The event has retained its traditions

Despite beating all previous records for the numbers coming to bathe, the Kumbh Mela has generally been seen here as a triumph of organisation.

Final day ceremonies were split between Allahabad and the city of Varanasi, further east along the Ganges, where the famous naked sadhus, or holy men, worshipped Hinduism's Lord Shiva.

At Allahabad, a ritual holy dip at the confluence of the Ganges, the Yamuna and another mythical river is deemed to be particularly auspicious.

The authorities estimated the attendance on the biggest bathing day to have been more than 20 million.

Spirit lives

They are congratulating themselves on the organisation of this huge undertaking, given that some past Kumbh Melas have witnessed deadly stampedes.

But the fact is that the vast numbers of ordinary pilgrims who came for the most auspicious days of the festival largely policed themselves as they bathed in turn from before dawn to after dusk.

The Kumbh Mela at Allahabad takes place every 12 years and never has the festival attracted so much attention around the world and drawn so many visitors from outside India - from the committed to the simply curious.

This is put down in part to the information about it that has been carried on the internet.

But even if this was the first Kumbh Mela to make its mark in cyberspace, the number of ordinary pilgrims who made arduous journeys from many parts of India simply to camp out in the open on the river bank, to bathe and to see the sadhus at close quarters ensured that the traditional spirit of the event was far from lost.