Several million Hindu devotees immersed themselves joyfully in the River Ganges yesterday, undeterred by the threat of clashes between rival groups of holy men.
The authorities moved to defuse tension which had mounted in the Himalayan foothills town of Hardwar on the eve of the most auspicious day of the Kumbh Mela festival, giving the go-ahead for a march by a host of scantily clad ascetics.
The eleventh-hour decision to allow the procession reversed a ban which was imposed after several people were injured last month in fighting between factions of holy men over who should be first to cleanse themselves of sin.
Officials said the march went ahead without any incidents and, despite the vast numbers of people thronging the banks of the holy river, there were no reports of accidents.
At least six million hymn-chanting devotees bathed in the chilly waters, many of them even before the sun had risen, as the last Kumbh Mela of the century reached its climax.
The 15-week festival formally ends on April 29th, the last big day of bathing.
According to Indian legend, Hardwar was one of the four places where the nectar of immortality fell to earth after spilling out of a pitcher during an epic battle for its possession between gods and demons.
The three-month-long Kumbh Mela, or "pitcher festival", which celebrates the gift of that immortality, is held in rotation at one of four Indian cities every three years.
The Guinness Book of Records cites the 1989 Kumbh, at the confluence of the Ganges and the Yamuna in Allahabad, as "the largest-ever gathering of human beings for a single purpose".
Millions of litres of untreated human and industrial waste spew into the Ganges every day, along with the smouldering corpses of funeral rites. But few devotees care - it is their spirits they have come to cleanse, not their bodies.