I have been reading so many books about the Ganges I’ll put a list at the end of this article in the footnotes of the titles.1 The research is going fine, but the writing is still lagging. I get a bit done, but for the next few months, I will be more disciplined in writing. It is a discipline or a practice. At least that’s how I know it.
I really love this book because it puts me back into the period before conspiracy theories began competing with the world for a position in reality. It happens from 2018-2020 mostly. I haven’t yet been able to return but will likely next spring. With this book finished!
A friend suggested the book start with part of its conclusion, so here’s how it starts.
Gaumukh
‘Are you alone?’
I replied with a smile and a nod.
‘Oh,’ I heard as I walked past.
She turned to watch. I felt her eyes and thoughts for a few steps. A thought arrived that perhaps she would be the last to see me alive.
Half an hour later, I am standing along a narrow stream about ten feet wide. There are ice-blue calves of glacial ice that collapse, about forty feet in height, widening the mouth. I watch ice balls float out from the snout of the Ganges. Some are tiny, and others are handheld to larger. The ice empties from the floor of the glacial ice river and has rolled and melted into spherical circles. I reach my hand down into the cold water and scoop out a smaller round chunk. It looks milky white, with no discoloration, and feels like glass. It must be packed with magnesium and other minerals. I place it into my mouth, savoring the multi-million-year-old frozen essence as it melts. This is Gaumukh, the mouth of the Ganges. I could get no closer to the snout without going into the water.
The trail had ended. From here, I wanted to climb up higher to Tapovan, but I did not know the way. I gazed at the mountain beside the glacier and saw an incline that looked climbable. I would need to cross over the Ganga, a knee-high stream here during the summer, and walk the opposite bank. And from there, climb up the rocky side of the glacier to reach the meadow of Tapovan, my destination.
As I scouted the potential route, I noticed a jutted-up rock behind me. The sun was just past its zenith, and I tucked into the sliver of shade. Out from under the blazing sun, I munched on a few dried fruits and rested, transfixed while seeing the Ganga mouth of water exiting the glacier rapidly, with little white ice cubes bobbling in the current. Even the biggest would not make it more than a kilometer before melting into the Ganges.
That sight, with the surrounding snow-capped Himalayas mountains, was enrapturing. My eyes lifted back, and as my skull touched the cool rock, I slipped into a reverie. I thought about what brought me here, all the past. I was beyond the cities, the temple, and all the people. Everything behind blurred together as I retraced the journey along the Ganges to reach the present. And when I got to the present, again, I thought, ‘I can reach the high glacier meadow with one more climb.’
Why was I waiting? I knew. I was waiting for an answer.
As I sat in the shade of that stone at Gomukh, I reached over to Ganga to catch and suckle on another million-year-old ice cube.
I had a simple question.
‘Can I go on? Can I go higher now? Up to Tapovan?’
I didn’t know who would answer my question or how, but I had asked. I wanted to know right then and there, so I waited for an answer. And being immensely tired from hiking the twenty kilometers from Gangotri the first half of the day, I dozed off.
‘Wake up! Look!’
Ganges River travel:
Francis Hamilton. An Account of the Fishes in the Ganges. Edinburgh, 1882.
Swami Sivananda, Mother Ganges. Rishikesh, 1962.
Eric Newby, Slowly Down the Ganges. Scribners, 1966.
Edmund Hillary, From The Ocean To The Sky. Viking Press, 1979.
Dennison Berwick, A Walk Along the Ganges. Voyage Press, 1986.
Vijay Singh, Jaya Ganga: In Search of the River Goddess. Rupa, 1985.
Bill Aitken, Seven Sacred Rivers. Penguin, 1992.
Debu Majumdar, From the Ganges to the Snake River: An East Indian in the American West. Caxton Press, 2000.
Stephen Alter, Sacred Waters: A Pilgrimage to the Many Sources of the Ganga. Penguin, 2001.
Mike Wardle, Through The Gates of Vishnu. Authorhouse, 2008.
Dennison Berwick, Goodbye Mother Ganges. Createspace, 2009.
Sudipta Sen, Ganga: The Many Pasts of a River. Penguin, 2019.
Dilip Da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers: Alexander’s Eye and Ganga’s Descent. Penn, 2019.
Bidisha Banerjee, Superhuman River: Stories of the Ganga. Aleph, 2020.