The roving journalist who lived with naga sadhus to bring the Kumbh Mela to the world

French-Spanish adventurer journalist Diego Buñuel admits he came to the Mahakumbh with "some prejudices".

However, after staying with naga sadhus in juna akharas for 24 days and learning about strange spiritual patterns to shoot his hour-long documentary, World's Biggest Festival: Kumbh Mela, he left the city with a surreal feeling, similar to what he felt when he watched the films his grandfather, Spanish legend Luis Buñuel, made. 

"I will always remember this festival as a place where I was surrounded by a number of naked men covered with ashes, living in extreme peace because they belong to a different world. 

Everything about the sadhus is so spiritual and wild," Diego tells the MAIL TODAY. 

As a war correspondent, Buñuel embedded with the US Marine Corps and got shot in Colombia, tracked gorillas in wartorn Congo and trekked through Antarctica while shooting interesting episodes of popular show, Don't Tell My Mother, for National Geographic channel. 

Covering the Kumbh for the channel, though, was one of the most intense and unpredictable assignments for him. "One has to live with the sadhus to understand what it means to live in a juna akhara. 

Their process of worship is at an extreme and they go through extreme pain. For these sadhus, it is the path to achieve God," says Buñuel. 

"Where the naga sadhus come from is one of the important aspects of our film. We learnt that there are families blessed by these sadhus that willingly give away their children to the akhara for extreme religious practices," adds Buñuel, underlining that the chillum-smoking sadhus have caused a shift in his thinking. 

"Before this I never knew anything like Kumbh. Various facets of Hinduism, the rituals and the vibrant shades are unknown to the world," says Bunuel. 

Explaining the flow of people for around two months to a wide audience in more than 60 countries where the documentary will be aired is a mammoth task. Bunuel plans to narrate it by keeping the "surprise quotient" intact. 

"When I was given the assignment on Kumbh, I asked, 'How is it possible for a million people to gather at a place for religion?'. In my film, I plan to divide the answer into many parts for the global audience to understand," he concludes.