Ever since they were newlyweds decades ago, Moti Ram and his wife, Kashi Bai, dreamed of bathing in a holy river during the Hindu Kumbh festival.
The elderly couple finally made it to the Kumbh — among the largest religious gatherings in the world — only to find themselves swept up in a stampede on Wednesday that killed 39 Hindu pilgrims.
Ram, 70, and his wife fell and would have been crushed if others had not pulled them to the banks of the Godavari River. But they expressed no regrets.
"Outsiders may not understand this, but we Hindus come here from all over the country because we want to seek our destiny and attain salvation," Bai, 65, said.
The couple and their 30-year-old son, Ram Phool Maina, who fractured his right arm in the stampede, traveled hundreds of miles in a packed train to reach Nasik.
"We were too poor to come, but we always dreamed about it, because we wanted to clean our sins and wash them away into the river," said Ram, a farmer in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
Some 60 million people journeyed to Nasik, 110 miles northeast of Bombay, this month, leaving behind their work, farms and shops to attend the Kumbh festival.
They come expecting inconveniences, such as sleeping in shanties and walking for miles in the sun, often without food or water. They know they might get separated from each other, hurt, or even killed in the festival. More than 750 people have been crushed or drowned at the event in the last two decades.
"We came here because it was destiny, and we survived because it was destiny," said Bai, wearing a brown printed sari as she visited her son in the city's government hospital on Thursday.
About 125 people were injured in Wednesday's riverside chaos; most of the dead were women who had been trampled.
Despite the potential heartache, the faithful still come.
"Many of those coming here are either poor people, or those who are anguished because of personal problems. Clinging to religion is the last resort for them," said university professor Madan Thapliyal, currently visiting friends in Nasik. He, too, went for a holy dip.
Although India has no state religion and a secular constitution, religious values run deep. More than 80 percent of India's 1 billion people are Hindus.
The Kumbh Mela, literally meaning "festival of the water pitcher," is held every 12 years, timed in connection with the alignments of the sun and Jupiter. The main festival is held near the northern holy city of Allahabad, while the Nasik festival is one of the "mini-kumbhs" held more often.
The Kumbh Mela originates from an ancient Hindu myth revolving around a joint effort by gods and demons to churn the oceans and attain immortality. The churning brought about a pitcher of "amrit," or nectar — and the two sides began squabbling over it.
In the melee, according to legend, the pitcher spilled and the four places where it dropped on earth are those where Kumbh festivals are held.
Millions of devout — from villagers in turbans to Indian movie stars — jostle and rush to the ghats, or riverside bathing areas. They chant mantras, shed clothes and leap into the water. Those who can't swim stand waist deep, scooping up water and pouring it over their heads in a centuries-old gesture.
They believe a dip will purify them — and are indifferent to the pollution in India's rivers.
The childless want children; relatives seek good health for ailing kin; and the elderly desire salvation from Hinduism's endless cycle of reincarnation.
Mark Twain, who visited the Kumbh festival in the 1890s, wrote: "The power of faith like that can make multitudes of the old and the weak and the young and the frail to enter without hesitation or complaint."