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.