BBC star 'wades through rivers of people' as tragedy leaves 30 dead

BBC journalist faces huge decision as catastrophe strikes and 30 die during filming epic spiritual journey in India to explore grief and spiritualism
'My dad was my hero, totally and utterly,' says Amol Rajan as he recalls the toughest journey of his life. Earlier this year, the broadcaster, 41, joined 500 million pilgrims from across the globe to attend the Maha Kumbh Mela festival in Northern India, the world 's largest religious gathering.
While on his journey, he explores his Indian and Hindu heritage and grieves for his beloved father, P Varadarajan, who died three years ago from pneumonia. 'I revered him growing up as I did my beloved mum,' says the University Challenge host. 'Both him and my mum were from very, very, very poor, very, very big families. My dad was one of 11 from a very poor part of southeast India called Tamil Nadu, and he gave up everything to come to this country because he wanted a better life for his two sons.'
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Amol grew up in West London and is forever grateful for the opportunities that his father gave him. 'I always had this idea in my head that if I worked really hard, I'd be able to kind of pay him back,' shares Amol. 'Then, very suddenly, three years ago, he got pneumonia and died. This was really shocking to me because it was the first time I'd ever lost someone I'd loved. It's the first experience of grief I've ever been through and I really thought I was going to get the time with my dad to kind of say thank you.'
The grief hit Amol hard and left him wondering how to shape the rest of his life. 'It felt very much like that was the end of the first part of my life… and it was only when he died that I entered adulthood,' he says. 'I think that one of the things that I wanted to go to the Kumbh Mela to do, was to confront my grief, reconnect with my dad, but also to try and work out what the next 38 or 40 years of my life would have to do with the first half.'
The grief was so intense, Amol shut it out. Then he decided to face it head on and honour his dad by attending the 2025 Kumbh Mela, which has been proclaimed a Maha (Great) Kumbh Mela, the first in 12 years, because of the way the planets are aligned.
'The Kumbh Mela is a Hindu pilgrimage, which is the biggest gathering of humanity anywhere ever, where people go bathing in a sacred river,' explains Amol. 'Every 12 years is a special one because of the alignment of Jupiter with the Moon, the Sun and Earth.'
Bathing in the holy rivers at the Kumbh Mela is believed to absolve sins and release souls from the cycle of rebirth, bringing them closer to moksha, or spiritual liberation. This is what Amol hoped to achieve for his father as part of his pilgrimage.
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Amol explains, 'I thought that if I went to the biggest pilgrimage in the history of the world and tried, along with tens of millions of other people, to jump in the holy water, that'd be quite a good way of forcing myself to think about my dad and also to do what you can do at the Kumbh Mela, which is you can release his spirit from the eternal cycle of death and rebirth.'
For Amol, the experience wasn't just emotionally wrought, it was physically terrifying when a huge crush saw at least 30 people lose their lives. 'At any one time you are essentially with about 70 million people – the population of Britain – in a small, makeshift, temporary megacity about 15 miles squared,' he explains. 'It's crowded. It's noisy. There are Tannoys going off all day, every day, and the sensory overload is really overwhelming. You really don't sleep.
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'A lot of people will know there was a crush on the most auspicious day, where 30 people were tragically reported to have died and I was just yards away when the horror took place. The journey that followed, where we're trying to wade through these rivers of people, is the most physically terrifying thing I've ever done.' It left Amol unsure of whether it was safe to continue making his film.
The pilgrimage tested Amol to his limits, but he knows his father would have been proud. 'My dad would have loved it,' he says. 'I don't know whether my dad would have fully believed the deep Hindu belief, which is that you can, by bathing in those cosmic waters at that special auspicious time, emancipate yourself from the endless cycle of death, birth and rebirth, but a little part of him would have liked it. And a little part of him would have liked the idea of me doing it on his behalf.'

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