Every year the Shivaratri Festival is celebrated in Pashupatinath in honor of the god Shiva. Pashupatinath is Nepal’s most important Hindu pilgrimage site, the temple complex is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is located on the eastern outskirts of Kathmandu.
The ghats are located on the western right bank of the Bagmati; in addition to the ritual bathing of the Hindus, they are used as cremation sites. The southern part, the Ram Ghats, are used by all castes, and billows of smoke almost always rise up here.
At the time of the Shivaratri Festival, the complex is overcrowded with pilgrims, and the number of the often very bizarre sadhus, the “holy men”, is particularly high. In addition, the consumption of drugs is not punished during these days, so that various “tobacco mixtures” are openly traded every few meters.
Pashupatinath has been mentioned a lot in the media in the last few days, as thousands of dead have been burned here in a very short time since the great earthquake at the end of April 2015 – not least to avert the risk of epidemics.

With at least 75 million pilgrims (2001), the Kumbh Mela, the “festival of the jug”, is considered the largest religious festival in Hinduism and even in the whole world. In March 2010 a “small” Kumbh Mela took place in Haridwar in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand. I was there – together with several million Indians who had made a pilgrimage here to the upper reaches of the holy river Ganges. After sunset the whole place is bathed in a sea of lights …

The pilgrimage “Romería de El Rocío” is a procession or pilgrimage on the second day of Pentecost to the Hermitage of El Rocío in the countryside of Almonte, province of Huelva, Andalusia, Spain, in honor of the Virgin of El Rocío.