READING SCRIPTURE AT DAWN, THE SANGAM, ALLAHABAD
This was one of those not sure what I’m going to get but am going anyway early starts. I knew that the Sangam was a special place as the massive Hindu Kumbh Mela festival is held there regularly, being one of four locations on the Ganges that gets to host it. It was pitch dark as I set off from my dingy mosquito infested hotel room in Allahabad, taking a very bumpy and breezy tuk tuk ride through quiet dark streets with huge potholes to add to the bone jangling entertainment.
It was still dark when I arrived and I couldn’t really see anything at all, not even the river, with no available street lighting. So I waited until the daylight came up and things started to appear out of the dark gloom, something I love to experience and something I thoroughly recommend to any of you who have never been somewhere with no available light before dawn.
Despite the gloom, there was plenty of sound. Some devotees were chanting their early morning mantras by the riverside with candle light as they waited for the boatmen to take them to the sacred confluence of the Yamuna and Ganges rivers, (both these are “physical” rivers, but there is also the Sarasvati river, a mythical “non-physical” river with origins in the Himalayas near Badrinath), that are part of a popular daily ritual at the Sangam. With the light finally up to a level where I could even see, I walked to the actual riverbank confluence point at the edge of the mudflats and shot some sunrise pictures there before returning to my drop off point near Akbar’s Fort where I found this guy sitting and reading his scriptures whilst quietly mumbling some lines.
For me, this picture is imbued with the sacred rituals that have been carried out at this place for centuries and I hope that when you own a print you can enjoy all those energies coming from the image. All in all the Sangam didn’t disappoint and I came away with a memorable experience and some very worthwhile images.
Print Information
Chris L Jones’s fine art photographs are printed on archival quality fine art Canson paper. He has tested many different fine art papers and found Canson to hold the qualities most akin to high quality silver halide prints that feel and look superb.
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