India from Above

India.

Birthplace of a civilization that is over 5,000 years old.

A land where ancient traditions live side by side

with a dynamic, modern society.

This spectacular aerial journey captures

this unique nation's incredible sights from above,

for the first time.

It shows how ancient festivals still dictate the rhythms of life here.

And how Indians are forging new traditions today.

From the drive to make democracy work for everyone

in a nation of over a billion people,

to ensuring ancient skills and techniques are preserved for future generations.

Our bird's eye view reveals how this nation is embracing

it's past to forge its future.

India.

Home to 1.3 billion people.

A secular nation where multiple faiths have thrived over centuries.

This is the birthplace of the world's oldest surviving religion,

Hinduism.

Scholars believe the roots of Hinduism lie in ancient texts

written over 4,000 years ago.

In India, water has been worshipped since time immemorial.

And no river is more sacred to India's nearly

one billion Hindus than the River Ganga,

known outside of India as the River Ganges.

This river has shaped the religious landscape

of India for thousands of years,

and still exerts its influence over millions of Indians.

One of the most revered parts of the river is at Prayagraj.

448 miles southwest of India's capital city, Delhi.

This is the confluence of three holy rivers,

the Ganga, the Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati,

the last one an invisible river existing in mythology.

Hindus believe the holy water of these rivers washes away all mortal sins.

This belief makes Prayagraj one of the four holy sites

chosen to host the world's largest religious gathering.

The Kumbh Festival.

Every six years, millions of pilgrims flock here in search of salvation.

When they come, a temporary city, two thirds the size of Manhattan,

springs up on these riverbanks.

And, with this many people packed into an area of over 12 square miles,

stampedes are always a risk.

With previous Kumbh Melas reporting a number of deaths

due to overcrowding, the task of ensuring the safety

of the pilgrims falls on the 20,000 police officers

deployed at Prayagraj, especially for this festival.

How is it possible to monitor the welfare of the 220 million people

expected to attend the 50‐day long Kumbh?

Deputy Inspector General K. P. Singh

pioneers a modern solution to this ancient problem.

This time we have used more than 1,000 plus cameras,

so we try to incorporate the technology with the best people.

So it was a new experiment altogether.

In the control room, Singh's team uses artificial intelligence

to analyze the live feeds from over 1,000 fixed and drone cameras

positioned around the festival.

This allows them to watch over pilgrims

across the whole site around the clock.

The technology uses an algorithm which measures the number of pilgrims

in real time, in specific areas, and analyses crowd densities.

It raises soft alerts for more than three people

per square meter and strong alerts for more than five.

This helps inform the team about the areas in danger of becoming overcrowded.

Singh uses this data to instruct his teams on the ground which manage crowds.

Eliminating bottle necks and averting injury.

After 50 days of festivities,

darkness falls on the last day of the Kumbh festival.

The pilgrims launch hundreds of burning lamps into the sacred rivers,

Ganga and Yamuna.

High above, the drone technology takes to the night sky for a special display.

They spell out the phrase "Kumbh 2019"

together with the three colors of the Indian national flag.

This modern‐day spectacle marks the end

of the largest religious gathering in the world.

From traditions that date back over a millennia,

to the millennials ringing in the new year with a modern celebration.

India is a land of festivity.

Come December, a festival begins to heat up on the world‐famous

beaches of Goa, on the west coast.

Asia's largest EDM festival, Sunburn.

An event where fans, world famous DJs and top EDM performers

from around the globe come together for a larger than life celebration.

After Sunburn takes over the beaches of Goa at the end of the year,

another festival begins in the spring

that unites Indians of almost all faiths.

We travel from the southwest to the northern region of India.

It is a warm afternoon in the town of Nandgaon.

A view from the air reveals a group of young men winding their way

through the narrow passages in the town.

A crowd of women waits for them in the main square.

Each woman is armed with a long stick called the laathi.

When the men arrive, the women use their lathis to beat them.

This symbolic act is part of a day long celebration in Nandgaon

that marks the beginning of the festival of Holi every year.

It's early evening in the northern town of Nandgaon,

where a unique ritual is playing out.

This is Lathmar Holi.

It began as a retelling of a famous Hindu legend.

A love story between the Lord Krishna and the maiden, Radha.

Krishna is believed to have blue colored skin.

The story goes that Krishna and his friends visit the village where Radha lives.

Krishna smothers her in pigment to try and change the color of her skin.

Radha fights back.

She and her friends beat Krishna with sticks and drive him from the town.

The modern inhabitants of Nandgaon,

the village where Lord Krishna spent his childhood,

recreate this tale of a youthful prank

in their playful stick beating ritual.

Nandgaon erupts in a kaleidoscope of color.

Neighbors throw handfuls of pigment at each other

to celebrate the ancient legend.

Age, gender and nationality disappear under a blanket of colors.

Scenes like these can be found across the subcontinent

during the week of Holi.

As people come together in a fun celebration

that coincides with the start of spring.

Like the festivals which bind together India's citizens,

the desire for progress transcends borders of states and culture.

The Indian Space Program is a source of great pride for the nation.

From its launchpad in the city of Sriharikota,

the Indian Space Research Organization has sent

missions to both the moon and Mars.

The modern drive to build vessels to explore

new horizons springs from the nation's ancient roots.

Once source of this passion for engineering can be found

on India's west coast, in the city of Veraval.

Indians have fished from boats here for centuries.

A bird's eye view reveals that Veraval is still a busy fishing port today.

Many of these boats are made from fiberglass.

A few are wooden, built by carpenters

who used techniques honed over centuries.

Mansur Kureshi comes from a long line of shipbuilders

that has always made boats the old way.

Mansur builds wooden boats of all shapes

and sizes for high profile clients with traditional tastes.

His vessels range from 40 to over 1,500 tonnes in capacity.

This week, the pressure is on Mansur and his team.

They must complete this huge fishing boat, called a dhow,

in the next seven days before the high tide arrives.

Miss the tide because of delays and Mansur

will have to push back delivery to his client by a month.

Today Mansur must check the boat's hull one final time

to make sure it's ready for launch.

Every wooden panel and every joint must be perfect.

Defects must be repaired.

Mansur's team cannot risk late delivery to the client.

The hull of a vessel like this one starts

as a single piece of wood called a keel.

Craftsmen make a frame to support the boat's shape

using large planks of wood.

Then, the last layer of wood,

which makes the outer skin of the boat, is fitted on.

Mansur's team of skilled workers uses only nuts

and bolts to put this dhow together.

Mansur finishes his inspection.

The boat's hull is perfect.

The build is right on schedule for floating and delivery to the client.

In an age when India has the technology to launch missions into space,

this nation is careful to preserve the unique techniques

pioneered by its past.

India is one of the fastest growing economies in the industrialized world.

And its population is predicted to increase 20 percent

to 1.5 billion by 2030.

This growth will stretch India's energy infrastructure

to its limits.

To meet future demand, India has an ambitious plan to boost the amount

of energy it generates from renewable sources

by 40 percent before the end of the decade.

Kamuthi, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu,

receives an average of more than seven hours of sunshine every day,

making it an ideal place to build such an epic solar farm.

And this monumental power plant is best seen from above.

Two and a half million solar panels combine

to generate 648 megawatts of clean energy.

Enough to power about 150,000 homes,

this is one of the largest solar power plants on Earth.

The entire project is spread across 2,500 acres of land,

if I have to give an analogy that land means 950 Olympic sized football grounds.

This plant has 38,000 pile foundations and 30,000 structural steel.

The solar farm needs to run at close

to maximum efficiency to meet demand.

For this, Anil Gupta and his team must make sure nothing prevents

the sunlight from reaching the panels photovoltaic cells.

Anil assigns a team of 20 grass cutters to remove tall foliage

that could throw shadows over the solar panels.

But the hot, rural location creates another big problem.

Dust.

Layers of dust settle on panels each day which could impede efficiency.

Using water jets to clean the panels takes too long and is too labor intensive.

So, Anil deploys a solution.

25 giant robotic mops.

Each spins at 100 revolutions per minute.

A solar powered motor moves them vertically up and down a rectangular

frame attached to a row of solar panels.

Once a section is cleaned, the frame slides along automatically

to the neighboring panel.

It takes one mop around two hours to clean a row of solar panels 803 feet long.

The robotic mops work every day to ensure this solar farm captures the natural,