View allAll Photos Tagged PILGRIMAGE
I finally got to see the Gandmaster of the Jedi Order today. Unfortunately, he didn't talk to me. Guess I was not worthy enough. So I took a photo of him and left.
I crossed paths with these monks at at a pass. They were making a pilgrimage. The young monk's job was to carry sacred woodblock prints...
A couple of people have emailed as to my route on this trip. This Zanskar trip and my earlier one both followed pretty much the same route... Below is my planned day by day itinerary (I made one or two changes on the way because of conditions on the ground... for example I had to make a detour to a higher pass at Hanuma La because it was snowed in). La = pass in the local language. Gompa = monastery.
Kulu-Manali
stay in Kulu-Manali
start walking
Baralacha La (17,384 ft)
walk
Lingti Chu
Chumik Marpo valley
Phirtse La (17,878)
Zanskar Valley
Phuctal Gompa (12,500 ft)
Ichar
Ichar Gompa
walk
Rest at Reru
Barden Gompas
Tonde Gompa
Poat Pass (17,300 ft)
trekking
Across Parfi La (12,800 ft)
Hanuma La (15,700 ft)
Murgum La (13,500 ft)
Singge La (16,700 ft)
rest
Sirsir La (15,740 ft)
cross river
Lamayuru monastery
Alchi monastery
walk
walk
Leh
Walking it's about 200 miles and takes about a month.
Here are my pals again, in the cab of original "Warship" class No. D601 Ark Royal at Dai Woodham's scrapyard, Barry Island. Can you imagine children being allowed to roam free in a place like this nowadays? During this period it was usual for most trainspotters, or the ones I knew anyway, to make at least one trip to South Wales to pay homage to the rows of rusting steam locomotives that had come to rest here. I read recently that most locos eventually found their way into preservation rather than succumbing to the cutter's torch, but sadly that was the fate that befell this diesel hydraulic pioneer. I took down the numbers of all the steam locos but if I'm honest I found the old diesels more interesting. Wednesday 11th April 1973.
The families attending the event.
HINGLAJ YATRA is the most sacred visit that the Hindu community living in Pakistan and around the globe perform every year and which activity takes place in Baluchistan, some 280 kilometres away from Karachi.
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Ähnlich wie bei uns den 'Tag des offenen Denkmals' gibt es im Süden der USA die 'Pilgrimage', wenn Eigentümer von historischen (Wohn)Häusern ihr Domizil für ein paar Tage für die Öffentlichkeit öffnen, so wie hier im kleinen Ort Eufaula in Alabama. Da geht dann schon ein Hauch von "Vom Winde verweht" durch den Ort, wenn wie hier zwei "Southern Belles" die Führung durchs Haus übernehmen ...
"Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, where we are least alone."
— George Gordon Byron (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage)
From the hill above Einsiedeln Abbey, looking out over the Sihlsee to the snow covered Alps... well worth the climb ツ ツ ツ
* Sony Alpha α SLT-A77 DSLR and a Sigma 10-20mm EX DC Lens
My work is for sale via Getty Images and at Redbubble and 500px
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Returning to one of my earliest shots on flickr, and having a play with Lightroom and Photoshot to see if i can breathe new life into it.
Sadly, it was taken in the days (2006) before i was shooting RAW so its a bit limited to how much can be done now, and i'm not even sure i'd call this an improvement, i just saw the old file and wanted to have a play. Thoughts and feedback are always welcome (but sometimes ignored :)
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©2006 Jason Swain, All Rights Reserved
This image is not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without the explicit written permission of the photographer.
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Links to facebook and twitter can be found on my flickr profile
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The Basilica of Santa María de Guadaluoe is the most visited Marian precinct in the world, surpassed only by Saint Peter's Basilica. Every year some twenty million pilgrims visit the sanctuary, of which about nine million do so in the days around December 12, the day on which Saint Mary of Guadalupe is celebrated.
Annually, the Basilica of Santa María de Guadalupe has at least twice as many visitors as the best-known Marian shrines, making it an outstanding social and cultural phenomenon.
Wilparting
is a district of the Upper Bavarian village of Irschenberg and is an ancient pilgrimage site on the same Irschenberg
@ Wikipedia
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 742.
Beautiful Myléne Demongeot (1936) became in 1957 one of the blond sex symbols of the French cinema when she seduced Yves Montand in Les sorcières de Salem. The coquettish French actress would go on to co-star in the three Fantômas adventures and many other European films of the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1980s she also became a producer.
Marie-Helene Demongeot was born in Nice, France in 1935 into a family of actors. Her parents met in Shanghai, China, and moved to Nice, France. Her mother, Klaudia Trubnikova, was a Russian-Ukrainian emigre from Kharkiv who escaped from the horrors of the Russian Civil War. Her father, Alfred Demongeot, was of French-Italian heritage. The family was bilingual and young Demongeot was able to use Russian and French, but eventually switched to French. She grew up in Nice. After the war, at the age of 13, she went to Paris and continued her education there. She studied piano under the tutelage of Marguerite Long and Yves Nat. At the age of 15, she became a model in the atelier of Pierre Cardin and studied dramatic art with Marie Ventura at Le Cours Simon in Paris. Two years later, she made her film debut with a supporting role in Les enfants de l'amour/Children of Love (Léonide Moguy, 1953) starring Etchika Choureau. More small roles followed in Futures Vedettes/Joy of Living (Marc Allégret, 1955) with Brigitte Bardot, and the British musical comedy It's a Wonderful World (Val Guest, 1956). Then she had her breakthrough at the side of Yves Montand and Simone Signoret with a memorable seduction scene in Les sorcières de Salem/The Crucible (Raymond Rouleau, 1957), based on the play by Arthur Miller.
With appearances in three or four feature films every year, Mylène Demongeot would rise to international fame in the late 1950s. Demongeot's first notable leading role was in Sois belle et tais-toi/Be Beautiful But Shut Up (Marc Allégret, 1958) opposite Henri Vidal, where she played a 17-year-old jewel smuggler. She further developed her screen image of a manipulative but humorous blond mistress opposite David Niven in Bonjour tristesse (Otto Preminger, 1958, and opposite Alain Delon in the comedy Faibles femmes/Three Murderesses (Michel Boisrond, 1959). Many of her screen assignments were along the ooh-la-la lines of her Swedish maid in the British Upstairs, Downstairs (Ralph Thomas, 1959). In Italy, she played opposite Steve Reeves in the Peplum (sword and sandal epic) La battaglia di Maratona/Giant of Marathon (Jacques Tourneur, 1959), with Rosanna Schiaffino and Elsa Martinelli in La notte brava/Bad Girls Don't Cry (Mauro Bolognini, 1959) based on a script by Pier Paolo Pasolini, again with Elsa Martinelli in the comedy Un amore a Roma/Love in Rome (Dino Risi, 1960) and with Roger Moore in Il ratto delle sabine/Romulus and the Sabines (Richard Pottier, 1961).
Among Mylène Demongeot's best known film-works are the role of manipulative Milady de Winter in the two-part adventure film Les trois mousquetaires/The Three Musketeers (Bernard Borderie, 1961) and the role of Helen in the Fantômas trilogy (André Hunebelle, 1964-1967), co-starring with Jean Marais and Louis de Funès. Other incidental interesting films were À cause, à cause d'une femme (Michel Deville, 1963) with Jacques Charrier, the comedy 12 + 1 (Nicolas Gessner, 1969) with Sharon Tate, and the Canadian drama Quelques arpents de neige/A Few Acres of Snow (Denis Héroux, 1972). Although she gradually fazed out of her stereotypical image of a beautiful French coquette, she still looked pretty convincing in the image of a mid-aged Madame, which she developed in the 1980s in films like Tenue de soirée/Evening Dress (1986, Bertrand Blier) starring Gérard Depardieu. On TV she appeared in the detective series Il professore/Big Man (Steno, 1988-1989) starring Bud Spencer, and in The Man Who Lived at the Ritz (Desmond Davis, 1988).
Mylène Demongeot was the co-owner of Kangarou Films, a production company she had founded with her late husband, director Marc Simenon, the son of Georges Simenon. During the 1970s and 1980s, they produced a number of unsuccessful films like Par le sang des autres/By the Blood of Others (Marc Simenon, 1974) and Signé Furax/Signed Furax (Marc Simenon, 1981). Marc Simenon died in 1999. Demongeot made a comeback in the crime drama 36 Quai des Orfevres/Department 36 (Olivier Marchal, 2004) starring Daniel Auteuil, and Victoire (Stephanie Murat, 2004) as the mother of Sylvie Testud. Later films were La Californie/French California (Jacques Fieschi, 2006) based on a short story by Georges Simenon, the hit comedy Camping (Fabien Onteniente, 2006), and the sequel Camping 2 (Fabien Onteniente, 2010). With director Hiner Saleem, she made Sous les toits de Paris/Beneath the Rooftops of Paris (Hiner Saleem, 2007) and Si tu meurs, je te tue/If You Die, I'll Kill You (Hiner Saleem, 2011). Demongeot also wrote several books, the best known are Tiroirs Secrets (Secret drawers, 2001) and Animalement vôtre (Animally Yours.2005). In the 2000s Demongeot made a pilgrimage to the birthplace of her mother in Kharkiv, Ukraine. There she planted a commemorative tree and presented her autobiographical book, Les Lilas de Kharkov (The Lilacs of Kharkiv, 1990). In 2006 she was named Commander in the Order of Arts and Letters for her achievements in acting. Mylène Demongeot is currently residing in Nice in the south of France. Her latest films include the comedy-drama Elle s'en va/On My Way (Emmanuelle Bercot, 2013), starring Catherine Deneuve, and Camping 3 (Fabien Onteniente, 2016), which became the second-highest-grossing domestic film in France in 2016, with 3,228,313 tickets sold.
Sources: Steve Shelokhonov (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Personal website (French), Allociné (French), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Women walking to the Khela Devi Mandir in Jaipur. It's a 300km pilgrimage for women in Agra, and they make it on foot.
The camel and the camel guy ...........
Pilgrimage to the shrine of a Saint at Noon Shareef at the suburbs of Islamabad during an annual Mela (festival).
Villagers from near and far get together with their family, friends and cattle to pay respect and also slaughter their animals for lunger (cooked food available for free to all the visitors at shrine) on the saint's birth day festival.
Shot just after sunset in very low light.
A Hindu religious ascetic (Sadhu) starting his day by worshipping the sun God after a holy dip at Gangasagar on the Makara Sankranti day
Gangasagar pilgrimage and fair, held annually, is the second largest congregation of mankind (more than 0.8 million this year) after the holy Kumbha Mela. Gangasagar finds mention in sacred texts and ancient scriptures of Hindu mythology including the two great Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
The river Ganga (Ganges) which originates in the Gangotri glacier in the snow clad high Himalayas, descends down the mountains, reaches the plains, flows through ancient pilgrimage sites, and drains into the Bay of Bengal. A dip in the ocean, where the Ganga meets the sea is considered to be of great religious significance particularly on the Makara Sankranti day (January 14/15), when the sun makes a transition to Capricorn from Sagittarius. Almost a million of Hindu devotees from all over India gather at Gangasagar for a holy dip and perform rituals and prayer (puja) with a belief that it will cleanse and purify their souls.
Images of Bengal, India
DAGUPAN BUS CO. INC. #1507
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Model: 2011 Yutong ZK6107HA/Surot 1st Gen
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Main Route: Cubao Q.C. Metro Manila - Manaoag Pangasinan via: EDSA/NLEX/Dau Mabalacat Pampanga/SCTEX/Concepcion Exit SCTEX Tarlac, Capas, San Miguel, Tarlac City, Gerona, Paniqui, Moncada, San Manuel Tarlac/Rosales (SM Carmen) , Villasis, Urdaneta City, Binalonan, Laoac Pangasinan.
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DAGUPAN BUS CO. INC. #1536
Bus No: 1536
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Chassis: Yutong ZK6107CRA
Body: Zhengzhou Yutong Bus Co. Ltd.
Suspension: Air Suspension
Seating Configuration: 2x2
Seat Design: Blue, Fabric (Metallic Silver Upholstery Design) 1st Gen ZK6107HA Seats
Seating Capacity: 45
Operator: Jac Liner Inc.
Transmission: M/T
Fare: Airconditioned
Route: Cubao Q.C. Metro Manila - Dagupan City Pangasinan via: A. Bonifacio / NLEX/Dau Mabalacat Pampanga/SCTEX/Concepcion Exit SCTEX Tarlac, Capas, San Miguel (Luisita), Tarlac City, Gerona, Paniqui, Moncada, San Manuel Tarlac/Rosales (SM Carmen), Villasis, Urdaneta City, Binalonan, Laoac, Manaoag, San Jacinto, Mangaldan Pangasinan.
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DAGUPAN BUS CO. INC. #1539 (MY RIDE)
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Seating Configuration: 2x2
Seat Design: Blue, Fabric (Galaxy Design) 2nd Gen ZK6107HA Seats
Seating Capacity: 45
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Transmission: M/T
Fare: Airconditioned
Route: Dagupan City Pangasinan - Cubao Q.C. Metro Manila via: Mangaldan, San Jacinto, Manaoag, Laoac, Binalonan, Urdaneta City, Villasis, Rosales (SM Carmen) Pangasinan/San Manuel, Moncada, Paniqui, Gerona, Pura Exit TPLEX Tarlac/TPLEX/SCTEX/NLEX/Dau Mabalacat Pampanga/A. Bonifacio Manila, E. Rodriguez Sr. Ave. Q.C. Metro Manila.
slide film 1985
2 young girls on a pilgrimage to the Jokhang temple lhasa. some Tibetan's of all ages would walk for days, weeks and longer to get there and and survive by donations on the way.
tons of smiles and most likely hungry
On the occassion of the homecoming of the image of the Stmo. Nombre del Nino Jesus after a 2 month pilgrimage ending as the Ayala, Alabang Residence of Sapian Mayor Arturo Orosco, Philippines
The share indulgence of pilgrimage is evident over this family who is relatively amused and happy while moving their steps towards their holy temple of Hinglaj. HINGLAJ YATRA is the most sacred visit that the Hindu community living in Pakistan and around the globe perform every year and which activity takes place in Baluchistan, some 280 kilometers away from Karachi.
Pure faith and surrender to the God Almighty... a very common scene in Mahakumbha amongst the pilgrims who come from all over India to take a holy dip in the Sangam
The people busy bathing into the waters and performing rituals at the Hingol River while their pilgrimage to the Hinglaj temple.
HINGLAJ YATRA is the most sacred visit that the Hindu community living in Pakistan and around the globe perform every year and which activity takes place in Baluchistan, some 280 kilometres away from Karachi.
===========================================================================
© All rights reserved
Please don't copy, edit or use this image on websites, blogs or other media. However if you are interested in using any of my images, please feel free to contact with me.
===========================================================================
Hi,
I was wondering if you could help me. While in Rome I was asked to make a
testimony of what occured and a small vision I received. I believe that
Fr.Abbott receives and reviews these testimonies but I don't have any
contact details for him so I am hoping you can help? Maybe you could
forward the details below or supply a contact email for Fr. Abbott.
It was my first time ever on a pilgrimage and it's only been in the last
3/4 years that I've returned to my faith. I knew and felt deeply I was
searching for something and probably for most of my life but didn't realise
it was God. It really makes me sad when I know in my heart that so many are
searching like I was but haven't come to realise yet that it's Jesus.
While visiting a local church here in Dublin, Ireland, I saw the TLIG flyer
with Jesus picture and on it "Feel loved by me". Immediately I thought
"you love me?" I was touched and brought the flyer home fascinated by the
picture and words. For a few days maybe even 2 or 3 weeks, the picture and
words kept going over in my head questioning "how could you love me and
with all my sins"?. I believe it was then that I was slowly being converted
and the more I read the messages, did the rosary, attending church each
day, the divine mercy chaplet, and holy hour of adoration even so far as
being in floods of tears especially on the Sorrowful Mysteries and Stations
of the Cross. I went to confession even to different priests with the same
sin because I felt I hadn't done or said it right. I didn't even fully
understand the precious gift of the Eucharist. Looking back I also know
now that our Blessed Mother was with me. Oh the struggle I had when I felt
I should do the rosary but it felt like a battle not to do it and only
through TLIG do I now understand what was happening. The voice in my head
kept saying "you should be honouring Jesus and not Mary". I honestly
believe something was trying to prevent me from praying the Rosary.
I read the message on the flyer and discovered the TLIG website. I soon
began to read the messages and I don't know how or why but once I heard
Vassula's Archangel was Daniel, I immediately thought "these are message
you don't ignore as he is unrolling the scrolls". I couldn't put the
messages down and even before receiving the prayer book, I had printed off
a number of the prayers. I began to enquire about prayer groups in Ireland
and to my delight I met with Ann-Marie and Kathryn and I remember asking
Ann-Marie on our first visit, is Vassula the Moses of our times.
The reason I choose to go on this pilgrimage, as I never felt the need to
go on a pilgrimage before was that on my birthday 11th of April, I received
an email informing us about the pilgrimage to Rome. As it arrived on my
birthday, I knew this was a pilgrimage I needed to attend.
I was never in Rome or even seen a picture of St.Pauls basilica but before
visiting the Basilica I kept feeling - hold my right hand up, then my left
as you would if you were going to clap with my fingers pointed upwards. I
had my rosary beads in my hand and I was prompted to put the crucifix in
the centre of my left palm then brought my left hand over to my right hand.
This brought my hands into the prayer position with the crucifix in the
middle.
My right hand I heard represented Peter (the East) & my left hand Paul (the
West), with the Crucifix in the center. The words in my head are: East,
West, Peter, Paul join my hands with Jesus (the crucifix in the center) -
Unity. My thumbs crossed each other. Before arriving outside St.Pauls
Basilica I was prompted to tell the Bishop who was sitting nearby us on the
bus and unfortunately I can't remember his name but he was a Canadian
bishop. When we arrived outside St. Paul's basilica, I looked up to the top
of the Basilica and it all came together. Peter on the Right, Paul on the
Left, Jesus and the Crucifix in the center, my thumbs crossed representing
the key, my hands looking like the point of a sword or top of the basilica
and pointing upwards to Heaven. Today I pray with my hands clamped with
the crucifix in the centre pointed upwards to heaven. I believe in my heart
its a very powerful way to pray.
It's been difficult to describe in words and I hope I've explained it
properly. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.
I've attached pictures which I hope will explain it so much better.
God bless and again if you have any questions or can help, I would be
extremely grateful,
Last summer I joined Concordia U. prof. Matthew Anderson on part of a pilgrimage across southwestern Saskatchewan. Matthew teaches a course on pilgrimage, and having done most of Europe's "big ones", he turned his attention to possibilities closer to home (Concordia is in Montreal, but Matthew is originally from Saskatchewan).
With research and assistance from Hugh Henry of Swift Current - including guiding and logistical arrangements - and attracting participants along the way for varying stretches, the small group retraced the old patrol trail of the North West Mounted Police (precursor to today's RCMP) between Wood Mountain and Fort Walsh, used between 1875 and 1912. Much of the route crosses now privately owned lands, so permissions had to be obtained, including places to camp.
Participants who were part of the trek during my limited involvement included writers, film makers, scientists, singers, performance artists, TV and radio documentary producers, birders, other photographers, and people who just plain love the prairie.
Here's a link to an entry from Matthew's blog site. Evening at Chimney Coulee, near Eastend, Saskatchewan (boyhood home of the great American writer Wallace Stegner). A musical moment, unplanned, and I just happened to have the video rolling: somethinggrand.ca/2015/08/18/a-musical-moment/
My own connection to the pilgrimage happened quickly and with great ease, after Matthew gave a presentation about this project in Val Marie, where I live: (1) the NWMP trail runs right through this place; (2) Concordia was the university I attended (then known as Sir George Williams) back in the 1960s; (3) it sounded like it would be fun. And it was.
Photographed near Val Marie, Saskatchewan. Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2015 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
Zhang Huan, Pilgrimage, 2001
Located outside of the Denver Art Museum is Pilgrimage, a life-size granite sculpture of Chinese performance artist Zhang Huan lying naked and face-down. It is based on Zhang's first performance after moving to the United States in 1998. The performance, Pilgrimage: Wind and Water in New York, was part of the Inside Out: New Chinese Art exhibition at P.S. 1, a contemporary art museum in Queens, New York. For this work, Zhang performed the remarkable feat of lying naked, face-down on a block of ice placed on a traditional Chinese bed for 10 minutes on a public street. The work, Zhang says, is about his experience coming to America and his fear of New York City. Zhang explains "I do like the city, but at the same time I have an unnameable fear. I want to feel it with my body, just as I feel the ice. I try to melt off a reality in the way I try to melt off the ice with the warmth of my body."* Zhang's performance is test of endurance but also a kind of existential meditation. Zhang believes he had to be naked to feel the full severity of the ice against his body and to arrive at a spiritual state of being. When he puts his body in extremely uncomfortable situations, he tries to distance himself from his condition, or as he puts it, "let my mind leave my body." When this happens, he can't feel any pain. Zhang says for him, this is a spiritual experience. A performance artist at heart, Zhang thinks of Pilgrimage as an active and interactive work: "In the winter, the water keeps the form of the body as art, but in the summer, when the water is not frozen, I want people to just have a drink."* Because of the continuous changes the sculpture will endure throughout the seasons, Zhang considers this sculpture to be a longer performance, one that never ends.
*Tom Whitten, "Body Politic: The Performance Art of Zhang Huan," Asian Avenue, November 2008, 13.
* Mary Jane Jacob, Zhang Huan, Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art (California: University of California Press, 2004).
... let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.
~George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Twice a year, the Azorian men walk clockwise around the island of Sao Miguel for 8 days during the weeks of Lent, while chanting and praying. By nightfall they stay with locals around the island and pray, and then, back to walking and praying. It's a really interesting thing to see and I'm glad I got to see it! Plus the clothing they wear is so vibrant and photo friendly!
It was fantastic! Like something straight out of a Paulo Coelho book! :)
SORRY everyone, the pace of our travels have been making it hard to get time to process and upload images to flickr --- they are going to have to wait until we are home in a couple of weeks.
BUT meanwhile ---- here is a picture from the final point of our pilgrimage to Belgium following my grandfather's steps in 1916/17. This is taken from the furthest point achieved in the attack on Paschaendale Ridge by the Battalion in which he served. [39th Battalion, 10th [Victorian] Brigade, Third Division AIF.
If you look closely, the spires of the [reconstructed] Cloth Hall and Cathedral in Ieper/Ypres are visible in the middle-left — silhouetted above the trees. Ieper is 8 Kilometres from where I took the picture. So, it took the Australians, together with British, NZ and Canadian troops, more than three months to cross that space and attack this ridge from which German artillery was pounding Paschaendale to a pulp of totally destroyed moonscape. The spires have only just been reconstructed.
The Australians never made it into Paschaendale village or its remains. They were thrown back with massive casualties from this spot where the cemetery now stands, and eventually the Canadians captured the site.
During those months of fighting it rained almost continuously. Artillery of both sides had fired over 6 million shells, which destroyed the ancient drainage systems built over centuries by Flemish farmers to drain the low-lying land, turning the farmland into a massive swamp. The water table is less than 50cm below the ground, so all trenches, shell craters etc were full of water, polluted by human & animal remains; and crawling with rats. Thick mud restricted movement to a crawling pace. Men who fell off the wooden walkways into shell-holes often drowned under the weight of their kit which was in excess of 35Kg.
There are conflicting figures as to the losses suffered by the respective armies but it seems that somewhere in excess of 500,000 men in total were killed or wounded during the 3 months campaign. Tens of thousands of these have never been found in the mud and chaos. Every year bodies emerge from the ground. Many of the burials we saw are unidentified: some have nationalities deduced from uniform or equipment relics found with their bodies, but many. many, many others are totally unidentified. The Tyne Cot cemetery where the picture is taken contains about 12,000 graves of which only about a third have names.
Gangasagar pilgrimage and fair, held annually, is the second largest congregation of mankind (more than 0.8 million this year) after the holy Kumbha Mela. Gangasagar finds mention in sacred texts and ancient scriptures of Hindu mythology including the two great Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
The river Ganga (Ganges) which originates in the Gangotri glacier in the snow clad high Himalayas, descends down the mountains, reaches the plains, flows through ancient pilgrimage sites, and drains into the Bay of Bengal. A dip in the ocean, where the Ganga meets the sea is considered to be of great religious significance particularly on the Makara Sankranti day (January 14/15), when the sun makes a transition to Capricorn from Sagittarius. Almost a million of Hindu devotees from all over India gather at Gangasagar for a holy dip and perform rituals and prayer (puja) with a belief that it will cleanse and purify their souls.
Images of Bengal, India