual safari before they once again return to their actual lives. At Kumbh, Powell has participated in all the drills of the ascetic life, including living as a kalpvaasi until January 15; she will also be in time for the swearing-in ceremony of President-elect Donald Trump on January 20.

Laurene Powell wife of the late Steve Jobs
Laurene Powell wife of the late Steve Jobs

Meeting ‘the other’

There is no denying that in these brief Kumbh trips there is also a genuine desire somewhere on the part of the Westerner to touch ‘the other’ -- the nub of ‘Eastern enlightenment’ -- and be charged or changed by the encounter. “When I met the sadhus for the first time in my life, I felt it was irrelevant where I had come from, who I was, and what kind of a person I had been in my regular life,” says Hahnloser. “I met a sadhu who has had his right arm up for many years, I met someone who can lie down on a bed of thorns…. When I asked why, they said they are doing it so that mankind may get some benefit from it. Meeting the yogis made me realise that much lies beyond my normal understanding. Maybe the universe sees what they are doing as a contribution and I don’t have to understand it.”

Jude, a gallerist from New York, says he came to Kumbh from a place of curiosity. Unwilling to reveal his religion, he said his relationship to it is “complicated”. Seeing how the East practices one of their main faiths has left an indelible mark on him, even as he says he is leaving the Kumbh with even more questions. “A mass of people, a mixed population of sadhus and common people walking across a bridge in the morning of the Shahi Snan to complete a pilgrimage was a sight of power,” he says. He closes his eyes for a moment, as if he would like to keep the memory frozen in aspic.

For Olga from Moscow, a vet-turned-yoga teacher, the idea of India as a land of “pure religion” has been strengthened by her visit to the Kumbh. A devotee of Shiva, she believes she attained moksha even if she met the Naga sadhus from afar. “I could not turn away from their gaze, I could feel their big energy, I could touch something deeper the more I looked at them,” she says.

The Kumbh festival

Yuuchan, a Tiktokker from Japan, has approached Kumbh as she would any festival. Her friend Tomoyatsu from Dubai has flown in—together they have akhara-hopped, posed with “the Babas”, and “just loved the craziness”. Kumbh has been her Land of Oz. Still high from the experience, she, however, goes a few decibels down as she talks to TMS at the airport before she catches a flight home.

What really pulled her to the Kumbh? “In Japan not too many people are religious or believe in a religious experience.” At the Kumbh, she came to see the obverse. “As I took a dip in the Ganga, I felt raised by a hundred hands,” she says, sharing photos from the experience. On her Instagram, these photos of the Mahakumbh have now started to appear. Yuuchan before and after the dip with the pontoon bridges in the background over which the pilgrims can be seen walking over the waters steeped in faith. For her, this is no less than a spiritual revolution and she will be streaming it.

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