The volume presents the comprehensive research findings and includes city maps, aerial images, \nanalytical drawings and photographs of this spectacular Ephemeral Mega City for the Kumbh Mela. \nKumbh Mela is the largest religious celebration on earth and the biggest public gathering in the world. \nThe resulting settlement is a virtual mega city!\n\nThe Kumbh Mela deploys its own roads, pontoon bridges as well as tents serving as residences and \nvenues for spiritual meetings, and social infrastructure such as hospitals, sanitation outlets, \nand vaccination clinics—all replicating the functions of an actual city. \nThe pop-up settlement seamlessly serves up to seven million people who gather for 55 days\n and an additional flux of 10 to 20 million people \nwho come for 24-hour cycles on the six main bathing dates. \n\nIn 2013, a team from Harvard University, representing faculty from multiple disciplines, \nresearched the large-scale event from its preparation to the actual celebration itself. \nThis was the first systematic study on the Mela as a City: a planned entity \nand covers issues of social inclusion, diversity, and even democracy that emerge under the framework \nof a neutralizing grid of roads that is the organizing armature of the city. \nThis subdivision of the city forms clusters of freedom and facilitates space for individual and group expression