Shiva festival/ b-day coincidence?

Well the yearly Shiva festival is being celebrated today (Varanasi is the Shiva city). Last evening a 75km walk started from the "burning" (cremation) ghat's Shiva temple. Completion of the loop brings good things to one's family for the year to come. A veritable river of young men rushed down the waterfront of Varanasi starting around 9 pm on this journey. A friend Noah and I couldn't hold ourselves back and joined the masses at the burning ghat, after successfully shoving our way into the 9 sq ft Shiva temple along with a raging group of 100 or so males our age and gathering a few grains of rice, tradition requires, we began the walk. It was 8km or so before we realized that we hadn't misunderstood: many take 15hrs to walk the whole 75km. Some water and a hot street omelette finished off the evening nicely around 2am...namaste cwt