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Ganges River: Day 13
Joyti Sharma: A Force of Nature
By Alexandra Cousteau | June 10, 2010
We began the day with a 6 am departure via van from Rishikesh back to Delhi for a day of meetings prior to our 9:30 pm series of flights to Botswana. The sun hides behind the mountains until nearly 9 am in Rishikesh, so the sky still echoed with darkness as we gathered our belongings. The roads were blessedly quiet for a few hours, allowing us to catch a few extra moments of sleep. But by lunchtime, when we reached Delhi, traffic clogged the streets with its now-familiar tempestuousness.
Ganges River: Day 11
Finding the Source
By Alexandra Cousteau | June 10, 2010
From Varanasi, the holiest city of Hinduism, where pilgrims wash their sins away as raw human sewage dumps into the river nearby, upstream to Kanpur, where tanneries besiege the water with industrial toxins, we travel upstream again to Rishikesh. This picturesque town in Northern India lies at the foothills of the Himalayas, close to the very source of the Ganges.
Ganges River: Day 9
Dead Rivers Tell Tales
By Alexandra Cousteau | June 10, 2010The Indians have a handy expression for navigating their roads: “Good horn, good brakes, good luck.”
Ganges River: Day 8
Rakesh Jaiswal: The Crusader
By Alexandra Cousteau | June 10, 2010
We woke up at 5 this morning to climb on a bus to Kanpur, a large industrial town about 300 km up the road from Varanasi, to interview Rakesh Jaiswal, an environmental scientist and the founder of Eco-Friends, a non-profit organization. The Ganges here is unrecognizable as a nation’s great provider and Hindu goddess. Water bubbles along the shore, thick black like liquid asphalt and stinking of sewage.
Ganges River: Day 7
Rivers of the World
By Alexandra Cousteau | June 10, 2010
We are fortunate to have another day to explore Varanasi. The place is endlessly fascinating, a non-stop sensory explosion. Adorable schoolchildren dressed in matching uniforms ride open-air, bicycle-powered rickshaws, eight of them crammed along the benches, backpacks hanging from a hook out the back. Today we saw them all hop out at a slight rise of a bridge over the river to help their driver push.
Ganges River: Day 6
Veer Bhadra Mishra: Scientist, Activist, and Holy Man
By Alexandra Cousteau | June 10, 2010Ganges River: Day 5
Death on the Ganges
By Alexandra Cousteau | June 10, 2010
In Varanasi, water is life. But water is also death.
Ganga, the Ganges, sacred river of India, stretches elegantly over 2,510 km from the Himalayas through some of the most populated regions on the planet before unifying herself with the ocean. According to Indian mythology, the goddess descended to the Earth through matted locks of god Shiva’s hair to make the whole Earth pious, fertile, and free from sin.
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