Five apps that make Nashik’s Mahakumbh Mela a better experience

There’s no doubt that technology and innovation has surrounded the Mahakumbh Mela in Nashik. Especially, with a team of experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, Boston) visiting Nashik to mentor young engineers and help them find innovative solutions for predictable problems. Through "Kumbhathon" workshops and seminars, they managed to inspire and support a host of ideas, some of them even seeing the light of day.

Here are a couple of apps devised during these sessions, as well as other equally useful ones that could help make your Kumbh experience a much easier one. 

Nashik Trimbak Kumbh

Developed by Nebula Studios

This is the official government app for the Kumbh Mela. Not only does it give you all the necessary spiritual information, including the meaning of Kumbh, but also practical information such as the routes of entry, parking and ghat locations. It also offers transport details and locates nearby ATM machines. 

Meditracker

Developed by MediTracker

Think of this app like a 911 service. Developed by students in Nashik, the emergency app not only gives you directions to the nearest hospital and medical store, but also has an "alert" button that sends a message to medical officers in case of a serious injury. 

Nashik Kumbh Mela Guide 2015

Developed by Mindtricks Software

What’s great about this app is that it gives you a day to day schedule of the Kumbh Mela, with the dates of interesting events, the shahi snans as well as the other important days. You can set notifications for the particular days too. Users can also access emergency numbers and post images of missing persons and subsequently file a report as well. 

Mahakumbh Nashik 2015

Developed by Impulse Technosoft

With information in three languages Hindi, Marathi and English, this would be great for the vernacular user. Apart from air, rail and bus schedules, there are online and offline maps of the city, historical information about Nashik as well as about the rituals at Kumbh. 

Epimetrics

Although this is not for the layman, this app is certainly of great importance at this year’s Kumbh. Also created by students during the Kumbhathon, it acts as a data-collecting platform for doctors and other healthcare professionals, and attempts to curb the spread of epidemics by digitising doctors’ logs at the various health centres across the city during the Mela. This makes it easier to track growing symptoms as well as identify vulnerable locations much faster.